CARE OF NAVELS IN NEWBORN 129 



clean bandage and the infant is kept ip a dorsal 

 recumbency with no opportunity for fecal, urinal 

 or other soiling of the dead stump. 



Navel Hemorrhage Not Serious. — If the liga- 

 tion of the navel cannot prevent infection there 

 would seem to be but two other reasons for the 

 procedure, hemostasis and fashion. In an exten- 

 sive obstetric practice extending over thirty-two 

 years the writer has not observed fatal or impor- 

 tant naval hemorrhage and has learned of but 

 one case from his fellow veterinarians. That one 

 case was in a foal, belonging to a veterinarian 

 who ligated the cord. Apparently he had excised 

 the cord too long, the excised arterial stumps re- 

 tracted up through the ligature and failed to 

 close as the ruptured end would have done, the 

 escaping blood accumulated above the ligature, 

 distending the amniotic sheath of the cord, pushed 

 it off and permitted the fatal hemorrhage. 



Fatal umbilic hemorrhage rarely, if ever, fol- 

 lows the normal division of the umbilic cord by 

 linear tension (herbivora) or by gnawing (carniv- 

 ora). Ligation is wholly superfluous from a 

 hemostatic standpoint and if accompanied by ex- 



