G14 
PUERPERAL FEVER. 
with difficulty, with danger, and sometimes with death, is it 
surprising that a great degree of fever may be set up ? — fever 
that arises from inflammation, at first purely local, and perhaps 
easily combatted, but which soon assumes a very serious appear- 
ance, and setting defiance to all the powers of medicine, and all 
the anxious efforts of man. This fever is often set up before as 
well as after parturition; and I know not a more frequent 
cause, than the barbarous custom of dealers driving the cows to 
fairs and markets a few days only before calving, while on these 
journeys they are often exposed to cold, wet, bad food, and 
general improper treatment ; and if these things are wrong before 
calving, they surely must be much worse after. Nor is it an 
unfrequent occurrence in these journeys, that, if a cow calve at 
night on the road, she is hurried off for the market next morn- 
ing with her more lively companions ; and whatever deficiency 
her travelling powers may manifest, however weak, worn out, or 
dejected she may appear, still the poor already suffering animal 
is goaded on by a large oaken rung, unmercifully applied to her 
by the worse than brute who drives her ; and after such treat- 
ment as this, who can be surprised that the cow is seriously, 
nay, irretrievably affected with general inflammatory fever of a 
fatal description ? In a cow which I had lately under my care 
(as the owner had had some severe losses from puerperal fever 
before,), I followed the advice given by the last quoted author; 
bleeding very largely, as she was in high condition ; I also gave 
her one pound of Epsom salts three times before calving, and one 
pound about three hours after: these, with spare feeding, both 
before and after calving, brought my patient out of danger, 
although there was an evident tendency to constipation. I 
would also in every case, but particularly where there is plethora, 
order the milk, such as it is, to be daily extracted from the cow 
before calving, as, from the neglect of this, there is frequently a 
considerable degree of irritation and fever set up, which must 
surely become worse and worse, and increase the danger at this 
interesting period. Even supposing that the accumulation of 
milk in the udder before calving did not create this irritation or 
fever, still, by adopting this plan of extracting the milk for a 
week before she calves, you have this advantage, that there is no 
“ beasty milk ,” as we say in Scotland ; the first milk after 
calving being as pure and sweet as it will ever be after. I never 
heard this plan recommended, nor am I aware that any author 
has ever noticed it; I merely stumbled upon it, as it were, when 
a cow that I had the care of wfts about to calve. But keeping 
the economy of the plan out of view, does it not relieve the 
