PARTURIENT APOPLEXY. 
161 
consequent on the act of parturition and the removal of the off¬ 
spring a predisposing cause of the disease, then it would occur 
more frequently in primaparse, is, to say the least, both narrow¬ 
minded and absurd, for other conditions are by no means equal, 
inasmuch as at the first calf maturity has seldom been reached and 
3 ven where it has, the exhaustion is much greater, and the 
plethora less than at a subsequent calf. 
The chief arguments used against the theory of cerebral 
tayperaemia are “ It’s too simple ” and “ I don’t believe it,” but 
since in medicine facts are king and mere belief or disbelief 
counts for nothing, and science is but the systematic classifica¬ 
tion of established and self-evident facts, such arguments are not 
worthy of serious attention. 
The foregoing comprises a short review of not only the most 
cecent theories formulated to explain the complex phenomena of 
oarturient apoplexy, but also of those theories most generally 
xccepted by competent veterinarians, and therefore, although they 
oe innumerable, those remaining unnoticed are not of sufficient 
importance, having long since been exploded, to warrant the 
3 rolongation of an already somewhat lengthy paper. 
It has been stated that it requires much less intellectual 
worth to criticise than to construct a theory, but that depends 
entirely on whether the theory constructed be imaginative or in 
xccordance with u the cold logic of facts.” In consequence of 
neither possessing a high degree of intellectual ability, nor being 
)f an imaginative turn of mind, we have neither aimed at pre¬ 
senting anything startlingly new nor profoundly wise. But in 
:he study of our subject, knowing that too frequently conclu¬ 
sions are formed from preconceived ideas, important facts being 
;aken entirely out of their proper relations to support perchance 
i theory which has little to sustain it but the enthusiastic ex¬ 
uberance and ingenious imagination of the individual in whose 
nind it originated, while scarcely less important facts are com¬ 
pletely ignored for the same irrational purpose, we have en- 
ieavored to collect and classify according to their importance 
md relations to one another all the obtainable facts relating 
-hereto, from which data, inasmuch as we have not been in- 
