DISEASES AND REMEDIES. 509 



same threshold; nay, to make all sure, he had broken through 

 the wall at the end of the cowhouse, and opened a new door, in 

 order that there might not be the possibility that an elf-struck 

 foetus had previously gone that way ; but still a greater or less 

 number of his cows every year slunk their calves. 



"Thirty years before, he had bought a cow at a fair, and she 

 had suffered an abortion, and others had speedily followed her 

 example; and the cow that had once slunk her calf was liable to 

 do the same in the following year, and so the destructive habit 

 had been perpetuated among his beasts. 



"Several of the cows had died in the act of abortion, and he 

 had replaced them by others ; more of those that had aborted 

 once or twice, or oflener, had been sold, and the vacancies filled 

 up. M. Chabert advised him to make a thorough change. This 

 had never occurred to the farmer, but he at once saw the pro- 

 priety of the counsel. He sold ev^ beast, and the plague 

 was stayed. This sympathetic influence is one main cause of 

 the slinking of the calves. There is no contagion, but the result 

 ia as fatal as the direst contagion could have made it. 



" Another cause of abortion is the extravagantly high condition 

 in which cows are sometimes kept. They are in a continual state 

 of excitement; and from the slightest cause, inflammation is set 

 up in the uterus, rendered more susceptible by the state of preg- 

 nancy, and abortion is the frequent consequence of that inflam- 

 mation. 



"M. Cruzel has given an instructive account of abortion thus 

 produced. He was consulted by a farmer who had ten breed- 

 ing cows, that occasionally worked at the plough ; as is often the 

 case in France. During the first year three of them aborted. 

 They recovered, and were soon again in calf. Two of them 

 slunk their calves a second time, between the fifth and sixth 

 months of pregnancy ; the third went her full time and produced 

 a weakly calf, that died on the second day. In the following 



