Objections to the System and to the Report of the Commission.
M. Guenon in his Treatise on Milk Cows, does not give any positive reasons why the escutcheon is indicative of the yield. He rested content with the fact, that he had proved it so before many learned men, and risked his reputation upon publishing the facts. The system as far as we have been able to trace it, has always been verified by those who have thoroughly studied it, and tested it by extended practice according to the rules of Guenon. The principal cavilers against it, either admit they have not constantly pursued it, or show by their writings their lack of sufficient knowledge of it. The report of the Pennsylvania commission has incited several to write against the system. The principal paper produced was one read before a meeting of the State Board of Agriculture, by Eastburn Reeder, and which he had reprinted in several papers. Of this essay, it is sufficient to say, he showed he had not studied nor practiced the system thoroughly, and because he could not understand it and got befogged, he quoted a large mass of scientific matter to show the system could not be true. These attempts at argument are so quietly, but completely, set aside in the essay of Prof. D. E. Salmon, D. V. M., on Contested Dairy Questions, quoted below, that we shall not discuss them further. For we cannot any more tell absolutely and positively why the escutcheon reveals what it does, than we can tell why a black cow eating green grass, converts red blood into white milk, than we can tell why the green grass grows. In both questions at issue, we have certain facts and theories to guide our reason and judgment about them, but we know nothing positive, and because it is so, Mr. Reeder and Mr. Hardin won’t believe it is so or can be so.
In addition to what Mons. Magne, the eminent French veterinarian, one of the most celebrated medical professors in France has written, Professor Arnold, of Rochester says, when indorsing what Magne writes:
“The size of the escutcheon is regarded as the measure of the quantity of blood supplied to the milk-producing vessels, and are evidence of their capability of elaborating milk. In the same way, the veins take up the blood, and carry it back in the milk veins which pass through the bag and along the belly, and enter the body through one or more holes, on their way to the heart. The size of these milk veins, and the holes where they enter the body, vary with the escutcheon, and like it, give evidence of the quantity of venous blood passing away, from and through the udder, and they have the same significance with reference to quantity, as the supply of arterial blood and the size of the escutcheon.”
Mr. Reeder also quotes the weights of cattle given by Guenon, and triumphantly exclaims, whoever saw such small cows in this country? Guenon distinctly quotes the weights, as net dead weight, or the animal deprived of its head and horns, its hide, entrails, and feet, and gives the excellent reason for it when he says: “If I had made the calculations for the animal on the hoof, the figures given by me would present a great difference, which would increase according to the amount of fat, sometimes to double the weight.” Unfortunately, Mr. Reeder did not know enough of Guenon’s facts to be aware of this clear statement, and supposed the weights were live weight.
Again, he says the commission did not examine the stock correctly. He would have looked at an animal, decided what escutcheon it had, or “to which class and order she belongs, and then append the figures of Guenon as the result. Any other mode of proceeding is not testing the Guenon system.” Here again his lack of knowledge of the system is shown; it would be exceedingly unjust to the reputation of Guenon, as he distinctly declares the size, the age, the breed, the treatment, the season, the period of gestation, &c., shall be fully considered. It is the judgment of just such men passed upon the system, which have tended to throw any doubt upon the merit of Guenon’s assertions. What would be thought of the judgment of such a person, if told by a physician to administer three things to a patient, and he gave but one, and the patient died, and he excused himself by saying, “you told me to give him medicine, and I gave it.”
Then Mr. Reeder denies the value of the system for pointing out the best feeders. The cow which gives the most butter, and which this system will readily point out, will fatten the most rapidly when dried off; for the butyraceous particles, which go to make the butter, will be diverted from the milk and turn to fat on the animal.
Mr. Reeder objects to the report of the commission, that they “in some cases failed to classify cows,” and “made incorrect classifications,” and “in some cases gave different results from Guenon,” and lastly “the terms employed to denote quantity, quality, and duration, are too vague, indefinite, and unsatisfactory.” In all these objections, Mr. R., it will be readily seen by any practicer of the system, shows his utter ignorance of the mode of applying it.
Guenon says it is sometimes impossible to properly classify an animal, owing to the effects of a cross, or some freak of nature. In such cases they may be judged according to the escutcheon it the nearest resembles. This the commission did, but of course could not classify them.
His judgment as to “incorrect classifications” we must pass by as of no account, he not being any more capable of that than the commission.
