376 Veterinary Medicine. 



In a second experiment a cow, six months in calf, was taken 

 from a healthy herd and placed in an aborting dairy herd and a 

 quantity of vaginal mucus from a cow that had recently aborted 

 was injected under the skin of the vagina. She calved prema- 

 turely at the end of the eighth month of gestation. 



Williamsen, while treating a herd for abortion, took a piece of 

 the afterbirth of one of the aborting cows and rubbed it on the 

 vagina of a healthy cow of his own, which had a habit of carry- 

 ing her calf fourteen days over time. Five days after she had 

 premature parturition. 



He took a fragment of the foetal membrane from the cow just 

 named and rubbed it on the vagina of a pregnant cow condemned 

 for tuberculosis. In seventeen days the cow aborted. 



Though not started as an experiment, the writer may name the 

 general extension of abortion from one or two cows in a tubercu- 

 lous herd after they had been tested with tuberculin. Cases of 

 this kind are doubtless much more common than has been sup- 

 posed . 



Kilborne and Smith developed suppurating vaginal catarrh in 

 cows and mares by inoculating them with the artificial cultures 

 of bacilli obtained from the vaginal secretions of aborting mares. 



Turner made cultures from the ovaries of aborting mares, and 

 others from the genital organs of foals suffering from omphalitis, 

 and produced abortions in pregnant mares by injecting with the 

 same. 



Pathology. Bacteriology . Franck attributed the disease to 

 leptothrix vagifialis, but subsequent observers failed to substan- 

 tiate this. 



The Scottish Abortion Commission isolated five different bac- 

 teria from the abortion membranes and vaginal mucus, but failed 

 to identify any one of these as, by itself, capable of causing the 

 disease. 



Nocard found in the fibrino-purulent matter between the 

 chorion and womb in aborting animals a micrococcus occurring 

 singly or in chains, and a short, delicate bacillus isolated or in 

 pairs. From the absence of evil effects between pregnancies he 

 opines that the germs grow in the membranes only, and do not 

 affect the womb nor the general system. He recognizes, how- 

 ever, that they survive in the womb from one pregnancy to an- 

 other in the complete absence of these membranes. 



