SCOTTISH METROPOLITAN VETERINARY ASSOCIATION. 873 
in existence subsequent to parturition, especially improper feed¬ 
ing, want of exercise, organic disease, &c. Plethora, from 
improper feeding and want of exercise, producing a tendency to 
stasis owing to the loss of equilbrium in the constituents of the 
blood, as previously shown. Animals feeding themselves, and 
but scantily nourishing their foetus, hence we seldom see an 
animal the subject of this disease give birth to a large calf. 
Obesity, or the accumulation of large quantities of fat in the 
organism, thus tending to a reduction of the vital force, and this 
reduction of vital force or nervous energy is equally as produc¬ 
tive of apoplectic and convulsive attacks as exaltation, as proved 
by the disease often supervening upon previous organic disease, 
as inflammation of the lungs or stomach, several cases of which I 
have seen in my own practice. Anatomical conformation, as in 
animals having short cervical vertebrae and being very round in 
the barrel; and in this way hereditary tendency is transmitted, the 
tendency becoming increased by multiplied consanguinity in the 
same way as seen in other affections in which the tendency is 
hereditarily propagated. Animals giving large quantities of milk 
are peculiarily liable to it, probably from a greater development 
in the vascular system. Barometrical influences, as proved by 
the fact of its often occurring sporadically. All of you must have 
noticed to a greater or less degree that at peculiar seasons and 
under some peculiar electric conditions of the atmosphere we have 
a great influx of cases of this kind; the same thing holds good 
in tetanus, and in a less degree with paralysis, hence I have long 
since arrived at the conclusion that we do not allow sufficient 
credit to the state of the atmosphere in the production of many 
of these diseases. I would ask how many cases of tetanus 
should we have arising from wounds if it were not for the exist¬ 
ence of some peculiar barometrical condition of the atmosphere, 
coupled with an unhealthy state of the system ? and, further, in 
order to bring the connection of these diseases with each other 
to a closer issue, I may remind you of the fact that tetanus 
occasionally accompanies parturient apoplexy, Mr. Borthwick only 
very recently having had to deal with such a complication. 
Another remarkable fact, showing the peculiarly excitable condi¬ 
tion of the nervous systems of cattle under particular electrical 
states of the atmosphere, I may bring to your notice. It is the 
fact that those animals which are subject to rheumatism will 
always be found considerably worse on the approach of thun¬ 
derstorms. One dairyman in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh 
called my attention to an animal which he had in his possession, 
at that time apparently in robust health, which on two occasions 
prior to a thunderstorm had exhibited such violent symptoms of 
cerebral perturbation by convulsions, prostration, and paralysis as 
