400 
J. SCHMIDT. 
milk fever, quickly vanishes; since then no evidence can be 
adduced of deficient secretion in such cases, but only of dimin¬ 
ished blood pressure and an increased absorption, the force of 
the belief is much strengthened that it is also an increased ab¬ 
sorption, which is so much in evidence in the rectum in calv¬ 
ing-fever. 
In addition to this it is noted in various other affections that resorp¬ 
tion occurs in the peripheral parts of the body concomitantly with car¬ 
diac depression and lowered arterial blood pressure. For example, in 
the petechial fever of horses (purpura haemorrhagica) as is well known 
there frequently occur enormous cedematous swellings in various parts 
prior to necrotic sloughing and now and then death ensues ere this 
stage is reached. Also the limbs can be very greatly swollen in such 
cases and it is observed at times, if the malady is sufficiently advanced 
that the muscular power of the heart is markedly depressed, the oedema 
of the legs suddenly vanishes, in fact to such a degree that they have 
some hours prior to death resumed their normal volume. 
In heifers mammary oedema is met with toward the end of 
pregnancy and sometimes after calving in a far higher degree 
than is common in fully developed cows. The arterial ramifi¬ 
cations of the udder in primipara are not so developed and di¬ 
lated that the blood can find at all so easy a passage as in cows 
and the passive blood pressure is necessarily greater. It there¬ 
fore follows that the blood stream, which flows through the 
udder immediately prior to and succeeding calving, cannot be 
so great in these primipara as if the mammcC were not enlarged 
by the cedematous swelling. 
There remains, consequently, a relatively great amount of 
blood which had occupied the uterine vessels during pregnancy, 
which can be disposed of to other parts of the body, especially 
to the brain. And yet this cciuses no pctvesis tn pvi^nipciTU. 
The tissues of the primiparse are also, in the brain as well as 
other parts, more elastic than in older cows \ since, however, the 
disease admittedly appears most frequently at the period of 
greatest vigor, this elasticity can play no part in this case or the 
disease would occur most frequently in aged cows. 
That the disease should largely first appear two to three 
