46 
A CASK OF PUERPERAL FEVER IN A COW. 
6th . — Decidedly better. She had made more than one attempt 
to rise. I ordered her to be gently turned over, and administered 
sulphur fviii, pulv. zingib. Jil, and potass, nitr. gij, in three pints 
of warm gruel. 
7 111 . — She had risen, and was eating some malt mash which the 
owner had given her. The pulse was 40; the muzzle moist; and 
she had ruminated a little in the course of the morning. Give pulv. 
anisi, pulv. gentian, pulv. zingib. each Jij. 
She gradually improved until the 12th, when she was discharged 
perfectly cured. 
I consider this disease to be an affection of the digestive organs, 
generally produced by too sudden exposure after parturition. 
Perspiration becomes checked, rumination ceases, and various 
organs no longer perform their functions. * 
I cannot agree with Mr. Robinson, who so kindly forwarded to 
the Veterinary Medical Association the morbid specimens of a 
diseased cow, that the case was one of puerperal fever. That 
frightful disease attacks, in the first stage, the internal membrane of 
the uterus and the mammillary glands, causing an entire suspension 
of the lacteal secretion — rapidly advancing to the mucous mem- 
branes of the respiratory organs and intestinal canal; delirium 
ensues, and frequently dysentery*. Lastly, the inflammation hav- 
ing extended to the external coat of the uterus, the whole perito- 
neal lining of the abdomen becomes affected, and the poor animal 
dies a loathsome and emaciated object. 
While 1 perfectly agree with the gentleman who stated that the 
cow is subject to two distinct diseases after calving, I must beg to 
differ with him in opinion as to the organs affected in the one, 
which he states to be a cerebral affection, accompanied with the 
following symptoms : — a staggering gait ; interrupted respiration ; 
the pupils becoming immensely large ; the animal reeling to and 
fro for a short time ; then falling and immediately sinking into a 
state of coma. That is, also, in my opinion, an affection of the 
digestive apparatus, chiefly confined in the first stages to the third 
division of the stomach, that viscus becoming enormously distended, 
and, if not promptly relieved, producing the symptoms already de- 
scribed, on account of the known sympathy existing between those 
organs and the nervous system. 
1 imagine that sufficient attention has not been paid to the lac- 
teal secretion in these diseases, as, in the one I have attended to, 
little or no alteration was perceptible in the early stage, while, in 
a pure case of puerperal fever it is entirely suspended. 
* I superintended the examination of a cow, the property of J. Mansell, 
Esq., St. Peter’s in the Wood, in November 1839, that died of puerperal 
fever, and found the mucous membranes of the uterus, colon, and rectum, in 
an extensive state of ulceration. 
