Parturition Fever, Etc. 307 



Nature of Milk Fever. As above intimated, everything points 

 to the excessive production of leucomaines in the udder which 

 has been called to undergo a sudden, phenomenal congestion and 

 physiological activity. The other explanations, put forth at 

 different times, are one and all untenable. Contamine considers 

 the disease as the reaction of the surplus nerve force, which was 

 not used up in the easy parturition. The theory is fantastic as 

 accounting for the rapidly developing sesthenia and paralysis. 

 Billings thinks the cerebral anaemia is due to vaso-constriction 

 produced by the exaggerated excitability of the uterine nerves. 

 Yet the most marked features of these cases is the quiescence of 

 the womb. Trasbot looks on the affection as a congestion of the 

 myelon apparently shutting his eyes to the far more prominent 

 encephalic symptoms. Haubner considers it as a cerebral anaemia 

 induced by the vaso-dilatation in the portal system and abdominal 

 viscera generally, the result in its turn of the vacuity of the 

 abdomen, from the expulsion of the foetus and its connections. 

 But the womb is often contracted and comparatively exsanguine, 

 the plethoric condition of the systemic vessels is suddenly in- 

 creased by the great mass of blood from the uterine vessels which 

 maintains a marked general blood tension, and finally, the closed 

 box of the cranium cannot have its blood drained from it without 

 some effusion to take its place. Stockfleth attributed the malady 

 to a metro-peritonitis, but there is rarely any indication of such a 

 condition. Frank claims a cerebral anaemia due to an over-dis- 

 tension of the rete mirabile, but sheep and goats, with more 

 abundant retia mirabilia, do not suffer. Palsy of the ganglionic 

 system with succeeding congestion of the myelon and encephalon 

 (Barlow, Kohne, Carsten Harms) fails to explain why the effects 

 are concentrated on the cephalic nerve centres. Glucosuria is 

 constant in the disease in ratio with its violence, but this contin- 

 ues for days after the cow has recovered and is to be looked on 

 as a result of disorder of the medulla and consequent derange- 

 ment of the liver and not as the cause. 



Lesions. These are exceedingly variable in successive cases. 

 Congestion and effusion in the meninges, cerebral or spinal, in 

 the rete mirabile and choroid plexus have been often noticed, and 

 exceptionally, clots of extravasated blood. In certain cases con- 

 gestion and pink discoloration of portions of the brain substance 

 (cerebral convolutions, bulb, ganglia) with marked puncta vas- 



