294 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



amiss with them. This is not strange, for we have 

 heard, read and have seen animals in the worst forms of 

 pleuro-pneumonia, and nobody thought of, or had seen 

 anything wrong, worthy of observation or remark. It is 

 but the other day, one of the papers of Philadelphia an- 

 nounced that a certain farmer had lost fifteen hundred 

 dollars jn a week or two, by the death of some cows 

 which were not thought to be sick. It is only the true 

 medical man who can estimate aright, the consequences 

 of even slight irritation of the white membranes of the 

 body. In this connection, it may be well to state, that 

 cows in calf are more susceptible of debility than cows 

 which are not in calf, for the simple reason that a great 

 quantity of blood is required for the growth and main- 

 tainance of the calf in the womb. 



This- fact of itself,, however, anomalous it may appear, 

 goes very far indeed, in destroying that which nature so 

 strongly endeavors to make perfect, or in other words, na- 

 ture in this case defeats her own ends. Debility from the 

 cow being in calf, and from the irritation of the shining 

 membranes of the body, more especially of the windpipe, 

 are the true causes of epizootic abortion in cows. The 

 solids of the body become relaxed, soft and flabby, the 

 placenta, or calf attachments separate from the fundus of 

 the uterus, or womb, and the death of the calf from star- 

 vation, it is then a foreign body, the womb contracts and 

 expells it, and this is called abortion. Farmers and others 

 should not deceive themselves by thinking that when a 

 cow is fat she is not weak nor out of order. Cows of this 

 description are most likely to be the victims of irritation 

 of the throat, and its train of consequences. Having thus 

 defined what I believe to be the true cause of epizootic 

 abortion, and which ^jviH, I think, upon fuller investiga- 



