580 ON PERIPNEUMONIA IN CATTLE. 
for when cattle are violently attacked, according to M. Rhodes, 
M.D. and Mayer of Murat, they survive seven or eight days; 
and ordinarily death does not close the scene before three weeks 
or a month, or more. M. Maret, veterinary surgeon at Allanches, 
has seen the disease last a month and even two months. Other 
observers have known it last longer still. 
I have but few words to say on the state of the pulse and the 
pulsations of the heart. The pulse in general is rather accele- 
rated at the commencement of the disease, though it is rarely 
stronger and fuller than natural. At the closing of the disease, 
when the breathing has become much embarrassed, the pulse is 
extremely small. The pulsations of the heart are strong and 
tumultuous at the commencement, according to what I have re- 
ceived from other veterinarians ; and 1 myself have recognised, 
this symptom in some emaciated calves, though in larger and 
fatter animals I have been unable to recognise any such symptom. 
The frequency of abortion in this disease is a fact which 
has attracted the notice both of veterinarians and farmers; and 
it is a circumstance which contributes to the losses arising from 
the epizootic. And, connected with this, it is worthy of remark, 
as has been observed by M. Cobrat, that cows which aborted 
early in their pregnancy had not been so likely to succumb 
under the disease as those that miscarried at a late period. 
Another indisputable fact is the presence of the epizootic in 
the foetus itself. M. Augsade has assured me, that foetuses, the 
aborts of cows at the time labouring under the disease, presented 
for the most part lesions characteristic of the peripneumony, and 
notably in the pleural effusion and the production of plastic 
membranes. All veterinarians agree on this point. 
In respect TO treatment, it is to be remarked of this, as of 
most other epizootics and epidemics, that numbers of medicines 
and curative methods have been essayed without any satisfac- 
tory results. Some practitioners are for bloodletting ; others of 
equal pretensions and number condemn it. One thing is certain 
about it, which is, that it does not answer to bleed after pul- 
monary oedema and pleural effusion has taken place. 
M. Sage insists upon the use of bitters and diuretic drinks, 
forbidding venesection, on the plea of the epizootic manifesting 
none of the characters of inflammatory disease ; in which opinion 
he is quite in accordance with the English veterinarian, Mr. Si- 
monds, who has gone so far as even to complain of the name of 
peripneumony for the disease. Many Englishmen shew their 
good sense in not giving it a name incongruous with its nature. 
Indeed, I do not myself see how we can assimilate with sporadic 
peripneumanies a disease never commencing in irritation of the 
respiratory passages, never, for example, in angina — a disease 
