Some Observations on Parturition Fever in Ruminants. 599 
discharges. Some have even gone to the extent of charging 
the proximity of decomposing animal matter with the pro- 
duction of the fever in this animal. This mode of production, 
however, — inoculation through the agency of a poison-laden 
atmosphere — is generally regarded as a much rarer occurrence 
than the agency of auto -infection. 
While admitting, in the case of the cow, the frequency, or 
rather constancy, of the inducing agent of parturition fever as 
situated in the animal itself, in the ewe I am disposed to look 
more largely to factors operating from without. As the fever is 
here of a different type, so does it appear that the agents which 
produce it are different. In the more artificial and carefully 
tended breeds, which are the greatest sufferers, a great amount — 
probably too much — of manual interference is exercised by those 
in charge during the act of parturition. When we take into 
consideration that the ordinary attendants on a flock at the period 
of lambing have frequently to undertake the after-death exami- 
nation of animals which have succumbed from many diseased 
conditions, and that in the matter of cleanliness they are not 
the most scrupulous, it requires no great stretch of imagination to 
understand how septic material may be conveyed by the hands 
into the parturient passages of ewes which have been hitherto 
healthy. These attendants I have observed passing from the 
handling and disembowelling of carcasses in which inflammatory 
and putrefactive action, it may be of this very character of which 
we are now speaking, was conspicuous, having merely wiped 
their hands on a dirty cloth or a little grass or straw, to manipula- 
tory interference in the delivery of an apparently healthy animal. 
As confirmatory of this mode of propagation in several outbreaks 
of this fever, I have observed that all precautionary measures 
adopted failed to arrest the spread of the malady until a change of 
attendants had been adopted and rigidly carried out. In addition 
to this direct conveyance of contamination by the hands and 
clothes of infected attendants, who may have been in contact 
with similarly diseased animals, or with septic carcasses, or with 
various organic materials undergoing putrefactive changes, there 
seems a strong presumption that a like infection may originate 
from sources less appreciable. It seems probable that parturient 
fever of the septic infectious type may originate from decom- 
position, or change of various animal substances unconnected 
with such animals as are actually suffering from this disease. On 
this account there is danger in placing animals in parturition in 
situations where contact may be effected directly or indirectly 
with discharges and secretions from certain sores or wounds of 
living animals, or even with dead, separated, and putrefying 
animal tissues. 
VOL. XX. — S. S. 2 R 
