ABORTION 119 



bouillon and gelatine with uterine milk and amniotic fluid of 

 primiparse about to abort ; media were also inoculated with 

 blood. After forty-eight hours the blood inoculations were 

 sterile ; the uterine milk furnished the bacilli, and the amniotic 

 fluid a delicate coccus in bunches or short irregular curved 

 chains. 



The third examination was made on a cow which had 

 aborted eight months previously and which had been served 

 once a week, without conceiving. The mucous membrane of 

 the uterus was red, moist; the removed mucosa contained a 

 liquid of acid reaction, swarming with bacteria, growing 

 freely in bouillon. Comparative tests on pregnant cows 

 and those which had calved repeatedly showed that the 

 reaction of the uterine mucus in the latter is not acid nor 

 contains micro-organisms. The intestinal contents of fourteen 

 calves either born dead or dying soon after abortion were full 

 of bacteria, confirmed by cultures and staining. In a normal 

 foetus, which has neither breathed nor partaken of any milk, 

 the intestinal tract is sterile. 



This explains the cause of the profuse diarrhoea of calves 

 which are born alive at an advanced period of gestation and 

 die soon after parturition ; possibly also the simultaneous 

 appearance of dysenteria neonatorum aDd abortion in the one 

 and the same stable. In three calves which died in the first 

 week after they were born with d}^senteria neonatorum, Nocard 

 inoculated calf's bouillon with pieces of the medulla oblongata 

 and got cultures which were identical with those obtained upon 

 the same medium by inoculations with the medulla oblongata 

 of premature births. He asked himself the question whether 

 the peculiar bellowing mentioned by many observers, and 

 supposed to announce the approaching death of the calf, could 

 be explained by these low organisms from the medulla oblon- 

 gata. The cause of it, same as in rabies, may be found in the 

 paralysis of the vocal cord. 



The exact researches of Nocard have materially advanced 

 the aetiology of infectious abortion. He summarizes the results 

 as follows : " Infectious abortion appears to be a disease of the 



