208 SCOTTISH METROPOLITAN VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY . 
supported by some of the ablest scientific veterinarians, I must say 
that at the present time I am not so satisfied that we are perfectly 
correct in assigning to it this and no other origin, or even in 
placing this external septic influence in its power of operation 
above the other, as I was in 1863, when my attention was first 
particularly directed to it. It seemed rather that the weight of 
evidence is pointing in the direction of diet as the source to which 
we ought to look for the chief cause of the disease. That we 
ought to regard it as a disease of mal-nutrition, having its origin 
during intra-uterine life, closely associated with or dependent on 
an unhealthy condition of one or both parents; this state of ill- 
health, again, being the result of a faulty dietary. 
There are several lines of argument in support of this view, 
which might profitably be considered. I will, however, at this 
time merely direct you to give some little attention to two of 
these. 1st. The fact that in all well-marked enzootic outbreaks 
of this disease among sheep, the ewes are rarely if ever in a state 
of well-established or robust health ; very often they are sufferers 
to a great extent from serious systemic disorders. 2nd. That this 
particular arthritic disease can be produced at will in lambs by 
a particular dietary of the ewes. Anything strikingly abnormal in 
connection with the ewes where arthritic disease has occurred 
amongst the lambs, may not appear until after parturition; but 
immediately succeeding the accomplishment of this act, and 
coincidently with the appearance of disease in the progeny, it is 
an exceedingly common thing to meet with serious and extensively 
distributed disease in the former. Malignant parturient fever 
has been noted by some observers; in my own experience the 
morbid conditions have been chiefly associated with the assimi- 
latory system, anaemia with structural alteration of the liver 
being the most common and extensively distributed. Neither 
this diseased condition, nor these structural alterations, can be 
regarded as purely post-parturient changes. Attention once 
directed to the subject by the occurrence of a few cases, a very 
cursory examination of the entire flock will generally satisfy any 
one only moderately skilled in the management of these animals 
that their condition is the reverse of satisfactory. The diseased 
condition only culminates with the act of parturition as a rule, 
although there are many that succumb to the systemic weakness 
during the latter weeks of gestation. 
Erom observations and the notes which I have kept of certain 
flocks, I feel satisfied that the general debility from anaemia, and 
the structural changes in the liver, originate at a period long 
antecedent to parturition. That breeding and pregnant animals, 
so decidedly anaemiated and exhibiting so marked hepatic disease, 
should give birth to weak and structurally defective progeny, is 
