PRACTICAL PAPERS—ABORTION IN COWS. 
259 
CAUSES OF ABORTION IN COWS. 
From a Report to the New York State Agricultural Society, 
BY WM. H. CARMALT, M. D., COMMISSIONER. 
[Although abortion in cows has not become an epidemic 
disease in Wisconsin, the great losses occassioned by it in 
some of the western states, taken in connection with the fact 
that it is said to have shown itself in that form in Illinois, 
warrant the republication of the following, taken from the 
report of the New York commissioners, on that subject— 
especially as the extracts embrace a view of many important 
facts and principles which are habitually disregarded by a 
large majority of farmers everywhere— ISecreiary.'] 
There, is then, no evidence of any active disease in opera- 
tion on the part of the dam, as shown by the careful post mort¬ 
em and miscroscopical examination of every organ in the body 
having a probable influence to produce .this disease. 
What is the evidence of disease on the part of the 
foetus? Of 4,163 abortions reported in 1867 and 1868, in 
3,597, or 86 per cent., the foetus was reported dead, or diseased 
looking. 
There have been but few opportunities afforded to the in¬ 
spectors, in which to make actual examinations of the foetus 
as expelled, but their limited investigations, and the general 
observations of farmers, unite in describing nothing inflamma¬ 
tory, or otherwise abnormal in the external appearance of the 
foetus;—but it is usually dead. 
The microscopical report by Dr. Dalton states that there was 
evidence of an abundant fatty degeneration of both foetal and 
maternal cotyledons, but that they were otherwise natural. 
