464 
Abortion in Cows. 
length of this article, and the many recapitulations, without which, 
I fear, I should be unable to sufficiently impress on my readers 
what I consider the more prominent features of this enquiry. 
The causes usually assigned for producing this malady are : 
impure water, diseased bulls, injuries, mal-position of uterus, 
badly-constructed stalls, feeding on hilly pasture, fright, excite- 
ment, exhaustion from any cause, purgatives, febrile or other 
debilitating diseases, infection, sympathy, and ergot. 
Impure Water, as before mentioned, cannot be regarded as a 
cause in this district. 
Diseased Bulls. — I think a careful perusal of these cases must 
exonerate the male, as very few had their affections confined to 
the animals on the farms affected with this malady. A writer 
states that gonorrhoea in the bull caused a dairy to abort ; such 
might have been the case, but, judging from its effect on the 
human subject, I should not have expected it. Syphilis in the 
human subject is an undoubted cause of abortion ; and it is, so far 
as we know, the only predisposing cause in the male parent. The 
bovine tribe are, I believe, insusceptible of true syphilis, though 
my friend, Mr. Toope, informs me that bulls are liable to a 
disease somewhat resembling it, but the symptoms are of such 
a nature as to prevent it being overlooked. 
Injuries. — Mal-position of uterus, badly-constructed stalls, 
feeding on hilly pastures, fright, excitement, exhaustion, purga- 
tives, may each cause an individual cow to abort, but that any 
efiluvium arising from a case so produced is capable of causing 
an otherwise healthy cow exposed to such emanations to abort, 
I do not believe. Febrile or any debilitating diseases will 
certainly predispose an animal to abort ; and if the nature of 
the disease be such as seriously to interfere with the normal 
physiological functions, we should expect such an occurrence. 
But that there is an infectious disease, the outward and visible 
sign of which is abortion only, I have no reason whatever to 
believe. 
Infection. — If this malady possessed the infectious properties 
usually assigned to it, we should naturally expect that the fol- 
lowing suppositions would be correct : — 
1. The source from which the first of a herd was infected 
could frequently be traced. 
2. A cow having aborted, the in-calf animals in closest 
proximity would be more likely to suffer than those more dis- 
tant, and more especially so, than those in a separate shed. 
3. That by intentionally keeping the affected animals in 
closer proximity to healthy in-calvers, by confining them to their 
sheds entirely — the disease would spread with greater rapidity. 
4. Isolation, promptly effected, would stamp it out. 