The same may be said of “giving different results from Guenon.” That is entirely a matter of judgment. Guenon says, judge of the cow by various things and then the result will approximate the amount stated to each escutcheon. Mr. Reeder says the amount set down to each escutcheon is inflexible. We prefer to follow the skill of Guenon and not the ignorance of Reeder, as it was Guenon we were appointed to test.
Finally, he objects to the terms employed to denote the significance of the escutcheon. The great difficulty of the commission was to find herds of which an accurate test of each animal had been made and kept. We believe not one farmer in one hundred thousand has such a record. Yet the commission are expected by such “infallible” advocates as Mr. R. to tell the exact character of each cow, and that record is to be set down alongside of the inaccurate record of the owner; and if they vary at all, the commission are the ones at fault. The very terms Mr. R. objects to were employed by us by special agreement with the owners, because they hesitated to say how many quarts or pounds each of their cows gave. But where there were such careful farmers as W. M. Large, M. Eastburn, J. Pyle, and M. Conard, who gave quarts, and the commission gave quarts, we would invite attention to the comparative reports as the best answer. And even in Mr. R.’s own case we ask comparison, for the reason why the commission are on most of his cows one or two quarts higher is easily accounted for, because we did not learn until after the examination that he was generally ranked by his neighbors a poor feeder, which would certainly make the difference. In the cases of such fine herds as those of S. J. Sharpless, Thomas M. Harvey, Thomas Gawthrop, and H. Preston, &c., the accounts were highly satisfactory to their owners and confirmed them in the merits of the system. For the same reasons we object to his test of “the system in other herds” as any proof of the merits of Guenon, for it was his interpretation of the escutcheons that is given, and it would be very unfair to judge Guenon as interpreted by one who is not an expert.
Mr. Hardin has written much against the system, but containing very little argument, and no valid objection. We will endeavor to sift out of the mass, any points made:
He thought there should be one “non-believer” on the commission, so as to “make a fair and disinterested report.” What possible use he may have been is a mystery, except to cavil at what perhaps he did not understand. The commission simply put down what they interpreted the escutcheons to indicate, and the owner stated what he knew of his stock. The two accounts were brought together and compared. What more a non-believer could have done, we are at a loss to conceive.
His process of examination was laid down thus: “To take down in writing before you see the cows, the owners’ and milkers’ opinions of all the cows to be tested.” “Make the owners and milkers, out of hearing of each other, tell you the name of the cow, her age, how much milk she gives when fresh, how much milk she gives a year, is her milk rich or poor; have you ever tested the milk by measure, or otherwise to determine the amount or its richness; what breed is she?” “Get a non-believer to make pencil sketches of each escutcheon.” “The Governor to appoint two more on the committee who are not believers.”
Now, having laid out this programme, he does not say what was to be done with it. The inference was to be drawn, we suppose, that the many escutcheons were to be engraved, and the public were to draw their conclusions from them and the reports given by the owners and milkers, and see how Guenon would stand the test. And what were the believing or non-believing commissioners to do? Supervise the taking down of all this? How, at once, this shows Mr. Hardin to know little or nothing of the system! Like Mr. Reeder, he did not know that Guenon assigns many other things to be thought of to form a correct opinion! Was it more proof to be told by the owner all that any one could know about the cow, and then say that corresponds with the escutcheon? Or did it put the system to a severer test, to say to the owner, don’t tell me a word, and then proceed to tell him all about a cow you never saw, simply from examining her escutcheon? In one case, you are assisted to define the escutcheon by the knowledge given you. In the other case, you define the cow’s character by only the knowledge you can get from the escutcheon. No better proof can be given of Mr. Hardin’s lack of practical knowledge of the system.
Another objection he makes, and repeats several times, as being a very strong one with him, is, why did not Guenon, and why do not the commissioners, go to work and buy up all the best cows and sell them at a profit, and thus get very rich. His cry is, why don’t they make plenty of money out of it, if it is so valuable? Simply, because neither of them are in that business, or care to be. But Mr. Harvey, a manager of the Delaware county almshouse, in one year from taking this position, changed the cows there, and increased the yield twofold from the same number of cows, and has bought and sold all the steers and cows on his large farm for many years solely by this system, and has grown wealthy.
He says in another article “feeling the modesty that naturally attaches itself to benighted ignorance,” he “started out in the city in search of some one who was learned on these subjects.” He found “a professor in our medical institute,” “one of our most learned physicians,” and they proceed together to canvass Professors Magne and Arnold’s theories and facts about the formation of the escutcheon. The result of two such wise heads (or of “benighted ignorance”) coming together, was that neither of them ever heard of Professor Magne, and that his dictum was “opposed to all the teachings of physiology.” The learned professor knowing as much about a cow as he did of physiology. And it is such stuff as this which forms the arguments of Mr. Hardin. Professor Salmon in his essay on Contested Dairy Questions effectually settles these “learned” men.
