ADDENDA TO THE DISEASES OF THE KIDNEYS. SSI 



It is particularly common in females^ milch cows, and young 

 subjects; the males are but rarely affected by it; native cattle are 

 much more resistant than the imported animals; an individual 

 predisposition is indisputable : it is not rare to see some cows 

 affected twice during the same year—in the spring and fall ; others 

 are troubled several times during the same season. A disease which 

 is mainly apparent in the springtime, it may make serious io roads 

 on flocks which have been kept in close quarters and poorly fed 

 during the winter, when such flocks are led to pasture wliile 

 the weather is still cold and the vegetation hardly started. It is 

 enzootic in cold pastures which are swept by the wind, exposed to 

 the north, poor, swampy, and turfy ; ordinarily it shows itself 

 toward the end of the first, or in the beginning of the second, week 

 of pasturing; when started too early, it is quite common to see the 

 disease appear almost immediately, and to remain active till the 

 middle of the summer. According to Gerlach, it may also be seen 

 eight or ten days after the abandonment of the pasture regimen. It 

 must be mentioned that not only is it seen in the spring, but some- 

 times in full summer after a cold rainy spell. It is said to exist in 

 the Alps only in those localities where the soil is schistous in char- 

 acter; where the soil is calcareous the farms are said to be free from 

 the disease (Lechner). 



Etiology. The majority of authors look upon passing of blood 

 in the ox as the consequence of a decomposition of the blood (Stock- 

 fleth, Gerlach, Spinola, May, Cauvet, Wieners, Pichon, Fried- 

 berger, etc.). Quite recently it has been attributed by Lechner to 

 a toxic affection of the kidney. We have separated renal hema- 

 turia from hemoglobinuria, and agî-ee with the first-mentioned 

 view. The alteration of the blood in this disease seems to be 

 hémoglobine mia ; the presence of red globules in the urine has not 

 been established by any authentic observation. Notwithstanding 

 that we do not know the real causes of this hemoglobinemia, how- 

 ever, the results to be obtained from the examination of the re- 

 ported observations on this subject indicate that we have two 

 principal etiological factors : either toxic or infectious products 

 ingested with the food effect decomposition of the red blood-cor- 

 puscles, or the phenomena are brought about by the action of cold, 

 which undoubtedly acts here as we have indicated in dealing with 

 the pathogenesis of hemoglobinemia of the horse. 



1. The etiological influences of a toxic or infectious kind are said 



