128 LIVERPOOL VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
tribution of the cerebral blood-vessels, as well as the phenomena 
that such peculiarities give rise to. Tor while one—Professor 
Walley—asserts that “ the increased supply of blood to the brain 
of the cow, with its easier method of ingress (the flow of blood 
to the vertebrals being almost one uninterrupted and straight 
course), with the shorter neck, and greater voluminity of the 
internal organs of the animal, is sufficient to account for it in 
the cow, and the reason why the mare is comparatively exempt 
from it/* The other maintains that “the cow has no single large 
vessel entering the cranial cavity, but a number of small vessels, 
which break up into a cluster of capillaries, or network known as 
the rete mirabile of Galen, these re-unite to form the arteries of 
the brain proper, and that, in consequence of this arrangement, 
the arterial supply of the brain is very uniform, and any irre¬ 
gular pressure on the aortic system is only slowly transmitted to 
the arteries of the brain. But if this increased pressure be long 
continued oedema of the brain results, which is followed by 
acute ancemia , which Mr. Fleming maintains is the pathological 
condition of this disease. 
In short, while Professor Walley maintains that the easy ingress 
of blood to the brain of the bovines gives rise to congestion, ex¬ 
travasation, and coma, Mr. Fleming maintains, with an elaborate¬ 
ness of reasoning and experiment unequalled in our literature^ 
that in consequence of this complicated arrangement of the 
cerebral blood-vessels, and the difficulty of influencing the circu¬ 
lation through them anaemia is induced. So that you see the 
phenomena differ widely, as well as the modus operandi by which 
it is brought about. 
Now, gentlemen, I desire to speak of all great authorities with 
respect, and that the more especially when we are under great 
obligations to them; and to no one in the profession are we more 
indebted than to Mr. Fleming. We owe him a deep debt of 
gratitude; a debt I am afraid we shall never be able adequately 
to pay, but we cannot allow our gratitude or our admiration of 
his genius to warp our judgments and cry “ Amen” to his every 
conclusion. 
Well, in this matter he adopts the German theory of Franck, 
viz. that it is an acute ancemia and sudden loss of brain power 
which accounts for the symptoms of this disease. His mind is 
evidently an eminently deductive one, for he starts from a mere 
speculative opinion, and then sets his great powers to work to 
fish in the troubled waters of physiology for facts to fit it. To 
read his essay on this subject is a grand intellectual treat, for in 
it we can see to what an extent a well-trained mind can reach in 
its comprehension of disease processes, without, perhaps, ever 
having seen a case. The position he maintains is this, “given 
