ON PHTHISIS IN COWS. 
357 
and then there would be no longer any well-founded hope of their 
becoming good milkers, and the farmer would have nothing more 
to do, as soon as they got tolerably well, than to fatten them for 
the butcher; and these inwardly and incurably diseased cows 
would never find their way to Paris. 
But it is not so: there is quite another order of things. The 
pulmonary organs do not become diseased in so serious a way 
all at once. The inflammation is slight at first: the animals are 
scarcely ill at all: soon all the symptoms of the disease dis¬ 
appear, and every fear is dissipated; but a chan 2 :e of manage¬ 
ment or diet, a change of atmosphere, or almost any other cause, 
reproduces the affection. These changes happen frequently in 
a greater or less length of time, and, at length, the malady 
becomes habitual,—it becomes chronic. The cow, in the mean 
time, continues to yield milk—it is only by close attention that it 
can be perceived that the secretion varies, and that it diminishes 
every time the chest is thus affected; but a slight, constant cough 
will infallibly betray the secret of the case to any one in the 
slightest degree acquainted with cattle. 
When the malady has arrived at a certain stage, a part of the 
lung becomes diseased, congested, of firmer consistence than in 
its natural state—it is hepatized. At length, tubercles begin to 
develop themselves; the pleura participates, more or less, in 
the inflammation ; and in this state the cow is affected with that 
disease which we call pulmonary consumption, or phthisis(pom7??e- 
liere). 
It is then, or even without the disease having arrived at such 
a degree of intensity, that, in most cases, some other cause de¬ 
velops all at once a new inflammation, acute, violent, in the 
lungs affected by the chronic malady; and this new inflamma¬ 
tion either quickly destroys the animal, or reduces her to such a 
degree, that it is with difficulty that she is saved, and, in fact, 
she loses almost all her value. It is remarkable, that before this 
last attack occurs, the cow, although often in an advanced stage 
of phthisis, continues to yield milk, and in a very considerable 
quantity. 
Some farmers know this disease well: others know it im¬ 
perfectly ; yet, when they have a cow that has experienced some 
of these intermittent secretions of milk, diminishing and return¬ 
ing; when the character of the cough is easily understood, and 
especially when they are in communication with a veterinarian ; 
these farmers, 1 say, know that it is time for them to get rid of 
tliat cow : they hasten then to send her to the bull, that they may 
sell her when she is almost ready to calve. Then, within a circle 
of thirty leagues from the capital, these cows are bought by the 
VOL. VIII. 3 c 
