ARTHRITIS. 



739 



at the Government Stud at Graditz, Silesia, where it prevailed enzootic 

 ally and caused considerable loss. In that year forty-seven foals were 

 attacked, and in 1870, twelve. Nineteen cases were not very serious ; 

 but of the other forty, twenty-nine succumbed — a mortality of 72 per 

 cent, of those affected. The foals were generally seized with it (75 per 

 cent, of the cases) during the three weeks succeeding birth. Of the 

 forty foals above alluded to, twenty were ill within the first eight days, 

 ten in fifteen days, and the others in the fourth or sixth week. The 

 period of the malady was, of course, related to the foaling season — April, 

 May, and June. After an attentive study of the symptoms, and making 

 postmortem examinations, Bollinger came to the conclusion that there is 

 a complete analogy between the arthritis of foals — particularly in the 

 "lesions observed — and the results noticed as a consequence of omphalitis 

 in infants. In his opinion, this joint disease, with its complications, is 

 due to metastatic pyaemia, which has its point of departure in the puru- 

 lent omphalo-phlebitis described in the preceding section of this work. 



In a more recent publication, Bollinger returns to this subject ; and 

 after alluding to his former opinion, founded on literary studies and clin- 

 ical observations, that the lameness or disease of the joints which attacks 

 foals and calves during the first weeks after birth, are due to primary al- 

 terations in the apparatus of the circulation, viz. — inflammation of the 

 umbilicus and umbilical vessels, he gives further evidence in support of 

 this supposition. The autopsies of the calves which form the subject of 

 his second communication, we will notice hereafter ; but we may men- 

 tion that they afford indubitable evidence of the existence of puru- 

 lent omphalo-phlebitis, and its consequences. As in foals, so in calves, 

 he traces the origin of joint disease to violent inflammation of the um- 

 bilical veins. He notes that in calves — which have a ductus venosus 

 Arantii, and foals have not — the direct opening of the vessels into the 

 posterior vena cava, as well as the general implication of the latter, 

 causes a proportionately larger number of cases in them than in foals. The 

 influences at work in the production omphalitis we have enumerated, but 

 Bollinger lays great stress on the want of care, which is, as a rule, be- 

 stowed on the navel in newly-born domesticated animals, and compares 

 this neglect with the scrupulous attention -paid to that of infants, which 

 is severed and bandaged immediately after birth ; while the former have 

 to lie with an open wound in all kinds of filth, and are thus exposed in 

 the readiest manner to inoculation with poisonous or injurious matters, 

 which cannot be excluded even from stables built especially for the purpose, 

 and kept thoroughly clean. If the navel wound of an infant was ex- 

 posed to the filth which young foals and calves have to lie in, it would 

 be quite as liable to blood-poisoning as animals, and to the consequent 

 affection of the joints. 



Bollinger contests the influence of food in the production of the 

 disease, as the strong, no less than the weak animals, are attacked ; and 

 it appears when every kind of diet is given to the parent. 



He also denies that it is produced by chills, and attributes its advent 

 chiefly to pyaemic or septic infection. He compares the enzootic appear- 

 ances of joint lameness with the endemic outbreaks of pyaemia and 

 septikaemia (or puerperal fever), and points out that the only real differ- 

 ence between man and beast lies in the simultaneous appearance of 

 puerperal fever epidemics with pyaemia in infants. One point is certain, 

 he adds, and that is that there is a physiological and anatomical differ- 



