496 
ON PUERPERAL FEVER IN THE COW. 
requiring a considerable expenditure of muscular energy, and, con- 
sequently, a large determination of blood to that tissue may thus 
prove a cause of exemption. It likewise very rarely follows flood- 
ing from the uterus. 
I may again observe that these several states, considered as pos- 
sessing immunity from this disease peculiarly, are still liable to 
various others, to which their idiosyncrasy predisposes, exhibiting 
symptoms totally different from those we have considered, and pre- 
senting post-mortem appearances equally varied from those we are 
about to detail. 
The predisposing causes are the existence of a larger quantity 
of circulating fluid in the system at the time of parturition, pro- 
duced constitutionally or artificially, than is required for the animal 
and organic functions ; — an excitability of nervous system, induced 
by gestation and parturition, unknown at any other time; — any 
thing indirectly preventing a full secretion of milk, or this directly 
produced by inability, inactivity, or want of tone in the udder 
itself to resume its functions, thus causing a want of lacteal secre- 
tion in proportion to the existence of its elements in the system ; — 
the adult or full state of growth, with considerable development 
of the vascular system and plethora, or a great development of the 
vascular system alone. Constipation mav be a cause. The ex- 
citing cause is parturition. These causes may, however, be con- 
sidered to possess such a reciprocal influence at the time of partu- 
rition as to promote the disease through their conjoined operation. 
Morbid post-mortem appearances in this disease l have in many 
minute examinations found to exist in the nervous system only of 
sufficient extent to cause death, or to occasion, during life, symp- 
toms such as we have recently noticed. Frequently, under these 
examinations, the manifestations are of such a character as almost 
to elude detection ; which is alone satisfactorily effected by frequent 
and careful comparative dissections of the nervous centres in this 
with other diseases, and these again with the healthy state. 
Although cows frequently die after calving, denoting during 
life, and upon examination after death, disease both of the ner- 
vous and respiratory, or nervous and digestive, or generative sys- 
tems, as the case may be, such, being evidently cases of combined 
affection, claim no place in the present consideration, which is 
limited to pure puerperal fever alone. 
We then proceed; and on examining the abdominal viscera, find 
in them structurally, except there is occasionally an organic chronic 
disease, no deviation from what is considered a healthy appearance. 
I have repeatedly traced the intestinal canal from the abomasum 
to the rectum, without finding, externally or internally, a single 
point of inflammatory or other morbid surface. The large intes* 
