SOCIETY MEETINGS 
791 
The roll being called, showed a goodly number of members 
to be present, besides Dr. C. L. Chase, Dr. L. P. Beechy, Dr. J. 
Yoder, Dr. 0 . W. Everly, Dr. Broomter, Dr. Caughey, Dr. 
Krider, Dr. W. C. Fair and Dr. H. Fulstow as visitors. 
Dr. J. C. Meyers, Sr., of Cincinnati, now read an interesting 
paper, describing deaths due to some disease, and entitled his 
paper “Is it a Vegetable Toxicum.” 
The essayist described several deaths in a single herd of 
cattle, in each of which death followed a certain train of symp¬ 
toms, and ask the question as per the title of his paper. 
Dr. W. C. Fair had had considerable correspondence with 
farmers, describing almost parallel cases, and he judged them 
caused by the feeding of improperly cured corn fodder. 
Dr. Torrence asked if the disease was confined to one farm, 
and did the cows in calf abort. 
Dr. Meyers had no report of the cows aborting, and said the 
disease was confined to one farm. 
Dr. Meyers asks if any present had had any experience with 
cornstalk disease. 
Dr. Cotton had heard much of the so-called cornstalk dis¬ 
ease, but he had never had the pleasure of seeing it. He had 
been called to see three horses with very much the same symp¬ 
toms as described, found two dead and the other nearly so ; he 
had examined pasture and could find nothing wrong, only that 
the owner had thrown out seven or eight tons of partially spoiled 
ensilage. Held post-mortem and could not tell cause of death. 
His theory is that a fungi (ferment) propagates on the corn fod¬ 
der, and it becomes poisonous. 
Dr. Gribble had been called to see a herd of polled Angus 
cattle in which eight of about twenty died with symptoms simi¬ 
lar to those described by Dr. Meyers. There were three herds 
in three different fields, the same creek watering all three; all 
were fed clover hay from the same stacks and corn and fodder 
from the same field, yet none died only in the one field ; on ex¬ 
amination the only difference to be found was that the field 
where the cattle died contained three piles of threshed timothy 
