Con tagious A bortion . 371 



The greedy ingestion of cold aliments, like frozen roots, or green 

 vegetation covered with hoar frost, may have a similar action, 

 the more so that such aliments are extremely fermentescible and 

 liable to cause tympany and undue pressure on the gravid womb. 



Even without ingestion, exposure to cold rain or snow storms 

 or the plunging in ice cold water tends to produce excessive peri- 

 stalsis and foetal movements and thereby prove injurious. 



Mechanical injuries to the abdomen as crushing by a gate, kicks, 

 hooking with horns or tusks, hounding with dogs, riding of each 

 other when a cow is in heat, are liable to produce congestions, de- 

 tachment of foetal membranes, and even death of the feet us. 



Very fermentescible foods like those following a wet season or 

 bad harvest, or those made of the leafy albuminous plants like 

 lucerne (alfalfa), sainfoin and clover, act injuriously in the way 

 of causing tympanies and compressions, but it must also be recog- 

 nized that we are here dealing with fodders abounding in bac- 

 terial ferments, and that some of their products may act physio- 

 logically as ecbolics, even if the bacteria themselves do not colo- 

 nize the genital passages as infections. 



Insufficient food or very innutritions forage , too close stabling, 

 heavy milking, early breeding (dam or sire), inbreeding, are 

 liable to lower the general stamina and throw the system more 

 open to the action of other factors. 



Stagna?it, corrupt drinking zvater has been charged with caus" 

 ing abortion, and the trouble has ceased when it has been with- 

 drawn, but it is difficult to estimate its value in different cases — 

 disturbing digestion, fermentation, poisoning, or introducing of 

 actual infection. 



Ergoted grasses and smut in maize, wheat or oats, have been often 

 charged with wide spread abortions, and though each has in turn 

 been administered in large and continuous doses without causing 

 abortion, this does not invalidate the many cases in which it mani- 

 festly had that effect, nor does it show that obstetricians have been 

 mistaken in their almost immemorial trust in ergot as an ecbolic. 

 It must be recognized, however, that grown under different con- 

 ditions, of sunshine and shade, and harvested at different stages 

 of its development, ergot varies greatly in its physiological action, 

 as it does also from having been overkept and thus one specimen 

 is effective or dangerous while another is absolutely ineffective. 

 The specific action of the alkaloids in determining contraction of 



