270 Veterinary Medicine. 



depend on house life with overfeeding on stimulating, spiced, 

 albuminous food, compulsory restraint of urination and defeca- 

 tion in obedience to the demands of cleanliness, distended bladder, 

 and rectum, constipation, proctitis, piles, and other sources of 

 local irritation. In all animals its origin is favored by the forma- 

 tion or arrest of calculi in the prostate, the pelvic urethra or 

 even the bladder ; by drug strangury from cantharides or other 

 irritant diuretic ; by excess of urea, uric acid or other irritant in 

 the urine ; by infection extending from the urethra or bladder ; 

 by ulceration or stricture of the urethra ; by rude or incautious 

 catheterization, or injection ; by exposure to cold ; and by local 

 infection in pysemia and other general zymotic disorders. Most 

 of these conditions conduce to local excitement and hypersemia, 

 which from adjacent organs, are sympathetically transferred to 

 the prostate. The same is true of frequent, and intense genera- 

 tive excitement which according to I<.afosse and Cadiot is a com- 

 mon cause of prostatitis in stud horses. Again the abscess of 

 strangles may become localized in the prostate, or the nodule of 

 glanders, or the tubercle of tuberculosis (cattle, pigs, dogs). 

 Cadiot suggests that in anima,ls, divested of the tail, external 

 injuries to the perineum may extend by continuity to the prostate, 

 as happens to man from horseback or bicycle riding. He adduces 

 no cases however. The habit of masturbation acquired by cer- 

 tain males may also be adduced theoretically as both cause and 

 consequence of prostatitis but future observation must show how 

 frequently this really operates. 



Forms. Lesions. According to the nature of the lesions the 

 affection has been divided into different forms : ist. Follicular or 

 Parenchymatous ; 2d, Diffuse or Interstitial ; 3d, Circum- 

 scribed Prostatic Abscess ; 4th, Multiple Miliary Abscesses. 



Follicular Prostatitis implicates primarily the follicles and 

 gland ducts and finally the entire gland tissue. It is usually 

 associated with and doubtless often proves an extension from an 

 adjacent infective urethritis, and tends, in persistent cases, to go 

 on to interstitial inflammation and abscess, or hypertrophy. This 

 is characterized by more or less swelling of the prostate, with 

 increased vascularity of its mucosa and the oozing from its open- 

 ings and gland ducts under pressure, of a thick, yellow, gelatinoid 

 fluid containing pus and granular epithelial cells and sometimes 

 strise of blood. 



