5J4 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON PUERPERAL FEVER. 
the opportunity of managing and preparing before parturition, 
he has not lost one. He may not do a great deal better than his 
neighbours when he has the fully developed disease to struggle 
with, but he has the means of prevention quite in his power. 
He often tells his employers that the cow has got a warehouse 
in her in which she hoards up a great quantity of food to 
eat at her leisure ; that this may all be very well, generally 
speaking, and when she has nothing else to do but to prevent 
the contents of the warehouse from running to putrefaction, as 
they are too apt to do, and breeding a kind of pestilence in the 
place ; but that, when all her attention is employed about her 
labour and her young one, and there is something about the 
house tending fearfully to increase this putrefactive quality, it is 
downright murder for the warehouse to be crammed. 
The reason that cows oftener die of puerperal fever in the 
summer than in the spring, is that the grass contains more sti- 
mulating matter — is more difficult of digestion — and tends to 
produce costiveness instead of the healthful laxative effect of 
the spring grass. 
In farther illustration of his views, he relates a case which 
occurred to him in February last. A cow had calved on the pre- 
vious day, and was now down and perfectly paralyzed. The 
muzzle was dry, the horns hot, the pulse 90 and feeble, and 
both jugulars strangely distended. He inquired how she had 
been fed lately. The owner said that she had had plenty of 
hay on the preceding day, and that morning he had been giving 
her grains. The case was plain enough ; — acute indigestion was 
at the root of the mischief. He bled her, and physicked her, 
and used all possible means to save her, but she died; and 
owing to repletion of the stomach (for the many plus was dis- 
tended to an enormous size), the contents were dry, and the 
inner coat of the stomach firmly adhered to the mass. 
There is much good plain sense in this communication. We 
thank our “ Yorkshire Farrier and Cow-leech” for it; and when 
he writes to us again, we trust that he will favour us with his 
name and address. 
A FEW GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON PUERPERAL 
FEVER. 
By Mr. A. Wilson, of the Edinburgh Veterinary School. 
By discussion, either on medicine, law, or politics, there is 
generally some good effected ; and whether such discussions are 
carried on verbally or sent to the press, still the result is the same 
