870 SCOTTISH METROPOLITAN VETERINARY ASSOCIATION. 
consent adopted, viz. parturient apoplexy, does not in some cases 
give us even a remote clue to the causes in operation to produce 
the disease or to their effects, for very frequently true apoplexy, 
i. e. sanguineous effusion within or upon the brain, is not disco¬ 
vered b y post-mortem examination. Hence we are led to conclude 
that our ideas as to its pathology are but crude at the best, and 
ill account for all the phenomena we witness in this intractable 
affection. One method only exists by which we can get rid of this 
seeming anomaly, even although we may still retain the term 
parturient apoplexy, with which we are all acquainted. 
If we could certainly aver that true sanguineous effusion or 
even repletion of the vessels of the brain always existed, then we 
should have no difficulty in the matter, but inasmuch as this is 
not always the case the term without qualification is untrue. 
The method I would wish to adopt is to endeavour to bring the 
causes of this disease under two heads, viz. those which may be 
truly called apoplectic, from direct compression, and those which 
cannot be called apoplectic because no compression or repletion 
is proved to exist, but in which by careful research we can always 
trace the effects produced by them to indirect action on the various 
nerve centres. 
The term parturient is derived from pario —I bring forth— 
“ apoplexy” from the Greek, sig. 1 strike or astound. In so far 
then as there is always sudden and often violent invasion of the 
disease occurring at the time of parturition, we acknowledge 
and retain the term. Congestive Puerperal Pever I have some¬ 
times thought is not an inapt designation, especially in a great 
many cases where we find congestion of several important organs 
of the body following in rapid succession after the original affec¬ 
tion has passed away. 
At one period, and that not far distant, all cases affecting the 
spine or the brain in cattle immediately after, or during the act 
of parturition, were called milk fever. Hence the great name 
which some men obtained for their power of curing the disease; 
hence, too, the non-exercise of proper discrimination in treating 
it. It will be as well before entering further into the subject to 
inquire with what diseases it has been, and is even now, frequently 
confounded. The first is “ paralysisthis we can dismiss with 
a few words, as we have no affection of the brain proper, no loss 
of sensation, and but little interference with the natural secretion 
or excretion—neither is it confined, as a rule, to the one animal, 
the cow; moreover, it is a disease affecting equally uniparous and 
multiparous animals. With “ metritis” the case is somewhat 
different, and I can easily understand a superficial and unscientific 
observer confounding the two diseases, for we have the same 
general prostration, the same carelessness of surrounding objects, 
