Our Domestic Animals in Health and Disease by John Gamgee

Author:John Gamgee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1871-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

* Now at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in Bed Lion Square.

FATT7 DEOEKEBATION OF THE HEABT. 373

the ventricle. All that Mr Henderson knows about the case is, that the horse from which the heart was taken dropped down dead, in an emaciated condition, in a dust-cart

*' A case of ossification of the right auricle is reported in the lUcueil de M^cL Vet, for Sept 1840. It occurred to Mr Barthelemy. The horse, small in stature and weak in appearance, worked in a public cairiagei but only for five months, before he was found iacapable, though only five years old. He had no cough, though it was found that his respiration and pulse were much quicker than iu health, and that the slightest exercise proved su£Scient to put him out of breath; though even then the motions of his flanks were but increased in number, without being rendered irregular. At length he was sent into the infirmary, and died there on the sixth day, with symptoms of pneumonia in both sides. There were found abscesses and vomicsB in the lungs, with hepatization and grey tubercle, quite su£Scient to account for death. But the heart also was diseased. It was so voluminous as nearly to fill the entire cavity of the pericardium; and its left auricle was ossified, and strongly adherent to the pericardium by white fibrous bands. It was double its natural size, and its ossified walls proved more than one-third of an inch in thickness. The auricular septum was sound, and the auriculo-ventricular valves had not a spot of ossification. The ventricles were not sensibly enlarged."

Fatty Degeneration op the Heart.

This disease, so common in the human subject, is not frequently seen in the lower animals. In a state of obesity the heart of oxen especially is surrounded with large masses of &t, which penetrate its structure to a certain extent But, in addition to fatty tissue, deposited around the heart, the muscular structure gives way, and fibres are observed broken up

and replaced by innnmerable oil-globulea I have, however, shown that in a case of dilatation the heart was fetty, .so that, apart from the tendency to obesity in some cases, and of premature decay in others, when various tissues are disposed to undergo fatty transformation, the heart is implicated by a similar retrograde change.

The symptoms are those of dilatation already given, and treatment is of no avail

Amongst the cardiac affections of a chronic nature, and which are rarely diagnosed during life, we must class—

TUMOUES OF THE HeAET.

There is a great variety of cardiac tumoiirs. Those that 1 have more frequently witnessed are—1. Parasitic growths, either internally situated or attached to the apex of the heart 2. Melanotic tumours in the substance of the heart. 3. Fibrinous tumours, or cardiac polypi, properly so called 4. Vascular tumours. 5. Cancer.

It is evident that the importance of these organic disorders varies as much from the position of the growth as from its size and tendency to interfere with the heart's action. The

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