PROGRESS OF VETERINARY SCIENCE AND ART. 39 
Dislocations of the vertebrae are rather rare, and are 
invariably very serious lesions, most times proving fatal ; but 
several cases have been recorded of incomplete dislocations of 
the cervical vertebrae, especially by Gohier, Lebel, and 
Godin. These have, in a great measure, though falsely, been 
explained away by persons who could not understand dis- 
placement of these bodies without injury to the cord, and it 
is extremely important that M. Vives can now contribute so 
much to settle the question. 
Respecting the case of distorted spine, the result of injury, 
recorded by M. Vives, it is very interesting, bears directly on 
the subject, but is not unique. I believe some specimens 
are to be seen in the museum at St. Pancras. I made two 
photographs, when at Berne, in Switzerland, from singularly 
distorted spines. The one was congenital, and describes the 
figure of a letter S ; some of the posterior dorsal vertebrae are 
represented as anchylosed. In this instance we should not 
have expected compression ; but in the second case there is 
disease of the spine, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth 
dorsal vertebrae being implicated. Caries and atrophy had 
gone on on the off side, the spine thus became bent, pro- 
ducing a large protuberance to the left, and along this side 
the ribs are distorted and pressed out, the vertebrae them- 
selves having become united by osseous deposit. Professor 
Gerber told me that this animal had lived on thus for a long 
time, and, moreover, the celebrated professor added that he 
knew of another horse, then living, in whom this kind of 
preternatural spinal curvature was still more exaggerated; 
the animal, nevertheless, was still very useful, drawing a 
greengrocer’s cart to market weekly. 
Nymphomania in Cows. — Schmidt refers to the con- 
fusion which has arisen from confounding this disease with 
tuberculosis, tubercles often being found, accidentally, on 
the serous membranes of cows who have died with violent 
desire for sexual intercourse. Schmidt has seen this nympho- 
mania only in old cows, which presented the following 
symptoms : — cows apparently in perfect health have been to 
the bull twice or thrice without being stinted. The mammae, 
especially the anterior quarters, shrink in size, the secretion 
of milk strikingly diminishes and curdles on boiling; the 
cows are very restless and uneasy, whether in the shed or 
out of doors; they appear terrified at any strange object; 
very frequently ride upon each other; rub their horns against 
a post or trough, or use them to throw up their litter, or 
more willingly to perforate, as it were, loose soil, such as 
molehills, before which they are apt to stop, staring, and 
