ECLAMPSIA-PARTURIENT APOPLEXY. 
199 
with parturient apoplexy the temperature is lower than nor¬ 
mal, or at least that it is not elevated. Will Dr. Williams please 
inform us of a single example of a disease affectmg women and 
cows , known to be due to the same causes and possessing similar 
pathological lesions, where this difference in temperature is admit¬ 
ted? 
My statement of the condition of the pulse in cows is, I 
am aware, antagonistic to the “ authorities,” but personal 
observations led me to doubt their accuracy on this point, and 
an extensive correspondence with practical veterinarians, in¬ 
stituted for the purpose of deciding this question, indicates 
that my experience is fully corroborated by theirs. 
Neither is the statement that the urine is abundant in 
quantity in cows with parturient apoplexy quite in harmony 
with the views of all veterinarians, but if applied to a period 
immediately preceding the attack, or during its early stages, 
that statement is strictly correct. The distended condition 
of the bladder so frequently met with by the veterinary 
practitioner is due to an established law, applicable to the 
cow as well as other mammalia and explicable by perspicu¬ 
ous physiological facts, namely, that during a variable period 
immediately following parturition the secretion of urine is 
greater than during any other equal period of health. It is, 
therefore, the opposite condition in women which all writers 
agree indicates the approach of eclampsia and marks its early 
progress. 
A review of the clinical history of the two diseases reveals 
the same striking lack of coincident facts. In women “ age 
does not appear to have any great influence as a cause, al¬ 
though it is between twenty and thirty years that eclampsia 
is most frequent, but this is not surprising, since it is at this 
age that women are more likely to become pregnant.”* 
Parturient apoplexy appears in neither young nor old cows. 
In women “ primiparity is without doubt the most fre¬ 
quent predisposing cause. Most authors will agree in this.”f 
* Carpentier, “Cyclopaedia of Obstetrics and Gynecology.” Translated 
by Grandin, II. page 95. 
t Ibid. 
