66o PA THOLOG Y OF PARTURITION. 



Duration, Terminatmis, and Complications. 



The duration of the disease is very brief. There are instances on 

 record in which it has been less than twenty-four hours ; but two or three 

 days is the ordinary term ; it has rarely extended to five or six days. 



If there are no complications, the terminations are death or recovery. 

 The chief complications are broncho-pneumonia, milk-metastasis, amau- 

 rosis, and temporary or permanent paralysis. 



Pneumonia is due to the passage of foreign matters — either food or 

 medicine — into the air-passages during the period when the animal can- 

 not swallow, or when it is comatose, and meteorismus, with eructations, 

 are present. This is often a cause of death when the Cow has recovered 

 from the parturient malady. Indeed, the animal may perish from suifo- 

 cation alone when the quantity of matter that passes through the larynx 

 is considerable. And not unfrequendy, when the creature has lingered 

 for a few days, and is then killed, the existence of pneumonia from this 

 cause will be discovered on making an examination^ of the body. Adam 

 {Wochenschrift fur Thier/ieilkunde, 1870-71) believes that ten per cent, of 

 the Cows which recover from parturient collapse eventually die of pneu- 

 monia, due to extraneous matters introduced during the paralyzed condi- 

 tion of the pharynx. 



Sometimes the animal appears to be almost recovered from the attack 

 of parturient apoplexy, when symptoms of lung congestion or inflamma- 

 tion are suddenly developed, and death soon occurs. 



Another complication of parturient apoplexy, is the so-called milk-me- 

 tastasis, which does not appear to have been noted in England, but 

 which is alluded to by Bentele, Born, and Franck in Germany, and Alle- 

 mani in Italy. Occasionally there is observed, after an attack of the dis- 

 ease, a white, milky-looking emulsion, similar to chyle, expelled as urine, 

 or as a discharge from the nostrils ; and at one time it was imagined that 

 this was the milk which, instead of being got rid of by the mammae, was 

 absorbed or retained in the blood, acted upon the nervous centres, and 

 was then expelled in this vicarious manner. 



Though no analyses appear to have been made of this fluid, Franck is 

 of opinion that the fluid is only the normal secretions mixed with lymph. 

 The milk-metastasis theory is untenable, as it is quite opposed to what 

 we know of the lacteal secretion, especially during this disease. 



1. Bentele {Wochenschrift fiir Thierheilktmde, 1857, p. 145) states that a Cow attacked 

 by calving-fever lay for sixty hours in a state of lethargy. The urine, which was passed 

 six hours afterwards, was milk (?) with clots — as if boiled — in it. The animal recovered 

 from the attack, but some weeks later had to be killed in consequence of diseased lungs 

 — probably pneumonia from foreign matters. 



2. Born (Anacker's Thierarzt, 1871. p. 279) relates a case, in which milk flowed from 

 the nostrils of a Cow that was affected with calving-fever. 



3. Allemani (// Medico Veterinaria, 1870, p. 289) tells us of a Cow proprietor, who be- 

 lieved one of his Cows passed milk instead of mine. The supposed milk — which was of 

 a yellowish-white color — contained epithelium from the bladder, a large quantity of 

 epithelium from the kidney, lymph-corpuscles, and albumen. After some days this 

 condition disappeared. The fluid did not coagulate spontaneously. 



With regard to paralysis, this is not evident until the animal recovers 

 consciousness, and begins to look bright and anxious for food, when it is 

 found that it cannot be made to rise. The paralysis may be limited to 

 one limb, to the two hind-limbs (paraplegia), or to one side of the body 