We have devoted enough space to a writer, who finds it so easy to tear down, but is never able to build up, a doubting Thomas, whose only mode of judging a cow, he says is a crumple horn, a large udder, and to test the milk every Monday for one year. What an amount of money the farmers of America would lose annually if they followed his rules, and what an amount they would save by following Guenon’s rules!
The following valuable essay is from the Country Gentleman of August 7, 1879:
Contested Dairy Questions.
By D. E. Salmon, D. V. M.
Several of our prominent dairy writers have been lately discussing the more complicated questions of their department in a very energetic and decided, if not in a scrupulously exact manner. Now, if these questions are worth the time and space necessary for their presentation at length, they are certainly of sufficient importance to receive candid and perfectly truthful treatment; and, though these writers may not have intended to give wrong impressions, their teachings can hardly be considered, in several respects, as representing the present condition of knowledge on these points.
Magne’s Theory of the Escutcheon.—In Mr. Eastburn Reeder’s essay on the escutcheon—which is a valuable paper, though marred in the above respects—there is an attempt at scientific argument in order to ridicule the accepted value of the milk-mirror; and the assumed facts on which this argument is based, are presented in such a positive manner that they will probably be accepted, without further investigation, by the majority of readers unless contested at once. The writer has hesitated to do this in the hope that it would be done by some one else; but the truth is of too much consequence to allow the matter to pass entirely without notice.
The first point to which I will call attention is the attempt to dispute Magne’s opinion that the hair turns in the direction in which the arteries ramify, and that the reversed hair on the udder and adjacent parts indicates the termination of the arteries which supply the udder with blood. When these arteries are large, he holds, they extend through the udder upward and onward, ramifying on the skin beyond the udder, and giving the hair the peculiar appearance which distinguishes it from the rest of the surface. If these arteries are very small, they are not likely to extend much beyond the udder, and, hence, form a small escutcheon; consequently, a small escutcheon indicates a feeble supply of blood, and little material to make milk of.
Now how is this combatted? The first argument is that “when Mr. Hardin showed this paragraph to one of the most learned medical professors at Louisville, Kentucky, he at once wanted to know who this Magne was, and declared his name unknown in the annals of medical science.” What are we to think of such a statement as that? Magne—member of the French Academy of Medicine, formerly director of the Alfort Veterinary School and professor of Lyons—unknown in the annals of medicine!
We are then asked if the arteries are not the same in all cows, and are told that we might as well expect more bones or muscles as more arteries. If Mr. Reeder will turn to Chauveau’s Anatomy—one of the best authorities in the world—he will find, in general remarks on arteries, the following statement, which I translate, not having the English edition: “Arteries very often present variations in their deposition, which the surgeon should keep in mind. These variations ordinarily concern the number, the point of origin, and the volume of the vessels.” And if he will go through the list of arteries, he will find examples given of each of these variations.
Again, he asks, “how is it that the ramification of the arterial circulation causes the hair to grow in one direction on one part of the cow’s body, and in the opposite on other parts?” Not a very difficult question, if we admit that arteries have such an effect, for they certainly do not all ramify in the same direction.
In a revised edition of the essay, subsequently published, some important points were added. Here we are told that “the arteries supplying the udder with blood are called the mammary arteries, and their ramification does not extend beyond the outer surface of the udder. Further down the aorta, or main artery, another pair of arteries branches off, called the femoral arteries. These supply the muscles of the thigh, or what we know as the rounds of beef, with blood, and ramify upon the portion of the escutcheon lying between them. Still further down, another pair of arteries, called the gluteal arteries, leave the aorta, and are distributed through the pelvic region, and ramify upon the extreme upper portion of the escutcheon. Here we have at least three distinct systems of arteries ramifying upon the escutcheon, and two of them most certainly have no connection with the milk secretion whatever.”
Without attempting to point out all the errors of this description, we will once more refer to Chauveau to settle the more important points. The reader will find in that work that the femoral arteries have a branch called the pre-pubic, which in turn has a branch called the external pudic, from which the mammary artery branches. It will also be found that the mammary artery “sends several divisions to the tissue of the udder, and is prolonged between the thighs by a perineal branch, which terminates in the inferior commissure of the vulva, after having furnished glandular and cutaneous divisions.” Turning to the description of the gluteal arteries, we find that they ramify in the gluteal muscles, which are at a considerable distance from the perineum, and that nothing is said of their going to the last named part.
