236 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



tention of the udder and the arrest in larger part of the circulation 

 and chemical changes in its tissues. This distention acts like magic, 

 and seems hardly to admit of failure in securing a successful outcome. 



It can not, however, be recommended as absolutely devoid of 

 dangers and serious complications. To get the best results, it should 

 be applied only by one who has been trained in the careful antiseptic 

 methods of the bacteriological laboratory. Some readers will recall 

 the case of the injection of the udders of show cows at Toronto to 

 impose upon the judges. The cows treated in this way had the udders 

 infected and ruined, and several lost their lives. There is no better 

 culture medium for septic and other germs than the first milk (colos- 

 trum) charged with albumin and retained in the warm udder. 

 Already in the hands of veterinarians even the Schmidt treatment 

 has produced a small proportion of cases of infective mammitis. 

 How many more such cases will develop if this treatment shall be- 

 come a popular domestic resort, applied by the dairyman himself in 

 all sorts of surroundings and with little or no antiseptic precautions? 

 But even then the losses will by no means approach the past mor- 

 tality of 50 to TO per cent, so that the ecenomy will be immeasurable! 

 under even the worst conditions. A fair test and judgment of this 

 treatment, however, can be obtained only when the administrator 

 is a trustworthy and painstaking man, well acquainted with bacterio- 

 logical antisepsis and with the general and special pathology of the 

 bovine animal. 



The necessary precautions may be summarized as follows: 



(1) Provide an elastic rubber ball and tubes, furnished with valves 

 to direct the current of air, as in a common Davidson sja-inge. 



(2) Fill the delivery tube for a short distance with cotton, steril- 

 ized by prolonged heating in a water bath. 



(3) In the free end of the delivery tube fit a milking tube to be 

 inserted into the teat. 



(4) Sterilize this entire apparatus by boiling for 30 minutes, 

 and, without touching the milking tube, wrap it in a towel that has 

 been sterilized in a water bath or in live steam and dried. 



(o) Avoid drawing any milk from the teats; wash them and the 

 udder thoroughly with warm soapsuds; rinse off with well-boiled and 

 cooled water, and apply to the teats, and especially to their tips, a 5 

 per cent solution of creolin or lysol, taking care that the teats are not 

 allowed to touch any other body from the time they are cleansed 

 until the teat tube is inserted. It is well to rest the cleansed and dis- 

 infected udder on a sterilized pad of cotton or a boiled towel. 



(6) The injecting aj^paratus is unwrapped, the teat tube, seized by 

 its attached end and kept from contact with any other body, is in- 

 serted into the teat, while an assistant working the rubber pump fills 

 the quarter as full as it will hold. The tube is now withdrawn and a 



