192 
ON PUERPERAL FEVER. 
writing without thinking much upon the matter*”) Mr. Wilson 
facetiously observes, that “ I have got a hair to make a tether o\” 
I have. Sir; and I have got the only hair upon which his system 
hung. If it is not debility, it must be paralysis. Finding that I 
thoroughly exposed the absurdity of his doctrine on this head in 
the December number, he now gives it another name, equally 
wide of the truth. “ Oppression, from the balance of the 
circulation being upset!” Oppression of what, and where ? His 
avowed doctrine is that inflammation begins in the uterus, 
gradually extending to other viscera in the abdomen, &c. Now', 
how can oppression of these parts possibly prevent the action of 
those muscles more particularly engaged in raising and support- 
ing the hind extremities ?— and if the balance of the circulation 
be upset, as he terms it, how happens it that all the loss of the vital 
principle is from the hind and none from the fore extremities ? 
Besides, Sir, if this were correct, every rapid and extensive 
determination of blood to the thoracic or abdominal viscera would 
produce the same effect. And yet it is a remarkable fact, that 
this is by no means the case. So far from it, the reverse is much 
more general. Look, for instance, at the violent attack of pneu- 
monia, a case which generally abstracts a greater quantity 
of blood from the extremities, by congestion in the lungs, than 
almost any other ; and yet, for peculiar reasons connected with 
respiration, the animal will almost always remain standing till 
near dissolution. 
But, Sir, the absurdity of this doctrine is not only shewm by 
negative propositions, but there is abundance of evidence to 
prove that in many cases it is perfectly impossible that the fall- 
ing of cows in puerperal fever can be produced by the causes 
which he assigns, because thei / do not exist at all. In The 
Veterinarian for February 1834, there is an article on this 
subject by an excellent contributor to that work (Mr. G. Bain- 
bridge, of Saffron Walden), the whole tenor of which so strongly 
corroborates my doctrine, that I feel astonished that I have not 
before noticed it. He says particularly, in one place, “ in several 
cases that I have examined after death , I have found the womb 
and alt other internal organs perfectly healthy .” I will not 
weaken the force of this most extraordinary fact by one single 
comment. 
In Mr. Wilson’s concluding lines he says, that, in my reply to 
his last, “ my illustrations were so unhappy, my arguments so 
weak and worn out, &c.” “that he shall take no further notice 
of any future ones by me or any one else on the foregoing opi- 
* I readily admit the apology. — E. A. F. 
