PUERPERAL FEVER IN CATTLE. 
373 
Occasionally we have it connected with peritonitis and enteritis ; 
and at other times it assumes a typhoid character. 
When I read in The Veterinarian for March Mr. Friend's 
theory of this fever, I confessed to myself that I had long been 
somewhat of his opinion, and traced it to disease of the organic 
motor nerves. When speaking of his practice, he says, “ I 
succeed better, but still fail on too many occasions (as I am 
afraid we must continue to do)," as soon as l came to that 
portion of the sentence within the parenthesis, I exclaimed 
“ Nil desperandum !” and the old adage came into my mind, 
“ a knowledge of a disease is half the cure." May it be realized 
in this instance. 
As Mr. Friend has promised to give the history and treatment 
of two cases of a recent date, both extreme ones, and both saved 
by a new mode of treatment, based on the diseases of the or- 
ganic motor nerves — if his curative treatment has the desired 
effect, he will, indeed, b e-Friend the human practitioner as well 
as the veterinarian ; for three-fourths of the women attacked by 
puerperal fever have fallen sacrifices to it. 
Some affirm that the cause of this disease is in the third 
stomach : with all due deference to them, I would say that the state 
of the third stomach is the effect, and not the cause. I attribute 
this to a want of a sufficient quantity of saliva, in consequence 
of the suspension of rumination, arising from a deficiency of 
nervous stimuli on the muscular coats of the stomachs, by 
which they should have been enabled to propel the indigested por- 
tions of their contents up into the mouth, in order to be a second 
time masticated and mixed with the saliva; and then, being re- 
swallowed, it enters directly into the manyplus, where comminu- 
tion commences under the sole influence of the ceiebro visceral 
nerve. In this mill (if the name be appropriate) both mecha- 
nical and chemical processes are going forward preparatory to the 
mass being passed into the abomasum, or true digesting stomach. 
When it is deprived of a fresh supply of saliva, and the 
nervous action withdrawn, the mill stops; the thin and tho- 
roughly ground portion escapes into the fourth stomach, the 
residue is pressed into an indurated mass, and which is found 
almost invariably to be the case on examination after death. 
It has been supposed that a quantity of saliva, equal in weight 
to the dry food which he eats, is consumed by the horse in the 
act of mastication. This is an extraordinary quantity. Nearly 
as much is consumed by cattle in the act of rumination ; ^and 
that act being suspended, and so much being withheld from the 
manyplus, the dry state of the contents of that stomach is no 
longer a matter of wonder. 
