12 BULLETIN 106, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



at the beginning of his experiments ? There is every reason to 

 believe that a calf in passing through the infected birth canal of 

 its dam may become infected at the time of birth, or if not then it 

 surely often becomes infected within a few days when kept in the 

 same stall or stable or fed and handled by persons who come in 

 contact with the diseased mother. If a new-born calf be removed 

 from its dam at once and kept in strict isolation, I find that it will 

 possibly escape infection for a time, but not probably, and that it 

 will be several weeks before the macroscopic lesions appear. 



Further and more serious doubt is thrown upon the recorded 

 experiments of Ostertag in the symptoms and course of the experi- 

 mental granular venereal disease from the fact that the recorded 

 symptoms are in conflict with the present writer's clinical experience 

 with the beginnings of the disease. This has been gained by observing 

 hundreds of heifer calves from 2 to 6 months old affected with 

 the disease, as well as a number of experimental calves under im- 

 mediate observation, which must necessarily have evidenced the 

 disease over and over again in its incipiency. 



Ostertag says : 



The first symptoms of infectious catarrh, are swelling of the vulva, redness, swelling 

 and sensitiveness of the vaginal mucosa, and a muco-purulent deposit upon the 

 vaginal mucosa. 



In the earlier stages of the malady, as we have observed it, there 

 are present none of the symptoms emphasized by Ostertag. On the 

 contrary, the disease comes on insidiously, and the first sign of 

 the malady is the appearance of a few nodules in the vulvar mucosa, 

 sharply defined above the surrounding epithelium, as pale yellow 

 or colorless transparent elevations having a vascular girdle about 

 their bases. Some would call these heifer calves sound, but if 

 two or three typical nodules do not indicate granular venereal 

 disease it would be difficult to understand by what line of reasoning 

 200 or 300 nodules can assure us of the existence of the malady. 



In other words, Ostertag describes, not the beginning of the disease, 

 but an " explosion" of the existing malady under profound irritation. 

 It is not strange that virulent streptococci induced the symptoms 

 he describes, nor that he was able to recover pure cultures of the micro- 

 organism from his experimental animals, but he has failed to repro- 

 duce the insidious, exceedingly mild early stages of the disease, which 

 anyone who cares to do so may watch in heifer calves in any dairy. 

 Neither need anyone fail to find cases, especially in recently bred 

 heifers or young cows, in which all the symptoms described by 

 Ostertag are present in their most impressive form, but that is not 

 the beginning or end of the malady; it is its zenith. In a muco- 

 purulent vaginal discharge streptococci are usually present, and, 

 if sufficiently virulent cultures are introduced into the vagina of an 



