PRACTICE OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 
375 
that I should never have given these cases to the world, had I not 
seen the question mooted by that excellent and indefatigable 
labourer, Mr. Cartwright, in The VETERINARIAN for May of the 
present year. In looking over The VETERINARIAN for 1844, the 
reader will find a very excellent paper upon “ Puerperal Fever l' 
by Mr. Barlow, — a paper which I consider well worth the perusal 
of every veterinary surgeon. In this paper the author has dis- 
played a clearness of perception with respect to the pathological 
bearings of puerperal fever upon physiology, as to render it worthy 
of a high standing in our veterinary literature. I do not subscribe 
to every opinion advanced in it by Mr. Barlow; but, as a whole, I 
consider it highly valuable to the student, and creditable to the 
writer. The cases I have detailed afford, perhaps, a fair general 
view of the forms or conditions under which puerperal fever is 
presented to the veterinary practitioner. 
Cases 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7, present, at their commencement, 
many symptoms in common; but the parts affected in Case 2 
were found after death to be very different from those in Cases 3 
and 7 respectively. The immediate cause of the animal's death in 
Case 1 was congestion of the lungs; the cow fell upon the ground, 
and, from the character of the ground where she lay, her hind parts 
were so elevated as to throw the whole weight of the bowels and 
heavily filled stomachs upon the diaphragm; from which circum- 
stance the cow was unable to breathe, and congestion of the lungs 
and death, as a matter of course, rapidly supervened. This, I am 
of opinion, is no uncommon mode in which the disease terminates : 
cows begin and die, as it were, at once ; and, if I mistake not, 
through congestion of the respiratory organs, induced by the great 
weight of the substances contained principally in the paunch, 
which, lying upon the diaphragm, its thoracic surface becomes not 
only convex, but powerless, thus rendering pneumonic hypersemia 
and death inevitable. 
Case 2 is interesting, as shewing that, notwithstanding all that 
may be urged in favour of puerperal fever being entirely confined 
to the nervous centres, occasionally acute inflammation of the 
peritoneum and uterus is present, and constitutes the disease 
with which the veterinarian has to grapple. The general symp- 
toms of the patient, in this case, resembled very closely, in 
many respects, the symptoms detailed of the others, the chief fea- 
tures of difference being in the violent struggles of the former ; 
also in the swelling of the pudenda, and the purple colour of the 
mucous membrane of the vagina. The cause of the uterine inflam- 
mation in this case I regard as arising from the difficulty and te- 
diousness of the calving process. We generally find inflammation 
of the uterus, when it does exist, occurring after a severe and pro- 
