686 
ON PUERPERAL FEVER IN CATTLE. 
to add to these very strong stimulants externally and internally — a 
system of treatment which has not only answered in my own prac- 
tice, but which I have the most flattering testimony (both public 
and private) to prove, has answered equally well in the practice 
of others : and I feel convinced, that if Mr. W. were to try the 
effects of these, he would not find it necessary to bleed to such 
an extent as to destroy, or nearly so, the secretion of milk, as he 
informs us was the case in one or more of his patients. 
To prove that I am wrong in my invariable living symptoms, 
he next says, that I have “ omitted constipation.” This would 
have been an omission, indeed ; but if Mr. W. will have the good- 
ness to turn again to the article in question, he will find that I 
have named as one of these symptoms, “ evident loss of mus- 
cular action in the three first stomachs, proved by their retaining 
their contents after death.” Now, I should have thought that 
even a “a student in a veterinary school” might have known 
that this was quite tantamount to calling it constipation. But, 
however, if he had meant to have used me quite fairly in his 
critique, he would not have mentioned this at all ; for he knows 
that I have, in another place in the very same paper, called it 
severe constipation ! Why I particularized it in the way I did, 
in my classification of symptoms, was, because the true stomach 
and intestines are generally found, after death, empty, or nearly so ; 
and I considered the terms I used as more expressive of the real 
state of the case than the word constipation. I will now, gen- 
tlemen, turn to his fourth case, to prove the correctness of this 
arrangement, and to gain an argument in support of my theory 
of the paralysed state of the three first stomachs. He says the 
“ two first stomachs were full of food,” and the manyplus not 
only “ full, but the contents so hard, that it appeared like cakes 
that had been baked whilst the other stomachs, though in- 
flamed as much or more than the others, were “ quite empty .” 
Now, Mr. W. contends, that he has satisfactorily accounted for 
the effects of this disease, by proving that inflammation existed 
in certain parts, a report of which, he says, is “ faithfully ” given 
in this very case, and is " sufficiently characteristic of what the 
disease is.” 
It is from the post-mortem examination of such cases as these 
that I am induced to think that “ simple inflammation is not 
sufficiently characteristic of the disease.” Looking at this very 
case, let me ask Mr. W. why inflammation had the effect of com- 
pletely emptying one stomach, whilst it had a directly contrary 
effect on the other three? I apprehend it is no stretch of the ima- 
gination to conceive that the true character of inflammation, 
simply considered, is shewn in the abomasum and intestines. 
