PUERPERAL FEVER. 
543 
was not at last healed up by upwards of an inch in breadth. Until 
the last time I saw her I did not notice any increase in her respi- 
ration, and it was only her offensive breath and general bad ap- 
pearance that indicated the disease, and in which state I only 
had an opportunity of seeing her once. The waggoner said that 
she had had a cough for sometime before, but it was not much, 
and did not seem to affect her, and that she only began to be worse 
after she had had the second ball, when her cough became more 
difficult and very short : her breath, he said, began to smell soon 
after I operated on her, but he at first thought it was from her 
leg. 
PUERPERAL FEVER. 
We have received a letter from a correspondent under the 
signature of “A Yorkshire Farrier and Cow-leech.” Why not 
favour us with his real name and address? We are thankful 
to receive instruction from any and from every quarter. We 
look only to the value of the facts which are stated, the 
legitimacy of the conclusions that are drawn from them, and 
the spirit with which they are communicated ; and we never yet 
did, and never will, reject that by which veterinary science may 
be in the slightest degree advanced. 
Our correspondent regards Puerperal Fever as being almost 
uniformly connected with acute indigestion or produced by it, 
or identical with it. He says that he has availed himself of 
every opportunity that presented itself of examining the cows 
that have died of indigestion, and he has almost invariably found 
the manyplus distended and its contents perfectly dry. The 
result of his inquiries into these cases has been, in the great 
majority of them, that the cows have been improperly fed. 
When his advice has been required respecting a valuable cow 
previous to her calving, he has always directed that she should 
be sparingly fed for a week or fortnight before her expected 
time, and with free access to as much water as she may choose 
to drink. As soon as she has calved and settled a little, he gives 
her from half a pound to a pound of Epsom salts, with a little 
nitre, dissolved in water of a blood heat ; and he orders that her 
food shall be easy of digestion, and not too great in quantity, 
and that she shall gradually return to her usual allowance. 
All this is on the supposition that the cow is housed ; but if 
she is in the field and the grass luxuriant, he orders her into a 
barer pasture, and to be treated in other respects like the former ; 
and he says, that of some hundreds of cows that he has had 
