198 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES. 



NocarcT states — " The autopsy of diseased animals does not 

 reveal any alteration of the thoracic or abdominal viscera, with 

 the exception of the uterus. The peritoneal serous membrane 

 is normal, incision of the uterus reveals the presence between 

 the mucous membrane and the chorion of a fibrinous muco- 

 purulent matter, which is more or less abundant and often acid, 

 in which the microscope shows epithelial cells, leucocytes, a 

 large number of isolated micrococci, which are generated or 

 associated in short chains of three, four, or five sections, and a 

 few short bacilli, which are isolated or associated in pairs ; in 

 the cotyledonous liquid the bacilli are predominant ; in the 

 product obtained by scraping the uterine mucous membrane 

 both micro-organisms exist in almost equal numbers. The 

 amniotic fluid also contains them. In the aborted fcetus the 

 intestinal mucous membrane is the seat of abundant epithelial 

 desquamation; its tissue seems infiltrated with various microbes, 

 which also exist in abundance in the contents of the intestines. 

 These micro-organisms, which are contained in the digestive 

 tube, give an explanation of the diarrhoea by which the calves 

 which have been aborted in an advanced state of gestation are 

 affected in two or three days after birth. Micrococci identical 

 with those found in the amniotic fluid are also found in the 

 medulla oblongata in those calves which continually bellow 

 during the days preceding death." Nocard arrives at the fol- 

 lowing conclusions : — 



1. In aborted cows, even in primipara, there exists in the 

 uterus, between the mucous and the fa?tal membranes, especially 

 in the cotyledonous crypts, several micro-organisms which can- 

 not be found in newly calved cows, which belong to a locality 

 where abortion does not exist. 



2. These micro-organisms do not seem to exercise any noxious 

 action upon the uterine mucous membranes of the mother, 

 either during the period of gestation, which must be interrupted 

 suddenly, or even after abortion. 



3. Eepeated abortion in the same subject can easily be 

 explained, if we admit the pathological influence of the microbe, 

 by the persistency of the latter in the uterine cavity till the 

 time when it is able to exercise its action on a new foetus or on 

 its envelopes. 



