450 
J. SCHMIDT. 
to the ingress of air which leads to ptomaine formation in the i 
nterns. On the other hand, Stoch;fleth * could have been more 
correct, if he had not sought a too rapid, but, on the contrary, a I 
too slow contraction of the uterus. He is indeed more and !' 
more impressed with the view that the most prominent symptom | 
of paresis arises from a poison, which is elaborated in the uterus !; 
from putrefying tissues, liquid excretions, blood clots and foetid 
gases, and that these products are absorbed into the blood : 
chiefly through the vessels of the massive, denuded placentules, i 
which are to be viewed as multiple fresh wounds. The causes 
favoring this may consist of all of those factors, which can 
serve to prevent a vigorous contraction of the uterus, as : taking 
cold, overloading the stomach, constipation, change of food. 
Were this, moreover, the case then must the malady occur most 
frequently in cows which fail to expel the afterbirth spontane¬ 
ously, and, above all else, in those cases following dystokia 
where, frequently, vigorous professional interference becomes 
necessary, in which cases it is not possible to entirely avoid 
superficial abrasions of the uterus. But in relation to the fre¬ 
quency of these cases of dystokia the malady attacks these ani¬ 
mals very rarely, and we are perforce obliged to exclude from 
this list those cases in which the afterbirth is not expelled be¬ 
cause of the early advent of the affection. 
On the contrary, it occurs that calving-fever supervenes 
with special frequency after easy births and among cows in 
which the afterbirth is spontaneously expelled or is at least 
very readily detachable and which therefore offers no special op¬ 
portunity for the elaboration of putrefactive material. 
Besides having accepted the correctness of such a view, we 
must confidently expect favorable results from antiseptic irriga¬ 
tions. This, however, has not been realized. I have used irri¬ 
gations of carbolic-, creolin- or lysol-water in numerous cases, 
especially in those where the afterbirth required to be detached, 
but also in many other instances without being able to perceive 
any such favorable influence. 
*Tidsskrift for Veterinarer i. R, Bd. i8, S. 382. 
