ABORTION, OR SLINKING. 



from brutality, or the animal being teased by other cows in season, 

 or oxen, the symptoms are more intense. The animal suddenly 

 ceases to eat and to ruminate — is uneasy, paws the ground, rests her 

 head on the manger while she is standing, and on her flank when 

 she is lying down — haemorrhage frequently comes on from the uterus, 

 or when this is not the case, the mouth of the uterus is spasmodi- 

 cally contracted. The throes come on, are distressingly violent, and 

 continue until the womb is ruptured. Should not all these circum- 

 stances be observed, yet the labor is protracted and dangerous. 



Abortion is sometimes singularly frequent in particular districts, or 

 on particular farms. It seems to assume an epizootic or epidemic 

 form. This has been accounted for in various ways. Some have 

 imagined it to be contagious. It is destructively propagated among 

 the cows, but this is probably to be explained on a different princi- 

 ple than that of contagion. The cow is an animal considerably im- 

 aginative, and highly irritable during the period of pregnancy. In 

 "abortion, the foetus is often putrid before it is discharged ; and the 

 placenta, or afterbirth, rarely or never immediately follows it, but 

 becomes decomposed, and, as it drops away in fragments, emits a 

 peculiar and most noisome smell. This smell seems to be singularly 

 annoying to the other cows — they sniff at it, and then run bellow- 

 ing about. Some sympathetic influence is exercised on their ute- 

 rine organs, and in a few days a greater or less number of those 

 that had pastured together likewise abort. Hence arises the rapid- 

 ity with which the fcetus is usually taken awav and buried deeply, 

 and far from the cows; and hence the more effectual preventive of 

 smearing the parts of the cow with tar or stinking oils, in order to 

 conceal or subdue the smell ; and hence, too, the ineffectual pre- 

 venting of removing her to a far distant pasture. 



The pastures on which the blood or inflammatory fever is most 

 prevalent are those on which the cows oftenest shnk their calves. 

 Whatever can become a source of general excitation and fever is 

 likely, during pregnancy, to produce inflammation of the womb : 

 or whatever would, under other circumstances, excite inflammation 

 of almost any organ, has at that time its injurious effect determined 

 to this particular one. 



'i'here is no farmer who is not aware of the injurious effect of the 

 coarse, rank herbage of low, marshy, and woody countries, and he 

 regards these districts as the chosen residence of red water ; it may be 

 added, that these districts are also the chosen residence of abortion. 



Hard and mineral waters are justly considered as laying the foun- 

 dation of many diseases in cattle, and for abortion among the rest. 



Some careful observers have occasionally attributed abortion to the 

 disproportion in size between the male and female. Farmers used 

 to be too fond of looking out for a great overgrown bull for their 

 dairy or breeding cows, and many a heifer or little cow was seri- 



