194 
TAIT BUTLER* 
ECLAMPSIA-PARTURIENT APOPLEXY, 
By Dr. Tait Btjtler, Y.S., Davenport, Iowa. 
In the December number of the Review was published a 
very interesting article from the pen of Dr. W. L. Williams, 
of Bloomington, Ill., on “ Parturient Eclampsia in the Mare.” 
In speaking of eclamptoid diseases attending parturition 
in various animals, he takes occasion to intimate that, in his 
opinion, parturient apoplexy in cows and eclampsia in women 
are diseases due to the same etiological moment, or rather 
that they are one and the same disease manifested in the 
two classes of subjects specified. 
It has appeared to me that in the study of diseases veteri¬ 
narians have been too apt to search for a disease affecting the 
human subject, bearing a more or less close resemblance to 
the one under consideration, and then taking it for granted 
that causes similar to those producing the former were re¬ 
sponsible for the latter. Reasoning by analogy, in regard to 
such matters, may usually be correct, but it is by no means 
a reliable method of procedure in all cases, and to my mind 
the case at point is a marked example of its fallibility. 
Dr. Williams, however, may have reached his conclusions 
by a correct system of careful reasoning, but a preponder¬ 
ance of evidence, as I see it, scarcely justifies such an opin¬ 
ion. In the interest of progress in the study of parturient 
apoplexy in the cow, it is important that this point be defin¬ 
itely settled. For if it is once fully demonstrated that these 
two diseases are due to the same causes, and that they are of 
the same pathological nature, then all discoveries in relation 
to the etiology, pathology and therapeutics of the one may 
be correctly applied to the other. Again, if it be decided 
that they are not due to the same nor similar causes, and 
consequently not identical in their nature, a position will 
have been reached conducive to a more thorough and orig¬ 
inal investigation of this fatal disease of cows. It is, there¬ 
fore, with the hope of aiding toward this desired consumma¬ 
tion that I attempt a short review of the subject. 
