512 Diseases of the Genital Organs 



nies that the infection, sometimes leading to abortion, can 

 cause sterility, retained afterbirth, or metritis other than the 

 specific metritis of contagious abortion, which must cease to 

 exist at the termination of pregnancy, to be succeeded by 

 another metritis due to other infection. So with the fetus 

 and the calf. The fetus is invaded by "the specific infection 

 of contagious abortion," but after the calf is born such in- 

 fection must terminate, though the calf may promptly die 

 from sepsis, dysentery, or pneumonia, and though bacteria 

 which can not be differentiated from those existing in the 

 digestive tract of the fetus are present in that of the new- 

 born calf and apparently cause the serious or fatal disease. 

 This group of writers use constantly the definite article 

 "the" in connection with the alleged specific contagion, thus 

 excluding all other infections or contagions as possible 

 causes of abortion. That is, if the B. abortus of Bang is the 

 cause of contagious, infectious, or epizootic abortion in 

 cattle, no other infection or contagion can act as a cause or 

 as one cause of abortion. If the B. abortus of Bang is the 

 cause of contagious or infectious abortion of cattle, then the 

 statement of McFadyean and Stockman, that in one preg- 

 nant cow which they destroyed they found uterine tubercu- 

 losis which would soon have caused abortion without the 

 presence of B. abortus, is erroneous. If B. abortus is the 

 cause, B. tuberculosis can not be a cause of abortion. But 

 that is resting the case upon what some may designate a 

 technicality. More pertinent to the discussion is the state- 

 ment of McFadyean and Stockman : "It is of great im- 

 portance to note, however, that two natural outbreaks of 

 vibrionic abortion, one in Ireland and one in Wales, were 

 met in cows." (Abortion in Sheep, Part III, page 9.) The 

 more recent finding by Theobald Smith, in this country, of 

 spirilla in aborted bovine fetuses, without the B. abortus, is 

 equally to the point. If B. abortus is the cause of contag- 

 ious, infectious, or epizootic abortion in cattle, then either 

 the vibrio of McFadyean and Stockman and the spirillum of 

 Smith did not cause the abortions attributed thereto, or the 

 abortions so caused were not "infectious," "contagious." or 

 "epizootic." 



