60 
PARTURIENT APOPLEXY. 
of the evil tendencies of hydraemia is reached in a well-detined 
case of parturient apoplexy. But it is not necessary that the 
entire encephalon shall be involved in the anaemic process for the 
evolution of a case of parturient apoplexy. Corresponding to 
the extent and variety of symptomatic expression may be patho¬ 
logical involvement of a part only, or the whole of the cerebral 
organ. Associated with the general hydraemia may be ischaemia 
of the brain, and this may involve the sensory tract or the motor 
tract, or bo_th. But aside from the impoverishment of the blood 
as a predisposing factor in the disease it must be remembered 
that the nervous system is greatly exalted in sensibility, and the 
liability to every form of nervous perturbation correspondingly 
increased. 
MacDonald, in 1878, published the results of some very care¬ 
fully conducted experimental examinations, and expressed the 
belief that eclampsia in women was due to irritation of the vaso¬ 
motor centre in consequence of an anaemic condition of the blood. 
We will revert to this subject farther on. The form of anaemia 
which obtains in pregnancy and parturition may be serous or 
polyaemic, albuminous or hydraemic. Taking, then, the conditions 
of blood impoverishment and nerve exaltation, in conjunction 
with increased arterial pressure, we are no longer at a loss for a 
physiological and scientific explanation of the phenomena of the 
disease. A greater liability to this disease exists in those cows 
whose condition is one of arterial fullness, as the pressure of 
hydraemic blood renders the animal very obnoxious to the disease. 
Bidder and Murck have shown experimentally that pressure 
alone would not induce eclampsia, and that the induction of this, 
condition required blood-impoverishment. It is admitted by all 
writers that the predisposing elements enumerated in this paper 
always attend the parturient state. It is only necessary that the 
exciting factors shall be engrafted upon these to provoke a case 
of parturient apoplexy. It needs only the torch of irritation to 
fire into activity the latent embers. This is furnished in the pro¬ 
cess of active parturition. All physiologists agree that visceral 
irritations may be potent causes of motor and sensory disturb¬ 
ances in every shade of intensity. Let, for example, the great 
