314 Veterinary Medicine. 



the prosterior half of the body in cotton or wool soaked in tur- 

 pentine, by applying sinapisms, or by moving over the surface a 

 warming-pan containing red hot charcoal. 



More generally cold in the shape of cold water, ice or snow has 

 been applied to the cranium or !spine. Theoretically the anaemic 

 brain might be thought to forbid this, but clinically it often oper- 

 ates well, possibly by' inducing a sympathetic contraction of the 

 vessels in and around the nerve centres and thus indirectly favor- 

 ing the resumption of active circulation and the reabsorption of 

 effusions. 



An elevated position of the head is no less important. ' It favors, 

 the return of blood from the brain by gravitation, and in this way 

 improves the intracranial circulation, and the resumption of nor- 

 mal function. A halter, or a rope around the horns, may be tied 

 to a beam overhead, or the head may be laid on thick bundles of 

 straw which will keep it up to or above the level of the chest, and 

 in this way not only is gravitation ensured, but the brain is pro- 

 tected against the violent blows and concussions, which come 

 from dashing the head on the ground. 



Modern Treatment of Milk Fever. The modern treatment was 

 inaugurated in 1897, when Schmidt, aiming at antisepsis, injected 

 into the four teats a quart of previously boiled water holding loo 

 to 200 grains of potassium iodide in solution. The mortality 

 which had been as high as 70 per cent was at once reduced to 15 

 per cent. Others followed with solutions of other antiseptics 

 (creolin, cresol, lysol, chinosol, boric acid, phenol, and even com- 

 mon salt) and had a corresponding success. The Jersey Island 

 dairymen found that by leaving the udder unmilked for 24 hours 

 their predisposed cows were protected against attack. Next came 

 the full repletion of the udder with oxygen gas which excelled 

 all other methods, reducing the mortality to a fraction of i per 

 cent. The final step was inevitable and the pumping of the udder 

 full of sterilized air proved the simplest, most soothing and most 

 efEective of all. My first case in 1903 had been eight hours under 

 the Schmidt treatment without relief from coma, but was on her 

 feet exercising all her functions healthily 2^ hours after the 

 sterile air treatment had been applied. She lived to prove the 

 heaviest milker of that season in a large herd of extra-milking 

 Holsteins. In one remarkable case the fever, the second attack 



