42 Hallier, 
cattle. The investigations prove that the disease is caused by a 
slowly incubating poison which operates in a fatal way upon the 
blood, and which also produces important structural alterations 
in the essential organization of the liver, the spleen and the kidneys. 
2) The precise nature of the diseased structural alterations. 
The blood suffers an impairment, and, in the fatal stage, an al- 
most entire destruction of its most vital portion — the red glo- 
bules. It also suffers in its natural quality and richness by the 
loss of albumen through the kidneys, and by other very serious 
kinds of impairment which are not yet understood. but which re- 
sult in actual destruction of the blood as a living element of the 
animal system. This spoliation and death of the blood (necrae- 
mia) appears to be complete. No disease or poison known to 
medical men has ever presented a more striking example of an 
incubating blood poison (toxaemia), and an ultimate termmation 
by necraemia or death of the blood. . 
The anatomical lesions, or structural alterations in the liver, 
are unquestionably the first in the order of beginning, and of re- 
lationship and importance. The particular kind of morbid condi- 
tions in the secreting and circulatory organism of the liver would 
inevitably contribute to the gradual and final destruction of the 
blood, and also would mduce the morbid changes that are obser- 
ved in the spleen. Physiological principles seem fully to account 
for the engorgement. erosion and sloughing which occur in the 
tubular portion of the fourth stomach or abomasum. The spleen, 
in its engorged. diseased condition, would necessarily aid in pro- 
ducing the stomach lesion (erosion and sloughing) by its own fai- 
lure to fournish outlet and relief to the engorgement of the ves- 
sels of mucous membrane of the rennet, and it could contribute 
in several ways to hasten the final dissolution of the blood. The 
engorgement and the acute fatty degeneration or change noticed 
in the kidneys is one of the chief causes of the rapid waste of 
albumen from the blood; but the disease may, and not unfre- 
quently does, go on to a fatal termination without being attended 
by any considerable amount of disease or change in the kidneys. 
The lesions or changes that have been observed in the other tis- 
sues and organs of the intected animals seem to be merely results 
of blood changes and impaired vitality. Those lesions which are 
merely incidental to the really essential changes in the blood and 
in the liver and spleen may, nevertheless, be recognized as aids 
