876 SCOTTISH METROPOLITAN VETERINARY ASSOCIATION. 
The practice of hefting animals recently calved for show purposes 
is prolific of parturient apoplexy patients, especially when forcing 
is resorted to at the same time; and I have had the particulars of 
two cases given to me in which it gave rise to the disease in three 
years old animals—one by Mr. Connacher, of Selkirk; the other 
by Mr. McOnie, a student at the College—over-exertion by 
being driven a long distance too soon after calving, or being sub¬ 
jected to the excitement and fatigue of a long railway journey. I 
have seen four or five cases in a week in one shippon produced 
by the latter cause. Throwing back of the volume of blood 
which has been contained in the uterine vessels during pregnancy 
is said to be an exciting cause; but if it were so, why, as Pro¬ 
fessor Simonds pertinently asks, does it not produce the disease 
in the sheep and other animals, for the same thing must equally 
occur in them as in the cow ? Inactivity of the mammary gland is 
another exciting cause. Nature has intended it for a safety- 
valve whereby the pressure upon the vascular system may be 
lessened, and if from, any reason it fails to perform its function, 
it not only does not tend to remove this pressure, but it may be a 
source of reflex-spinal irritation, for we frequently find tho udder 
filled to repletion with blood without the secretion of scarcely a 
drop of milk. How far any irritant acting upon the udder may 
become an eccentric cause may be understood by the fact that in 
the human subject the pressure of the child's lips upon the 
mammae often produces excruciating spasm of the uterine walls, 
and if convulsions are present, induces violent exacerbation of the 
symptoms. 
Having thus, gentlemen, given you a review of some of the 
exciting causes, allow me to call your attention to one which, in 
my opinion, gives rise to more cases of parturient apoplexy than 
all the rest put together—it is the absurd system of removing the 
calf from the mother immediately it is born. As practical men 
I need not tell you that the stimulus of the calf sucking causes 
the animal to allow its milk to flow more freely, and increases 
the secretion of that fluid; moreover, the operation of licking the 
offspring—natural to ruminants—-must act as a healthy diversion to 
the nervous system, and keep up a moderate degree of excitement, 
thereby combating the tendency to local congestion, and aiding 
in the restoration of the checked circulation which is all the more 
necessary in animals of a phlegmatic disposition, and in a highly 
plethoric state. I do not advance this opinion theoretically: I 
have proved it over and over again in practice, and I would ask 
how many cases of parturient apoplexy, or convulsions, or even para¬ 
lysis, do we see in animals that are kept in a semi-wild condition ? 
I have seen herds of Hereford cattle (notoriously short in their 
necks and round in their barrels, and predisposed to this affection 
