ACCIDENTS OF PREGNANCY. 201 



as well as nervous or convulsive derangements — such as tetanus, epilepsy, 

 vertigo, etc., are all set down as causes. Disease of the uterus will, of 

 course, be very likely to lead to the premature expulsion of the ovum or 

 foetus. Metritis, abnormal conditions of its mucous membrane, as well 

 as new formations — such as fibroid and carcinoma, and other alterations 

 by which the enlargement of the organ is hindered — as enormous tumors 

 in the abdomen, ovarian dropsy, etc. — will predispose to or excite abor- 

 tion, as will also every condition which leads to hyperaemia of the viscus. 



Abortion has not unfrequently been ascribed to some defector other 

 influence in the male, though in what these consist has not been ex- 

 plicitly stated ; unless they are to be found in the debility arising from 

 too frequent usage, or other causes related to the animal's state of health. 

 There is strong and abundant evidence that a male enfeebled by too 

 much use, is very likely to be a cause of abortion in the females to which 

 he has been put. This accident has also been said to occur frequently 

 when the male was larger and more powerful than the female. Various 

 injuries and diseases of the foetus or its envelopes, may lead to the same 

 result. External violence may not only injure the uterus itself, so as to 

 produce abortion, but the foetus even may sustain damage. Cauvet, cited 

 by Saint-Cyr, has remarked in a case of miscarriage in a Mare brought 

 about by kicks on the abdomen, that the foetal membranes exhibited 

 at the corresponding point an enormous ecchymosis, and behind the 

 shoulder of the foetus, which was in relation to this extravasation, was a 

 large brown-colored exudation. Another observer has witnessed an ad- 

 hesion between the skin on the cranium of a foetus and the foetal mem- 

 branes, as well as depression of the cranial bones — all evidently due to 

 external violence. 



In acute febrile diseases of the mother, the foetus may perish from the 

 abnormal accumulation of heat ; or chronic or acute anaemia in the female 

 may prove fatal to the foetus, by causing asphyxia in it. 



Certain virulent disorders affecting the female may likewise cause the 

 death and expulsion of the young creature iti utero. The foetus of a Cow 

 affected with contagious pleuro-pneumonia, has been found with its lungs 

 affected in a similar manner ; * and to prove that the transmission of 

 these diseases can be effected in this way. Sheep which were in the 

 uterus when their dam was affected with variola (sheep-pox) were found 

 to resist inoculation with the virus of that very malignant malady. 

 Hydrocephalus, ascitis, anasarca, and chlorosis, may also lead to the 

 death of the foetus, which in nearly every case is not only the most fre- 

 quent predisposing cause of abortion, but is almost a certain determining 

 cause of its expulsion. Hydramnios, and other morbid conditions of 

 the foetal membranes, or faulty formation or relations between the 

 placenta?, are other causes ; as well as congenital malformations of the 

 foetus, malposition, or exaggerated volume. The presence of several 

 foetuses often leads to abortion in uniparous animals. 



Symptoms. — The symptomatology of abortion is extremely varied; 

 being in some cases so trifling that, as already said, the accident may be 

 unperceived, so far as the female is concerned \ while in others the sym- 



* Barrier describes an abortion epizobty among Cows, in which nearly all the calves were expelled alive 

 at the fifth to the seventh month, but died within eight days afterwards. The principal symptoms were a 

 more or less loud rale, the discharge of rusty-colored mucus from the nostrils, and constant loud bellow- 

 ings. At the autopsies the " lungs were tumefied, red, and fleshy, and the brgnchia filled with the saffron- 

 tinted fluid that flowed from the nostrils." 



