PARTURIENT APOPLEXY. 
151 
— 
In their writings on parturient apoplexy, as of many other 
diseases, veterinarians have to a great extent figured only as 
foster-parents. Now, while we fully appreciate the priceless 
value of the advantages our profession has derived from the ac¬ 
cumulated knowledge of its elder sister, human medicine, and 
while the importance of the study of comparative medicine and 
surgery is obvious, still that the wholesale system of adoption 
practised by many writers on veterinary medicine has led to 
grave and unpardonable errors, and has been chiefly instrumental 
in bringing about a lack of independence of thought and original 
investigation, is, it appears to us, a fact too perspicuous and axio¬ 
matic to fail of recognition by the least observant. 
The Traube-Rosenberg theory, “that eclampsia (in women) is 
due to oedema cerebri and the sequential anaemia,” was adopted 
into veterinary medicine and ably supported by Franck and 
Fleming; while the one most generally accepted in human 
medicine, “ that it is due to intoxication of the blood with the 
entire element of the organisms which go to make up the urine,” 
was espoused by Dr. F. S. Billings, Y.S., and vigorously sup¬ 
ported in a paper read before the Boston Gyneological Society 
and published in the Journal of Comparative Medicine and Sur¬ 
gery for April, 1884. Before adopting these theories into veter¬ 
inary medicine it was, as evidenced by the statement of Dr. Bil¬ 
lings that “ one cause must produce the phenomena in man and 
animals,” assumed that eclampsia parturientum in women and 
parturient apoplexy in cows were analogous diseases. That there 
is some evidence to warrant that assumption is morally certain, 
but it is equally certain that that evidence is not sufficiently con¬ 
clusive to justify such a dogmatic assertion as the one just 
quoted. Hence, it matters not one iota to the veterinarian 
[ which, if either, of those two theories be correct in human medi¬ 
cine unless it be shown beyond the peradventure of a doubt that 
1; parturient apoplexy in cows and eclampsia parturientum in 
women are analogous diseases. To our mind this has not been 
very satisfactorily shown, but since, as above stated, there is 
some evidence to support that view, we shall consider each theory 
as it applies to parturient apoplexy in cows, regardless of its 
