520 SPORADIC DISEASES. 



of affecting tlie Imman frame, and hence of rendering the flesh 

 of animals affected by it unfit for human food." — [Domestic 

 Animals) If this assertion were correct, the number of the 

 human race would ere this have been much reduced, for it is 

 a well-known fact that the flesh of cows slaughtered whilst 

 suffering from parturient apoplexy is a common article of diet, 

 and that no bad consequences result from it, provided the 

 animal has been slaughtered early, before the system has been 

 empoisoned by the excessive doses of medicines which are so 

 generally prescribed in this malady, and antecedent to a general 

 vitiation of the animal solids and fluids by the accumulation 

 of effete materials. 



The anatomical theory is upset by the fact that the disease is 

 inseparable from domestication and stimulating food ; peculiar 

 to deep milkers, and scarcely ever succeeding difficult parturition, 

 which most assuredly would be the case if shortness of neck, 

 excessive — natural — vascularity of the brain and its membranes 

 were predisposing causes. 



The other theories, namely, that which traces the origin of 

 the disease to derangement of the function of the ganglionic 

 or sympathetic nerve, and that ascribing it to indigestion, may 

 conjointly, I think, be looked upon as offering at least an 

 explanation. 



Parturient apoplexy rarely occurs prior to the third period 

 of parturition, but I have seen it, in two instances, succeed 

 the second calving. Cows of all breeds are subject to it, pro- 

 vided they are deep milkers. It seldom attacks cows in which 

 the lactiferous system is not highly developed, no matter of what 

 breed they be. Age, and the profitable property of giving an 

 abundant quantity of milk, are acknowledged and well-known 

 predisposing causes ; so much so, that dairymen very often 

 decline to buy a deep milker immediately prior to a third or 

 subsequent parturition. This tendency to the malady is pro- 

 moted and intensified by warm weather and stimulating food, 

 which is generally allowed in great abundance. All cows, but 

 more particularly those which are profitable milkers, ought to 

 be well fed ; but it should be remembered that prior to the act 

 of parturition, cleep-milking cows, which are dry or nearly so, 

 rapidly become plethoric, and that this state of body, at the 

 time when the calf is born, is one which very commonly excites 



