ABORTION. 295 



tion of the subject be fully borne out, I will now speak of 

 the causes of sporadic abortion, or abortion occurring in 

 isolated or single cases. A cow may, or may not abort 

 after having suffered from an accident or injury, which 

 will depend whether the calf or womb has been injured. 

 A kick from a horse, or a gore from another cow is often 

 the cause of abortion. The eating of diseased grass seed is 

 another cause of abortion, but not so much, nor so 

 often the cause as many persons suppose. For a cow will 

 readily and without injury, take one ounce of the best 

 and strongest ergot of rye to be found in the market ; 

 now where is the cow to get one ounce of ergotized 

 grass seed or any other diseased seed? 



There may be, however, other cryptogamic causes which 

 we are as yet not acquainted with, and if we were aware 

 of the existence of such, we are still ignorant of their ac- 

 tion, if any upon the uterus of the cow ; so I think we 

 may as well dismiss this as being utterly untenable also. 

 There is still, however, one other cause to be considered 

 before we close this subject, and that, is, a cow having 

 once aborted is ever after liable to do so again, and at 

 about the same period of the previous abortion. The 

 causes of this are local and confined to the womb itself, 

 such as distention, dropsy, physometra, tubercle, fibrous 

 tumor, polypi and hypertrophy of the womb ; one or other 

 of those diseases singly, or combined, are often seen in the 

 womb of cows subject to periodical abortion. 



Prevention of Epizootic Abortion. — When one or 

 more cows have slunk, or aborted their calves, the other 

 cows without a day's delay should have the following 

 powder mixed in their feed night and morning for a week, 

 and commence again and give every alternate week for a 

 month or so. Powdered sulphate of iron, two drachms ; 



