PARTURIENT PARESIS. 
393 
voted to it. The results, however, have been uniformly indif¬ 
ferent. 
Formerly there were ordinarily distinguished several forms 
of the malady. The reason for this existed partly in the vari¬ 
ous ^ades of the disease, partly in certain complications and 
also in the confusion of this with other diseases, especially with 
metritis (septicaemia puerperalis) and with persistent decubitis 
after parturition. In a like manner we are to explain the great 
variety of symptoms described. 
Accordingly it has become the custom to designate in a more 
restricted sense as .calving-fever or parturient paresis only the 
so-called paralytic form of calving-fever with its characteristic 
nervous symptoms. 
The symptoms of calving-fever are now well known. 
Though these may vary to so great a degree in different indi¬ 
viduals that, e. the temperature may vary from 35° to 41° C. 
(95 to ^05*^ yot it is ordinarily easy to diagnose the dis¬ 
ease. On the other hand, the cause of the malady remains yet 
an unexplained riddle, although much earnest thought has been 
expended upon its solution 5 so long as the etiology is not suffi¬ 
ciently known, the therapeutics must be pre-eminently experi¬ 
mental. Certainly these experiments have rendered no immed¬ 
iate value. But the negative results of therapeutics, and accu¬ 
rate observations on the development of the disease, its symp¬ 
toms, and its course at various times has furnished a certain 
basis for criticism of the various hypotheses announced. And 
since these hypotheses have mostly, in the course of time, 
proven themselves untenable, it has become necessary to con¬ 
sider and investigate other possibilities. 
I have rested my own conclusions upon the basis of general 
experience , thut the disease notably occuts chiejiy 171 well noiiT’- 
ished a 7 id very proficse niilkmg cows, cows which have easily 
^iven birth to the calf, very seldom, however, after difficnlt par¬ 
turition or following an abortion; that, further, it is observed 
chiefly at the most vigorous age in life and at the age of greatest 
Milk production, and almost never in primiparcs, as well as com- 
