606 Some Observations on Parturition Fever in Ruminants. 
and disinfected, and a sufficient time has elapsed since it has 
been so treated. Articles which cannot be thoroughly cleansed, 
such as cords or absorbent structures, must on no account be 
used, however much they may have been washed. 
With ewes, particular care ought always to be exercised that 
the individual who is actually affording assistance in lamb- 
ing should not be required to make any examinations of car- 
casses, or to handle those, particularly of sheep which have died 
under doubtful conditions. In all cases where much manual 
interference has been necessary to effect delivery, the shepherd 
will do well to thoroughly disinfect his hands and arms with 
the wash previously mentioned, before proceeding to give assist- 
ance to other animals. While with all animals, chiefly with 
such as are herded in flocks, we must be careful, should par- 
turition fever declare itself, that the diseased be removed from 
amongst the healthy as soon as we are satisfied of illness. In 
many instances it will be advisable to change the attendants, 
and to sprinkle, by means of a watering pot, the fleeces of 
the unaffected with the carbolic acid solution already mentioned, 
and remove them to a different and as yet uncontaminated 
situation, where both exposure and food-supply may be altered 
if desired. 
I am well aware of the extreme difficulty there is always 
encountered, not merely in convincing stock-owners and at- 
tendants of the necessity of such extreme precautions, but even 
in having these fully carried out. Still I am satisfied that 
without such precautions every other measure will prove 
abortive. Indeed, so tenacious of vitality does the septic 
principle or agent of inoculation seem, that situations and 
paddocks where some forms of parturition fever have appeared 
one year, may, unless special cleanliness and care have been 
exercised, again be visited with a similar outbreak when par- 
turient animals are placed there. 
When ewes are confined to stationary paddocks during the 
period of lambing, every care ought to be exercised in the 
removal and burial, or destruction, of all placental membranes 
and other animal matter capable of undergoing putrefactive 
changes. The difficulty of carrying out these precautions to 
the full has led in most large flocks to the separation of the 
animals during parturition into sections, with a regular system 
of change — often at some inconvenience as respects the situation 
where the ewes shall be placed at the time of lambing — and the 
selection of temporary paddocks in the open field, and away 
from the common homestead. 
I feel tolerably certain that in all cases of extensively dis- 
tributed and virulent outbreaks of this fever amongst ewes, it is 
