740 Diseases of the Genital Organs 



mean. When considering abortion in cows, it was stated 

 that commonly the word signified the observed expulsion of 

 a fetal cadaver. In the sow there may be expelled at one 

 time macerating embryos of varying sizes and degrees of 

 decomposition, fetuses recently dead, poorly developed, sick 

 pigs, and fully developed, viable pigs. Such a medley is 

 difficult of accurate definition. There are present, in the one 

 uterine evacuation, phenomena which may be designated as 

 abortion, stillbirth, premature birth, and birth. Accord- 

 ingly it is difficult to interpret the precise meaning of a 

 writer when he says that sows have aborted. In some in- 

 stances, like those reported by Hayes and Traum 1 , who re- 

 cord that, out of seventy sows, twelve aborted at from the 

 forty-third to the one hundred eighth day of pregnancy, it 

 seems clear that the uteri of the sows were at the times 

 named emptied of their embryonic contents and that the 

 embryos were dead. There is no intimation, however, as to 

 whether the embryos in a given uterus had perished at vari- 

 ous dates, as shown by size and degree of maceration, or 

 whether they had apparently perished simultaneously. Ac- 

 cording to my abattoir studies and such clinical observations 

 as have been available, the course and character of genital 

 infections in swine conform to the basic principles of geni- 

 tal infections in cattle, modified profoundly in some respects 

 by the multiparous type of reproduction and significant dif- 

 ferences in the handling of animals. Probably no animal 

 carries infections in the genital organs more universally or 

 in larger volume. The ovaries do not show lesions with the 

 same frequency as the dairy cow, but the same varieties of 

 disease are present. Fig. 216 illustrates the physiologic- cy- 

 cles occurring in the ovary with one ovary (2) illustrating 

 ovarian adhesions as a result of salpingitis. Fig. 217 illus- 

 trates cystic disease of both ovaries. Without history, the 

 latter was quite certainly a nymphomaniac and sterile. The 

 symptoms, as I have observed clinically in other cases, arc 

 essentially the same as described in cattle. There is sex 

 perversion shown in the behavior of the sow towards other 

 domestic animals. I have not observed the sinking of the 



Preliminary Report on Abortion in Swine caused bj /•' Abortus (Bang.) North Am. Vel . 

 May, 1920, 



