NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X 453 
iron apparatus, plaster of adhesive mixtures, and similar means. So long 
as the dressing remain in place undisturbed and no chafing or other evi- 
dence of pain is present, the dressing may be continued without changing, 
the patient being kept in the slings for a period sufficient to insure the 
perfect union of the tendons. But for a compound lesion, when there is 
laceration of the skin, some special care is necessary. The wound must 
be carefully watched and the dressing removed at intervals of a few days, 
or as often as may be needful, all of which additional manipulation and 
extra nursing, however indispensable, still adds to the gravity of the 
case and renders the prognosis more and more serious. When the ten- 
dons have sloughed in threads of various dimensions, or if in the absence 
of this process of mortification healthy granulations should form and fill 
up the wound, still very careful attention will be required, the granulat- 
ing ends of the tendons having a tendency to bulge between the edges of 
the skin and to assume large dimensions, forming bulky excrescences or 
growths of a warty or cauliflower appearance, the removal of which be- 
comes a troublesome matter. 
The union of the tendons will at times leave a thickening of varying 
degree near the point of cicarization, the absorption of which becomes 
an object of difficult and doubtful accomplishment, but which may be 
promoted by moderate blistering and the use of alterative and absorbent 
mixtures or perhaps the fire iron. A shoe with heels somewhat higher 
than usual will prove a comfort to the animal and aid in moderating 
and relieving the tension of the tendons. 
DISEASES OP CATTLE. 
Revised Edition, 1908. 
ABORTION (slinking THE CALF) . 
Technically, abortion is the term used for the expulsion of the off- 
spring before it can live out of the womb. Its expulsion after it is cap- 
able of an independent existence is premature parturition. In the cow 
this may be after seven and one-half months of pregnancy. Earl Spencer 
failed to raise any calf born before the two hundred and forty-second day. 
Dairymen use the term abortion for the expulsion of the product of con- 
ception at any time before the completion of the full period of a normal 
pregnancy, and in this sense it will be employed in this article. 
Abortion in cows is either contagious or non-contagious. It does not 
follow that the contagium is the sole cause in every case in which it is 
present. We know that the organized germs of contagion vary much in 
potency at different times, and that the animal system also varies in 
susceptibility to their attack. The germ may therefore be present in a 
herd without any manifest injury, its disease-producing power having for 
the time abated considerably, or the whole herd being in a condition of 
comparative insusceptibility. At other times the same germ may have 
become so virulent that almost all pregnant cows succumb to its force, 
or the herd may have been subjected to other causes of abortion which, 
though of themselves powerless to actually cause abortion, may yet so 
