Apr. 2, 1917 
Some Facts About Abortion Disease 
11 
through animal inoculation and cultural methods, with the following 
results: In all cases two or more quarters of the udder, the milk from the 
infected quarters, and one or more supramammary lymph glands, and 
in one instance some of the pelvic lymph glands, were infected. All 
other organs and tissues were invariably free from infection. 
When abortion bacilli are injected into the nonpregnant uterus of a 
cow, they disappear in the course of a few days. When the discharge from 
the uterus of a cow which has aborted is tested, abortion bacilli for 20, 30, 
or even 40 or 50 days may be found; but they eventually disappear, and 
it is the impression of the writers that their abundance and period of 
persistence are intimately related to the magnitude of the lesions in the 
uterus attendant upon an abortion. 
It is the belief of the writers that the evidence they have supplied is 
sufficient to prove two facts: (1) that the udders of cows are a common 
habitat of abortion bacilli, and (2) that abortion bacilli do not maintain 
themselves in the bodies of nonpregnant cows elsewhere than in their 
udders. The occurrence of the bacilli in the supramammary glands, and 
in one instance in pelvic lymph glands, and no farther in the body, 
merely proves that the germs tend to penetrate into the body from the 
udder through the lymph channels, but that they can not go very far 
before they are destroyed. 
PRODUCTION OF SEEMINGLY NORMAL CALVES BY INFECTED COWS 
When abortion bacilli are injected into the udder through the teat, by 
a method which avoids a trauma, the bacilli are established in the udder, 
and the cow, according to all available tests, becomes an infected cow. 
There is a remarkable and truly important fact concerning the pro¬ 
duction of calves by cows with infected udders. Such cows, irrespective 
of whether they have, at some time in the past, aborted or not, may give 
birth to seemingly normal calves in a seemingly normal manner asso¬ 
ciated with the occurrence of abortion bacilli in their uteri and in the 
afterbirth. Quite a number of records prove this, and although it does 
not occur every time a cow with an infected udder calves, it is far from 
uncommon. As has been stated, it may occur with a cow which has 
never aborted; and it may occur with the third seemingly normal par¬ 
turition after an abortion. In the experience of the writers, in which 
they have made a number of tests, this remarkable fact has never been 
observed in connection with cows which react positively with the agglu¬ 
tination test but the udders of which were free from infection. And the 
fact becomes all the more remarkable when it is viewed in the light of 
another fact—namely, that numerous careful tests of the uteri of non¬ 
pregnant cows, irrespective of whether their udders were infected or not, 
tests made both between and during periods of oestrum, in no instance 
revealed the presence of abortion bacilli. 
78369°—17-2 
