DISEASES OF THE TTBINABY OEGANB. 129 



diminution of the water of the blood, and as the whole amount of the 

 blood is thus decreased, and as the quantity of urine secreted is largely 

 influenced by the fullness of the blood vessels and the pressure exerted 

 upon their walls from within, it follows that with this decrease of the 

 mass of the blood and the lessening of its pressure o\itward there 

 will be a corresponding decrease of urine. The waste of the tissues, 

 however, goes on as before, and if the waste matter is passed out 

 through the kidneys it must be in a more concentrated solution, and 

 the more concentrated the urine the greater the danger that the solids 

 will be deposited as small crystals or calculi. 



Again, the concentrated condition of the urine which predisposes 

 to such deposits is favored by the quantity of lime salts that may be 

 present in the water drunk by the animal. Water that contains 20 

 or 30 grains of carbonate or sulphate of lime to the gallon must con- 

 tribute a large addition of solids to the blood and urine as compared 

 with soft waters from which lime is absent. In this connection it is a 

 remarkable fact that stone and gravel in the domesticated herbivora 

 are notoriously prevalent on many limestone soils, as on the limestone 

 formations of central and western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, 

 and Michigan; on the calcareous formations of Norfolk, Suffolk, Der- 

 byshire, Shropshire, and Gloucestershire, in England; in Landes in 

 France, and around Munich in Bavaria. It does not follow that the 

 abundance of lime in the water and fodder is the main cause of the 

 calculi, since other poisons which are operative in the same districts 

 in causing goiter in both man and animal probably contribute to the 

 trouble, yet the excess of earthy salts in the drinking water can hardly 

 fail to add to the saturation of both blood and urine, and thereby to 

 favor the precipitation of the urinary solids from their state of solution. 



The known results of feeding cattle a generous or forcing ration in 

 which phosphate of lime is present to excess adds additional force to 

 the view just advanced. In the writer's experience, the Second Duke 

 of Oneida, a magnificent product of his world-famed family, died as 

 the result of a too liberal allowance of wheat bran, fed with the view 

 of still further improving the bone and general form of the Duchess 

 strain of Shorthorns. Lithotomy was performed and a number of 

 stones removed from the bladder and urethra, but the patient suc- 

 cumbed to an inflammation of the bowels, induced by the violent 

 purgatives given before the writer arrived, under the mistaken idea 

 that the straining had been caused by intestinal impaction. In this 

 case not only the Second Duke of Oneida, but the other males of the 

 herd as well, had the tufts of hairs at the outlet of the sheath encased 

 in hard, cylindroid sheaths of urinary salts, precipitated from the 

 liquid as it ran over them. The tufts were in reality resolved into a 

 series of hard, roller-like bodies, more or less constricted at intervals, 

 as if beaded. 



61386—08 9 



