ON PUERPERAL FEVER. 
95 
after the first bad symptom had been recognized ? Is the ani- 
mal dull, and has she given up feeding? We shall find her 
feverish. Is rumination suspended? We may be sure to find a 
still greater degree of fever. Is the breathing difficult and the 
respiration hurried ? Under each and all of these consequent 
symptoms there is fever. There is fever before any. of them has 
been detected — there is generally less or more fever before the 
cow calves ; and need it be a matter of surprise, when improper 
treatment has been adopted, by feeding or otherwise, that a con- 
siderable degree of fever is soon observed after parturition ? 
What is fever ? It is a disease that affects all the organs of 
the body; but some organs may be more or less affected than 
others. Some fever may depend on inflammation, acute or sub- 
acute, modifying the symptoms very much. Other fevers, again, 
may arise from functional derangement of some organ or organs, 
having, as yet, no connexion with inflammatory action. A third 
kind of fever may arise from the lost balance of the circula- 
tion, where there is a determination of blood to deeper seated 
organs. Now, from which of these causes puerperal fever gene- 
rally arises, it is not of much consequence to know. It is better 
that we should know whether or not the symptoms are different ; 
because I should suppose they are not : and if not, the same 
treatment that does good in one case will do good in another ; 
modified, of course, according to the mildness or severity of the 
attack. From the foregoing remarks, I think it may justly be in- 
ferred, that with each and all of the symptoms which accompany 
this disease, there is fever to a greater or lesser degree : there is 
complete loss of appetite — rumination is suspended — severe con- 
stipation has, likely, already shewn itself — there is also, and I 
admit it most frankly, “ great prostration of strength,” arising 
from great precordial oppression. 
Now, how are these evils to be overcome ? how are they to be 
combatted but by depletion, by purgatives, and bleeding? A 
free use of the lancet is not warrantable at all times, and the 
remark is applicable to cows in this disease, because I have 
found the patient sometimes in such a state, that only about two 
quarts of blood could with safety be taken away at first, but in a 
few hours afterwards we could take six or seven more. 
Then, I ask, whether I was right or wrong in pushing the 
bleeding and medicines to the extent to which I did push them ; 
or would it have been better practice to have adopted milder 
treatment, and allow the disease to run its course ? Such a 
question scarcely requires an answer. When a fever, of what- 
ever kind, is once lighted up in the system, no one can tell how 
it may terminate, but every one who has the charge of such a 
