87-A SCOTTISH METROPOLITAN VETERINARY ASSOCIATION. 
to induce him to make all haste in procuring the services of the 
nearest butcher, and to his astonishment on returning he found 
her on her legs (the thunderstorm meanwhile having passed over, 
or developed itself) as well as she was before the attack. Thermo- 
metrical influences also exert a predisposing effect, hence we have 
considerably more cases in summer than in winter, though this is 
further accounted for by the fact that there is less consumption 
of carbon in hot than in cold weather, and greater lassitude of the 
system. Age is another predisposing cause: this truth is so well 
established that we seldom see the disease appear in an animal 
before the second or third calf. 
In the human subject we see the same thing, apoplectic 
attacks not often arising in the pre-adult period of life, and 
we can understand partially why it should be so when we con¬ 
sider that less nitrogenized principles are required to build up 
the organism than in youth, hence any excess is sure to lead 
to repletion of the vascular system; and more than this, in age 
the system is not so vigorous, thus favouring any tendency to 
stasis which may exist. Inactivity of the urinary organs must 
be classed amongst the predisposing causes, inasmuch as if these 
organs are not performing their natural functions (and from the 
little exercise the animals generally have, they are not particularly 
active), much debris must necessarily be added to the blood (not 
only from the mother, but from the foetus) which would other¬ 
wise be eliminated. The same may be said also of the skin and 
liver. Pressure of the gravid uterus upon the respiratory organs 
preventing the due oxygenation of the blood; or an impure con¬ 
dition of the blood from any cause acting as a morbid stimulant 
to the spinal cord. 
Exciting causes .—Previous cerebral disease of any kind, 
whether parturient apoplexy or otherwise, giving rise to arteritis 
and brittleness of the coats of the arteries which cannot withstand 
the pressure put upon them during the act of parturition. Vio¬ 
lent straining, either from constipation or from the endeavours to 
eject the foetus. Constipation should ever be carefully guarded 
against at the period of parturition. Eeasoning analogically, you 
must all have—at any rate those who have suffered /rom this 
unpleasant affection—been struck by the painful sense of fulness 
in the vessels of the head in endeavouring by violent efforts to 
expel hardened feces from the rectum; and this straining has 
been frequently the cause of cerebral apoplexy in the human sub¬ 
ject. How much more injuriously, then, must it act in an animal 
with such large stomachs as the cow, especially if superadded to 
the pregnant condition ? And in old animals, you must bear in 
mind, this is intensified, as in them all the hollow viscera become 
more voluminous, and there is a greater probability of organic 
