220 PATHOLOGY OF PREGNANCY. 



others calve beside them, and why should they do so when abortion 

 takes place ? Sympathy should be shown as much, if not more, in 

 the first instance as in the second. 



Then, again, others attributed this kind of abortion to the fact of 

 pregnant Cows being brought into contact with putrescent materials or 

 odours, no matter what they were derived from ; this was another old 

 notion, and so firmly was it believed in by farmers, that, in order to 

 ensure their pregnant Cow against this accident, they were accustomed 

 to smear the animals' noses with tar when any bad smells were evident. 

 But for this belief also there is no better foundation than for the 

 supposed sympathy ; as it frequently happens that Cows go their full 

 time amid foul odours, and it even happens that in a shed a Cow will 

 calve, and the placenta will be retained until it evolves an almost in- 

 supportable stench of putrescence, and yet other pregnant Cows will 

 remain unaffected ; while not unfrequently abortions occur in a large 

 cowshed in which cleanliness is well attended to, and no bad smell can 

 be perceived. 



The evidence in favour of the presence of an infecting agent in these 

 outbreaks of abortion which cannot otherwise be explained, is strong 

 from a clinical point of view, and still stronger from an experimental 

 one ; for in addition to the investigations of the authorities already 

 named, we have those of Nocard, carried out ten years ago, which 

 should definitely settle the question, as they were almost exhaustive 

 on every point, while his experiments were conducted with that 

 scrupulous care which marks all his pathological inquiries. He ascer- 

 tained that there was nothing in the living animal to indicate that 

 this abortion was a general disease of the Cow ; as all the functions 

 are normally performed, the temperature does not rise above the 

 tenth of a degree ; the urine contains neither sugar nor albumin, aud 

 the blood, milk, and various tissues are unaltered. The histological 

 examination and cultivations of solids and fluids did not reveal the 

 presence of pathogenic organisms. He examined the bodies of Cows 

 which had just aborted, of those about to abort — especially primiparae, 

 and of those which had aborted the previous year and were afterwards 

 sterile. In Cows which had aborted but still retained the foetal 

 envelopes, he removed, with all due precautions, fibrinous muco- 

 purulent flakes of a bright yellow colour he found in the latter ; 

 difficulty was experienced in separating the maternal and foetal placentae, 

 and the placental villi were of a dirty white colour, looking as if in- 

 filtrated with pus or macerated ; around the base of the cotyledons 

 there was a great quantity of the same yellow flakes, similar to those 

 frequently recorded as passing from the vulva after abortion. The 

 cotyledons, after their placental covering was removed, were firm, 

 rosy, and penetrated by deep wide follicles ; pressure caused the 

 exudation of some drops of purulent-looking matter, softer than the 

 flakes. Scraping of the cut surface gave a milky juice, white and 

 homogeneous, analogous to cancer juice. He also obtained a quantity 

 of cotyledonary pulp, and this, with the other matters, he sowed in 

 broths and in peptone-gelatine tubes. When stained and examined 

 microscopically, the puriform matter was found to consist of a mass 

 of epithelial cells and leucocytes mixed up in a mucus and fibrinous 

 network, together with a number of micrococci — isolated, double, and 

 in short chains — consisting of three, four, and five cocci ; here and there 

 were also a few short thick bacilli, isolated or associated two by two. 



