378 Veterinary Mediciiie. 



living in the blood and affecting the womb by whatever channel 

 it may enter the system. 



V. A. Moore and the present writer made a series of experi- 

 ments at the New York State Veterinary College. In the foetal 

 membranes and uterine mucus of a number of cows, aborting in 

 different parts of the State and therefore long distances apart, we 

 found a bacillus that in form and culture-experiments closely re- 

 sembles bacillus coli commune. This was nearly always in pure 

 cultures, and in the few cases showing other microbes, these were 

 only such as inhabit the healthy vagina. Our bacillus was never 

 found in the womb nor foetal membranes of cows that had calved 

 at the full period in healthy herds. It agreed in most respects 

 with the bacillus found by Chester, but differed somewhat in fer- 

 mentation tests. It differed also in proving fatal to rabbits when 

 inoculated on these animals. Injected in the form of cultures 

 into the vagina in three old pregnant cows it continued to live on 

 the mucosa, producing more or less catarrh and mucopurulent 

 discharge in the different cases, yet all three carried the calf to 

 full time, one having calved on the 123d day after injection, the 

 second on the 167th, and the third on the 190th. 



The results obtained at the Delaware College Experiment Sta- 

 tion and the New York State Veterinary College, do not differ so 

 seriously, as either one does from those obtained in Europe, by 

 Nocard, Bang, and the Scotish Abortion Committee. The facts 

 that the same germs were found, either in pure cultures, or ex- 

 ceptionally, along with the normal microbes of the healthy 

 vagina, in the womb, and foetal membranes of every aborting cow, 

 that they were never found in the healthy cow which had calved at 

 full time, and that the generative passages were the seat of a 

 catarrh, alike in the cows that aborted and in those that were 

 inoculated with the abortion discharges, but did not themselves 

 abort, are all but conclusive that this microbe is the essential cause 

 of the abortion. 



The single objection to this view, namely that the inoculated 

 cows did not abort is explained by the fact that in the New York 

 abortions it is the rule that the calf is carried six or seven months 

 from the date of impregnation (the date of the presumptive infec- 

 tion) to that of abortion. It is to be further borne in mind that 

 our experimental cows were old, and may have passed through 



