142 PUERPERAL OR MILK FEVER IN CATTLE. 
CASE II. 
A cow in middling condition, belonging to Mr. Williams, 
Walsall. She calved on the 27th June ; fell on the 28th. I 
was called in on the 29th, and she died the same evening. 
Inspect io cadaveris . — The rumen and manifolds were full of 
food ; the gall-bladder full; the cuticular membrane of all the 
three first stomachs peeled off on the slightest rubbing, shewing 
the muscular coats highly inflamed ; the abomasum and intes- 
tines were nearly empty, and but slightly inflamed. The uterus 
was healthy. The liver was sound and healthy ; so were the 
spleen and kidneys : the lungs were inflamed, and had several 
cysts in them containing a fluid perfectly clear. Strong medi- 
cines had been given her to unload the stomachs, but there ap- 
peared no power in them to co-operate with the remedies ap- 
plied, and she died without any relief being afforded her. 
CASE III. 
A cow, very fat, belonging to Mr. Wright, of Walsall. I was 
called in at two o’clock in the afternoon of the 16th July. She 
had been down about twenty hours ; had had three quarts of 
yeast and some other medicine (I could not ascertain what) 
given her : no relief being afforded her by seven o’clock in the 
evening, I advised him to have her killed ; and, strange to say, 
there was no appearance of disease in any of the thoracic or ab- 
dominal viscera, except that the three first stomachs were gorged 
with food, and the true stomach and intestines nearly empty. 
Here, gentlemen, light broke in upon me like a flood : in the 
early part of my practice I always suspected and accounted for 
the sudden paralysis of the hind extremities by saying, that in- 
flammation extended from the womb to the spine, and that the 
thickening of the membrane covering the spinal marrow, conse- 
quent upon this, was the occasion of this palsy of the hind ex- 
tremities. But finding, on examination of several cases, that this 
was quite a visionary theory, without foundation, and finding 
also that the stomachs were invariably filled and inert, I shifted 
my ground, and adapted my practice by degrees to endeavour 
effectually to unload them, and carried it to an extent I could 
scarcely reconcile to myself, and w 7 hich has been denominated 
temerity in the pages of The Veterinarian. I succeeded 
better, but still failed on too many occasions (as I am afraid we 
must continue to do) ; but I began to suspect that fever or in- 
flammation was not a cause, but a consequence, and that the 
origin of this disease w r as not yet traced or pointed out by any 
