14 BULLETIN 106, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
as to what constitutes muco-purulent vaginal discharge, if the 
amount is to decide the question. Unlike other females among our 
domestic animals, there is a well-nigh universal vulvar discharge 
of mucus or muco-pus from cattle, which varies quite as widely 
as the number of nodules present. There is a somewhat close 
harmony between the number of nodules present and the amount 
of vaginal discharge. 
If it is held that the presence of nodules in the vulvar mucosa, 
be they few or many and accompanied by little or much irritation 
or discharge, indicates the granular venereal disease, the prognosis 
as to complete cure of the disease is hopeless in the present state 
of our knowledge. It attacks the heifer and calf ordinarily when 
a few weeks old, and, except at times near to parturition or abortion 
or under the influence of serious disease of the uterus (pyometra, etc.), 
the disease is still clinically recognizable in most aged cows. No more 
typically chronic malady is known, so that the terms acute, sub- 
cute, and chronic are mere expressions of the vacillations in intensity 
dependent upon a great variety of causes. 
From another standpoint we may regard the prognosis with some 
favor. Viewing it as the possible cause of abortion and sterility, 
we know that during its zenith, when the animal is from 2 to 5 years 
of age, the economic losses from these causes are greatest, and that 
after this period has passed the intensity of the disease abates, and 
with it the losses from abortion and sterility decline. So also we 
may regard as favorable the fact that we may repress the disease in 
its intensity and at the same time may decrease the losses from 
abortion and sterility. 
Ostertag relates that one 6-year-old cow recovered spontaneously 
in 8 weeks, but he does not define what he means by recovery. 
Thorns holds that after recovery from the disease the follicles 
slowly decrease in size, but only in small degree, and then remain, 
and emphasizes his opinion that the cure of the disease is not neces- 
sarily followed by a disappearance of the nodules. Hess (in a personal 
communication) holds that when the redness and swelling of the 
vagina and the muco-purulent discharge therefrom have abated the 
disease is cured; that is, it is no longer present, sterility fails, abortion 
does not occur. 
When necrotic or other tissues become encapsuled, when inorganic 
salts are deposited in the tissues, when dense sclerotic tissues have 
formed as a result of disease, and in many other cases, it is readily 
understood that the effects of the disease may persist indefinitely 
after the cessation of the malady. In the granular venereal disease 
investigators agree that the nodules consist^ essentially of masses 
of what appear to be round or lymph cells, cells of a very primitive 
