LIVERPOOL VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 127 
True, if we have a very fat cow down with this disease, we 
are less likely to get her up than one in fair or lean condition, 
but this I consider is owing to the want of tone in the system, 
or the deficiency of disease-resisting power arising from fatty 
degeneration of the heart, arteries, and other important organs, 
always present in such subjects. But, indeed, we rarely have a very 
fat cow down with this disease, unless her milking capabilities are 
well developed; and it is a well known fact that a cow having 
a tendency to lay on fat has little aptitude for the formation 
of milk. Our high-bred shorthorn cows very rarely go down 
with this disease, and in this connection I may state to you the 
experience of a shorthorn breeder of thirty years’ standing. 
Bobert Searson, Esq., late of Cranmore Lodge, Deeping, St. 
James, had a very good herd of short horns, and bred successfully 
for thirty years. 
During all that time he never had a case of parturient 
apoplexy, his principal difficulty being the tendency to fatten 
and give over-breeding, as manifested in his best cows, and on 
the other extreme, a tendency to tuberculosis, arising from 
prolonged lactation. 
Before he began to breed pure shorthorns he was very much 
troubled with drop after calving, and after he gave over—some 
years ago—he had a return of the old visitor. These facts, I 
think, prove pretty conclusively that the fatty degeneration theory 
“ will not,” as a critic remarks, “ hold water.” 
Nor is Professor Layman more happy in his explanations 
of his theory when he stated that the symptoms of the disease 
in the early stages “ are due to phlebitis or thrombosis,” and 
that “the desintegration of the clot and the discharge into the 
circulating medium of this product ” is the true and only source 
of the disease. 
If this were “ the true and only theory ” of the disease, very 
few parturient animals would escape, for the involution of the 
uterus by fatty degeneration is a phenomenon in all. And even 
although phlebitis and thrombosis might occur in some—for it is 
by no means proved that it takes place in any of our patients— 
we have no 'phlegmasia dolens in them ; it does not follow that 
septicaemia must follow as a consequence. Nay, rather we 
should expect embolism and its attendant evils. But I must 
hasten to notice the “ anatomical theory of the disease.” 
The propounders of this theory endeavour to explain the reason 
why this disease occurs only in the bovine female, on the ground 
of anatomical peculiarities in the blood-vessels entering the 
cranial cavity, which they assert is the only true explanation of all 
the phenomena attending it. Unfortunately they differ very con¬ 
siderably in the descriptions of the anatomical relations and dis- 
