500 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
produces one type of abortion. On the other hand, the removal of 
the calving cow from the herd to calve in a separate building, hitherto 
unused and therefore uninfected, usually secures the escape and sur- 
vival of the offspring. 
The disease has been traced by Nocard and Lignieres to a small 
bacillus having the general characters of those which produce hemor- 
rhagic septicemia, which is usually combined with a variety of others, 
but is in some cases alone and in pure culture, especially in the joints. 
The theory of Lignieres is that this bacillus is the primary offender, 
and that once introduced it so depresses the vital powers of the system 
and tissue cells that the healthy resistance to other bacteria is im- 
paired or suspended, and hence the general and deadly invasion of the 
latter. 
Inoculations with this bacillus killed guinea pigs or rabbits in six 
to eighteen hours, and calves in thirty hours, with symptoms and lesons 
of hermorrhagic septicemia, including profuse fetid diarrhoea. 
The predominance of the early and deadly lesions in the alimentary 
tract would seem to imply infection through the food, and the prompti- 
tude of the attack after birth, together with the frequent coincidence 
of contagious abortion in the herd, suggest the presence of the germ 
in the cow; yet the escape of the calf v/hen the cow calves in a fresh 
building is equally suggestive of the infection through germs laid up 
in the building. This conclusion is further sustained by the observa- 
ton that the bacillus evidently enters by the raw, unhealed navel, that it 
is diffused in the blood, and that a very careful preservation of the 
navel against infection gives immunity from attack. 
Prevention. — The disease is so certainly and speedily fatal that it 
is hopeless to expect recovery, and therefore prevention is the rational 
resort. 
When a herd is small, the removal of the dam to a clean, unused 
stable a few days before calving and her retention there for a week 
usually succeeds. But it is in the large herd that the disease is 
mainly to be dreaded, and in this it is impossible to furnish new and 
pure stables for each successive group of two or three calving cows. 
The thorough disinfection of the general stable ought to succeed; yet 
I have seen the cleanest and purest stable repeatedly disinfected with 
corrosive sublimate without stopping the malady. It would appear 
as if the germ lodged on the surface or in the bowels of the cow and 
tided the infection over the period of stable disinfection. But though 
insufficient of themselves, the supply of separate calving boxes and 
the frequent thorough cleaning and disinfection of both these and 
the stables should not be neglected. The most important measure, 
however, is the disinfection of the navel. 
The cow should be furnished with abundance of dry, clean bedding., 
sprinkled with a solution of carbolic acid. As soon as calving sets 
in the tail and hips, anus and vulva, should be sponged with a carbolic 
acid solution (one-half ounce to the quart), and the vagina injected 
with a weaker solution (2 drams to the quart). Fresh carbolized bed- 
ding should be constantly supplied, so that the calf shall be dropped 
