PREFACE 



When we consider the vast and yearly increasing amount of animal 

 wealth we possess, the great skill, attention, and expense bestowed on 

 the perfecting of the most important of the domesticated creatures, which 

 are daily becoming more essential factors in our progressive civilization, 

 it is somewhat remarkable, and rather discreditable, though not alto- 

 gether inexplicable, that nothing in the way of a work devoted to the 

 parturition of animals, and to the diseases and accidents incidental to 

 that period, has yet appeared in the English language. For very many 

 years the Anglo-Saxon race has devoted itself most assiduously and 

 praiseworthily, and with the greatest measure of success, to the multi- 

 plication and full development of those qualities which more particularly 

 enhance the value and utility of animals. This has entailed unwearied 

 efforts, the closest and shrewdest observation, and all the judgment and 

 practical and scientific knowledge which generations of men could afford. 

 It might therefore be considered that every thing relating to the repro- 

 duction and rearing of these creatures must, from a materialistic point of 

 view alone, be of great moment not only to breeders and stock-raisers, 

 but to the entire community. Great loss may be, and far too often is, 

 quickly sustained among animals during the pregnant or parturient period, 

 and this loss may not only prove very serious to individuals, but make 

 itself gravely felt by the general public. A treatise which might aid, to 

 however small an extent, in pointing out how these losses may be averted 

 or remedied, must surely, then, prove a welcome boon to those who are 

 engaged in breeding and raising animals, as well as to all who are in- 

 terested — and few are not — in their multiplication and welfare. At the 

 commencement of this century a book was published, entitled " A Prac- 

 tical Treatise on the Parturition of the Cow, or the Extraction of the 

 Calf; and also on the Diseases of Neat Cattle in General." The author 

 was Edw^ard Skellet, " Professor of that part of the Veterinary Art ; " 

 but that and other parts of this art were certainly in a very crude, meagre, 

 and elementary condition in the days when Skellet ventured to touch 

 upon them ; and yet his book may be said to be the only attempt which 

 has been made in this direction in England. Papers on obstetricy — 

 some of them of much value — have appeared from time to time in pro- 

 fessional journals ; but while in other countries many treatises have been 

 produced, no one in this country has undertaken the task of supplying 

 what has, for very many years, been an urgent want — a text-book of 

 Obstetrics worthy of modern Veterinary Science. The necessity for such 

 a guide has been felt more particularly by the Veterinary practitioner at 

 the commencement of his career ; for only too frequently he has had to 

 rely entirely upon his own resources, and to painfully acquire, at the 

 expense of his employers, that knowledge of the subject which was either 

 very imperfectly or not at all taught at the Veterinary Schools, and could 

 not be found elsewhere. To deliver one of the larger domesticated 



