600 PRINCIPLES OF VETERINARY SURGERY 



directly by the geological constitution of the soil, is based 

 upon numerous facts, and seems to have been presented by 

 the old writers. It w^as thus that Dupont attributed the dis- 

 ease to a special anther (antheriod ossifragum). Thum- 

 bler, a physician of Bergen, refers to the habit of Nor- 

 wegian peasants of feeding their cattle with crushed bones. 

 In 1780, Hinter accepted Linneeus's idea, Haubner and 

 Kurst attributed it to another plant, the molinia caerulae, 

 and Rolofif thought the equisetum played an important 

 part. But these ideas are insufficient to explain the appear- 

 ance of the disease in regions where these plants are abso- 

 lutely unknown. 



More recently the chemical theory of the insufficiency 

 of the food, based on very complete investigations as to the 

 composition of the alimentary substances and the constitu- 

 tion of the soil, has been accepted. The disease prevails 

 chiefly on lands under cultivation where the soil is bad and 

 anything but productive, and where the system of culture 

 is not properly understood. A soil poor in calcic phos- 

 phates necessarily produces poor forage. In every locality 

 where the disease is prevalent the poverty of the food in 

 phosphates has been proven. Hering, Spinola, Rolofif and 

 Zundel support this theory. Cantiget, who has studied os- 

 seous cachexia very closely and observed it for ten to fif- 

 teen years on badly cultivated farms, has shown how the 

 disease has disappeared by the improvement of the land 

 and its fodder. It retained' its hold, however, in locali- 

 ties where the soil was not improved. The works of 

 Schloesing and Joulic have demonstrated, nevertheless, 

 that the ratio of phosphoric acid in good lands is 4000 kilo- 

 grams to the hectare (about 2j^ acres). They found that 

 the disease occurred on lands which had. less than 2000 kilo- 

 grams per hectare. Cantiget analyzed soils from lands 

 where there was little or no osseous cachexia and found 