Here, then, is complete and positive refutation of these arguments—not by mere statements of my own, but by the words of a standard work, of world-wide reputation, on the anatomy of these animals. Magne’s facts are correct, then, whether his inferences are or not. The same artery that supplies the udder with blood supplies the skin on which the escutcheon is formed; and, more than this, the artery ramifies in the direction in which the hair of the escutcheon grows. Is there any connection between the two for all that? Who knows? A point or two to show that such a connection is not beyond the possible may still be in place.
Erasmus Wilson, who has made a specialty of the skin and its diseases, shows that the direction of the hairs on the anterior surface of the human body is, commencing at a point near the arm-pit, downwards and slightly inwards towards the umbilicus, and that below this point the direction is upwards and inwards; so that the umbilicus “is the center of convergence of four streams,” as he expresses it.
Now this disposition, complicated though it is, certainly resembles that of the arteries—the branches from the axillary artery passing downwards and inwards, while the epigastric arteries branch from the femorals near the groin, and have a direction upwards and inwards. On the neck, the direction of the hair is upwards and backwards; in front of the ear, it is downwards and forwards; behind the ear, it is backwards—in each case following the arterial ramifications. In addition, Tisserant and others in France, who stand high as authorities, admit that the escutcheon continues to increase in relative surface till the second or third milking—that is, till the development of the udder, and, consequently, of the vessels supplying it have reached their highest point.
In some cases, it must be confessed, the correspondence in question apparently does not exist, but rather the opposite; and as the mammary artery has substantially the same distribution with horses as with cattle, we cannot see why the former should not be as plainly marked as the latter, if the direction of the hair depends on the direction of the arteries.
But, it may be asked, in what possible manner could the one condition influence the other? It must be remembered that physiology is still a growing science, and that there are many things yet to learn, so that it is still pardonable to confess ignorance. We know, however, that the cavity in the skin surrounding the hair (hair follicle) is set in an oblique direction, as well as the hair that emerges from it; the papilla at the bottom of this cavity must also be inclined, and it is this that, in all probability, decides the direction of the hair, as the growth of this takes place by additions of cells from the surface of the papilla. Now, each papilla, or elevation, has a vascular loop, or, as some say, a minute artery and vein, and one can easily imagine how the direction of this minute artery might influence the direction of the papillary summit, and, consequently, of the hair that grows from it.
I do not say that this is the proper explanation, but I suggest it as one way in which the correspondence might be accounted for. I do say, however, that the evidence brought to bear on this point by Mr. Reeder can have no influence in deciding the question, for the reason I have given.
Dr. Henry Stewart, the noted scientific and practical farmer and writer, said lately; “I have for some time past been studying the nature of the escutcheon physiogically and anatomically.” And he has “recently discovered a still more satisfactory connection between the milking capacity of a cow and the development of the escutcheon.”
“The milk-vein is an important mark of the deep-milking cow. But it is not the veins, but the arteries, which supply blood to the system, either for the production of tissue or the secretion of the milk. And yet the veins are important because they bear a direct relation to the arteries, being the return channels for the blood after it has fulfilled its functions; and so the larger supply of blood conveyed by the arteries requiring a vein of large capacity to return it, this vein is an ultimate indication of the vigor of the circulation of the lacteal organs. The main artery which supplies these organs is the subcutaneous abdominal [what Mr. S. says is commonly called the milk-vein.] This important artery supplies a large part of the posterior portion of the system, furnishing blood to the genital organs and the skin covering these and the adjacent parts. The subcutaneous abdominal artery is one of the two branches of the external pudic artery in the female, the other being the mammary artery. This last is very voluminous and distributes several main branches to the mammary glands and tissue, and also by a prolongation between the thighs, supplies the inferior commissure of the vulva and gives off many smaller branches, which spread into a network among the glandular tissue and the cutaneous structure. Here is the close connection, then, between the skin of the posterior part of the cow, from the lower point of the vulva down between the thighs and around the udder, and the udder itself. The same artery supplies all this portion of the skin, furnishes the subaceous glands and the hair follicles, and the whole cutaneous structure, and the hair also with blood, and also provides for the demands of the milk-secreting organs. A vigorous circulation through a voluminous arterial system ... gives a relatively vigorous milk secretion, and, as well, a growth of hair, which curls and forms the well-known peculiar structure of the escutcheon.”