PARTURIENT PARESIS. 
523 
nate through an exalted physiological activity of the various organs, I will con¬ 
fine myself to the foregoing examples. 
But if the S3^mptoms of overgorging are brought about by an increased ab¬ 
sorption of substances formed by the digestive activity, yet they are scarely 
due to a pure auto-intoxication, if we would exclude all bacterial influences. 
For the bacteria existing in the alimentary canal and taking part in the digest¬ 
ive processes, can play an important role through their products of decomposi¬ 
tion. Butin haenioglobinuria it must be a process absolutely free from bacterial 
influence which works in or through the muscles, and hence, in relation to the 
foregoing presumption, a pure auto-intoxication. 
I will barely recall here that the paralysis in acute infectious diseases also 
has a toxic origin. 
From the foregoing it follows that under certain conditions 
aside from other products of decomposition, a larger quantity of 
a specific toxic substance can develop than the organism is com¬ 
petent to at once neutralize and excrete. At the same time we 
saw that the substance which was considered the cause of calf 
fever, could probably come neither from the uterus nor digest¬ 
ive tract. 
We must then seek elsewhere for the cause of parturient 
paresis. There remains only the udder as the most probable 
source of origin. 
All conditions which favor profuse milk secretion during or 
after birth, likewise add evidently to the disposition to milk 
fever. The etiology of the disease is therefore to be sought in 
an abnormality which in one way or another is connected with 
the secretion of milk during the colostral period. The par¬ 
turient apoplexy occurs, therefore, as is known, after a sud- 
treatment, that by the one or the other inciting cause a partial 
detachment of epithelial cells ensues. Likewise it is noted at 
times, that parturient apoplexy first shows itself lo to i6 days 
after birth, indeed in very rare cases, even six months after par- 
1 turition. Although such cases usually tend to assume a very 
pernicious type, I have however seen two cases which pursued an 
equally typical course under antitoxic therapeutics as in cases 
of the ordinary character. Although the symptoms in the 
cases named are throughout similar to those observed in par¬ 
turient paralysis arising under ordinary conditions, the tendency 
might be to believe, that the cause is not identical in these cases 
