399 
ON PUERPERAL FEVER IN COWS. 
By Mr. E. A. Friknd, WalsaJl. 
Dear Sir, 
I HAVE before this felt an inclination to make a remark or two 
on some of the observations which were made in the course of a 
debate of the Veterinary Medical Association on Puerperal Fever 
in Cows; but having previously occupied your pages to a consi¬ 
derable extent on the same subject, I have hitherto forborne; 
but your appeal to me in the last Veterinarian respecting the 
queries of Veterinarius on some points of treatment in this dis¬ 
ease, prevents the possibility of my supposing that I shall be 
considered to intrude by so doing; at any rate it carries its own 
excuse with it. 
I am more than ever convinced that, if we are to nroo^ress as we 
ought to do in that branch of veterinary science which relates 
to cattle in particular, we must learn to call diseases by their 
proper names. The whole of the debate before alluded to is a 
striking proof of the correctness of this opinion. That there are 
different degrees of intensity of disease in these cases under dif¬ 
ferent circumstances, and in different localities, I am ready to 
admit; and this it is, perhaps, that has led partly to a discre¬ 
pancy of opinion amongst professional men that, without account¬ 
ing for it in this way, is truly surprising, and, even bearing this 
in mind, I must confess I felt astonished at many of the remarks 
made upon it in that debate. Some of the gentlemen who spoke 
on that occasion must have been most fortunate indeed in the 
cases of this kind submitted to their care, if it be not as I have 
before said, that v\’e owe this confusion to our defective nomen¬ 
clature of diseases. For instance, Mr. Cheetharn speaks of cases 
as those of puerperal fever, where the cow would not rise simply 
from disinclination, and the post-mortem appearances of such as 
died presented chiefly inflammation of the bowels, and where 
such as recovered did so under a system of treatment based on 
the knowledge of this fact, and properly qualified to meet such an 
exigency. Now I consider that these cases immediately follow¬ 
ing parturition may have just as good a right to be called puer¬ 
peral fever as the same disease which Veterinarius calls by the 
same name,or, perhaps, more so; but they are decidedly different 
cases altogether. The circumstance of the cow being down 
simply, and this being dependent only on the will, gives nothing 
of the character of that disease which I contemplate when I use 
tile term puerperal fever. I have never yet met with an instance 
in w’hich I have failed to recover the animal if they have risen 
at all after my attendance. These are distinct diseases, and 
