524 
J. SCHMIDT. 
with the typical parturient apoplexy. But when I have ob¬ 
served the typical course after the treatment (compare No. 13), 
I entertain no further doubts from this standpoint. 
The products of decomposition are practically always poison¬ 
ous wherever they are formed and whatever their chemical con¬ 
stitution may be. The toxic substances endowed with a specific 
action which can induce quite characteristic symptoms of dis¬ 
ease are in all probability formed also in minimum quantities 
under normal conditions, along with other products of tissue 
change. But only when it is formed and taken up in larger 
quantities than common, and chiefly if the neutralization and 
excretion fails, it reveals its presence through morbid symptoms, 
instead of inducing relatively increased absorption. This can 
occur in milk fever because of the one or the other exciting cause. 
The physiological limit for the neutralization of excreted 
toxic material or the depurative power of the liver, the kidneys 
and other organs can be easily overstepped by self-intoxication, 
as we have seen in case of the activity of the digestive tract and 
muscular system. Calf fever of a mild type occurs indeed, more 
frequently than is believed. That is, we occasionally see in the 
cow, without other evident reason, a sort of inert digestion after 
parturition, in connection with retained afterbirth, and a certain 
depression of the nervous system, languid expression, weariness, 
feeble movements, yet without any marked paralytic symptoms 
yet showing uniformly a subnormal temperature. If one at¬ 
tempts in these cases to remove the afterbirth, he will be sur¬ 
prised to observe that the uterus has scarcely contracted at all 
since parturition and that the afterbirth is readily detached. 
At times similar cases are met with, where the placenta has al¬ 
ready been expelled in which however, the uterus has not con¬ 
tracted and where likewise the temperature is relatively low. I 
believe that such cases represent a milder type of milk fever. 
Those cases, in which no evident symptoms of paralysis ap¬ 
pear, probably have their foundation, not alone in that only a 
minimum of the toxins become developed, but as readily also 
in that the toxin has a different composition. In the different 
