The Nodular Venereal Disease 309 



abortion, it is still true that sterility, abortion and calf dys- 

 entery run parallel with the nodular venereal disease. 

 Calves thirty to sixty days old do not suffer from dysentery 

 or pneumonia if they are free from the clinical evidences of 

 the nodular venereal disease. New-born calves break down 

 with dysentery before the signs of the nodular venereal dis- 

 ease are established. If the evidences of the disease are 

 present, the calf exhibits one or several of the following 

 symptoms : dysentery, torpidity of the bowels alternating 

 with diarrhea, sticky feces adhering to the hairs of the tail 

 and buttocks, pneumonia, a hacking cough, lustreless coat, 

 and pot-belly. When such a calf reaches breeding age, its 

 fertility is uncertain. 



It is highly interesting to observe that, in applying the 

 agglutination test for B. abortus to the blood of calves, the 

 reactions are parallel to the manifestations of the nodular 

 venereal disease : the blood of calves severely infected re- 

 acts highly to the B. abortus test, and vice versa. The sig- 

 nificance of this parallelism is undetermined. By no means 

 does it show that the B. abortus is or is not the cause of these 

 lesions. It is not known to what degree blood samples from 

 the same animals may react to the agglutination test for the 

 streptococci, colon-like bacilli, micrococci, and other bacte- 

 ria commonly recognized in the genitalia of cattle. 



The most important consideration regarding the nodular 

 venereal disease, pending scientific study of the problem, is 

 that it causes important disease of the copulatory mucosa 

 (balanitis, posthitis, colpitis, vaginitis) which produces def- 

 inite injury. Frequently the disease is so severe that it 

 causes recognizable pain in coitus, followed by hemorrhage 

 owing to the summits of the nodules becoming removed by 

 attrition. Each of the multiple small abrasions constitutes 

 an open and inviting avenue for infection by any agent pres- 

 ent. In the bull the mucosa may be so severely swollen that 

 phimosis is established and coitus is barred. The vulva of 

 the heifer is frequently so inflamed that it bleeds under 

 gentle digital palpation, and the vulvo-vaginal mucosa is 

 covered over with much stringy, tough muco-pus. What- 



