Gramdar l^enereal Disease of Cows 1077 



lead them to make careful observations, and enable them to con- 

 tribute important data to our knowledge of the malady. 



Our suspicions of the existence of the disease in this country 

 were first aroused by a communication from a veterinary practi- 

 tioner, relating to abortion and sterility in a dairy herd of 40 

 cows, which we shall designate Herd i. The letter stated in 

 part, "They have had considerable abortion the past year, and 

 now many of their cows are sterile. Some have been bred as many 

 as nine times without becoming pregnant." The sterility was 

 not confined to cows which had aborted, but included some 

 which had recently given birth to apparently healthy calves. It 

 was noted that the different bulls used in the herd seemed to suf- 

 fer from enlargement of the penis, and became somewhat indif- 

 ferent sexually. The practitioner also stated that, following an 

 interval of 1 2-24 hours after breeding, the cows bled somewhat 

 from the vulva. Apparently this latter phenomenon was mis- 

 interpreted, and really consisted of the regular menstrual flow 

 following estrum without impregnation. In this disease, how- 

 ever, the menstruation seems exaggerated. The general phe- 

 nomena related are typical of the history of the prevalence of 

 this malady in a dairy. 



Herd i. An inspection of the suspected herd, Jan. 3, 1909, 

 revealed the fact that, of the 40 cows, 25, or 62.5^, showed 

 typical lesions of the disease ; 4, or 10%, were regarded as ques- 

 tionable ; and 11, or 27.5%, were apparently well. 



The symptoms were thoroughly typical. The lesions corre- 

 sponded to those recorded by European investigators. Many 

 of the moderately affected cases were identical in appearance 

 with Fig. 154. The mucous membrane of the vulva was thickly 

 studded over with countless granular elevations about the size of 

 hemp seed. The areas of mucosa in which the granules were 

 located were generally injected, sometimes intensely inflamed 

 and thickened. In such cases, the granules were very abundant, 

 reddi.sh in color, but not so intensely injected generally as the 

 contiguous mucosa. 



In many cases, where abundant granules of large size were 

 present, the mucosa was not greatly injected. In the.se instances 

 the granules were very prominent, not .so numerous, but ap- 

 peared larger. These were not usually injected, but were more 



