INFECTIOUS ABORTION OF MARES. 
303 
ORI GINAL ARTI CLES. 
[Written Specially for the American Veterinary Review.] 
INFECTIOUS ABORTION OF MARES. 
By W. L. Williams, V. S., Professor of Surgery, etc., at N. Y. State Veter¬ 
inary College, Ithaca, N. Y. 
Infectious abortion as a distinct, specific malady has long 
been recognized among domesticated animals, and, distinguished 
from general transmissable diseases which in the course of their 
attack may induce abortion of the pregnant females, as seen in 
hog cholera affecting pregnant sows, or the so-called “ pink-eye ” 
or epizootic (infections) cellulitis of mares ; as well as the some¬ 
times wholesale abortions reported from ergotized or other dele¬ 
terious foods. 
A brief resiune of the literature upon the subject, as relating 
to the affection in mares, is given in connection with the records 
of some experimental work conducted by ns, in the sixth and 
seventh annual reports of the Bureau of Animal Industry, De¬ 
partment of Agriculture, p. 449. 
It is desired here to briefly record some observations made 
upon the control of the disease when once existing in a herd of 
pregnant mares. These observations were made in a herd of 
standard trotting and thoroughbred mares, the property of Mr. 
H., Bozeman, Mont. 
In all, Mr. H. had, in November, 1895, twenty-five mares 
presumably pregnant. None of them worked except one grade 
draft mare, and all having apparently faultless care as to free¬ 
dom, housing, feed and water. The first animal to abort was 
the grade draft mare used for general farm work, the abortion 
occurring in November, 1895, followed by somewhat widely 
separated abortions of three trotting mares, which led to our be¬ 
ing consulted early in 1896, after which a close watch was kept, 
and on February 7th we were called to attend a young trotting 
mare which had apparently been in labor for some twelve to eight¬ 
een hours ; the foetal membranes, considerably decomposed and 
