5o8 Diseases of the Genital Organs 



injurious result. Neither does it prove, nor tend to prove, 

 that abortion is not sometimes or frequently caused by the 

 Bang organism. 



I have long held that any attempt to prove experimentally 

 that a given organism is the cause or a cause of an abortion 

 occurring during the pregnancy in which the inoculation 

 was made, is unwarranted and misleading. When Bang 

 discovered the bacterium which he described, he definitely 

 showed that it was an intra-uterine and fetal infection. No 

 beneficent office could be ascribed to it. If capable of ex- 

 isting in vast numbers in the one cow and fetus, it might 

 equally well exist in equally great numbers in other uteri 

 and fetuses of the same species and of similar constitution. 

 There was present metritis, for which, under ordinary sur- 

 roundings, no cause except infection is known. Bang recog- 

 nized in the uterus an infection. If this was the only bac- 

 terium present or recognizable (upon which point Bang is 

 not clear) the only justifiable conclusion at which he could 

 arrive was that the bacterium in question was the cause of 

 the . abortion. Bacterial search of the uterus of another 

 aborting cow in which some other microorganism was found 

 would not vitiate nor influence the conclusion reached upon 

 the one described. 



Abortion is not a disease nor the symptom of any one dis- 

 ease. So far as the fetus is concerned, abortion is death, 

 and death is a result common to all diseases. The fact that 

 an adult dies is not proof that it has anthrax, and the fact 

 that a fetus dies is not proof that it was killed by B. abortus. 

 In so far as the pregnant female is concerned, abortion indi- 

 cates endometritis at the cervical end of the uterus. Me- 

 tritis exists in non-pregnant and pregnant heifers, in preg- 

 nant cows, in cows in the puerperal stage and during the 

 interval of rest between a period of calving and the next 

 conception. The character of the metritis which may occur 

 at any period in the life of the female varies infinitely and 

 the number of bacteria capable of causing the metritis is 

 unknown. A few instances of metritis stand apart, such 

 as that of uterine actinomycosis and tuberculosis. They 



