PREFACE

In presenting this treatise on the diseases of dogs and cats to our readers, we do so with confidence in its value as a vade mecum on the subject.

It is written by a veterinary surgeon of very large experience, who has made the smaller domesticated animals a special study, and condensed in the pages of a comparatively small book more practical information than can be found in any similar work. It has been the aim of the author to avoid technical terms and the scientific jargon which often does duty for plain and concise instruction, but, being written for the use of chemists, the formulae are expressed in the ordinary language of the dispenser.

The need of such a work has been long recognised in the trade, but not supplied. It is impossible within the covers of a single work to afford chemists and druggists the information required on horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats and poultry, and we have endeavoured to avoid such a mistake by offering our readers a work which can be thoroughly relied upon for directions as to the treatment of those animals about which the chemist is so often consulted, and for which he may easily acquire a reputation, adding to his business a profitable branch which has been generally neglected by Veterinary Surgeons, who prefer to devote their attention more exclusively to horses and cattle.

INTRODUCTION.

In treating of the diseases of dogs and cats, we do not propose to follow the beaten path hitherto adopted and slavishly copied, to the exclusion of all originality and introduction of modern pharmaceutical agents. Nearly all that has been written on dogs and cats may be briefly described as Youatt boiled down or Stonehenge plagiarised. These writers had a practical acquaintance with their subjects, and brought to bear upon them an amount of talent which has been aptly described by Carlyle as “an infinite capacity for taking pains,” but they had not the aids to diagnosis now in the hands of pathologists, nor were an army of scientists continually engaged in the laboratory and the dissecting-room poring over the microscope, or working out theories for the benefit of those who cannot themselves spend time in scientific investigation, however much inclination they may have in the direction of original research. The practitioner cannot keep up with the times unless he accepts the aid so freely offered by investigators. In the chapters we propose submitting to our readers we shall advocate the use of materia medica not found in any other work, but not, therefore, experimental, as we are advised by the most advanced veterinary authorities, whose maxim in therapeutics is to “prove all things, and hold fast to that which is good.”

Methods of treatment and theories of causation, etc., will not be despised, because time has not yet proved them, nor will the latest microbe be accepted without question as the cause of disease. In his inaugural address at the opening of the 1892-3 session of the Royal Veterinary College, Professor McFadyean said “The old order is going; the old practitioner who disguised his ignorance and never hesitated is making way for the new man who dares sometimes to say ‘I don’t know,’ but always attempts to understand his case. . . Modern pathology either rests its explanations upon solid facts or continues its researches until a sound bottom is found.” Progress in every other department with which pharmacists have to do has been very marked during the past few years, and the contrast is made the more unfavourable when animal medicine is compared to human. The messes we were called upon to dispense 20 or 30 years ago are fast disappearing, and more elegant preparations taking their place, yet black drinks and red drinks and cure-alls are still in vogue for animals whose increased value should make their treatment and medicines a concern of greater importance to the veterinary practitioner and pharmacist.

Chemists and druggists have not catered sufficiently well for the animal-owning public in the past, but have allowed, unqualified pushing dealers to gain access to the farmer and supply him at markets and fairs with what he does not want, when otherwise he would have bought what he was really in need of from the local druggist.

It is not too late for the intelligent chemist to supply the wants of those household animals, the dog and cat.

A dose of acid hydrocyanic, administered with fear and trembling, is as much as a good many men ever attain to in this direction, but it need not be so, and the public quickly learn to appreciate a man who can for a reasonable charge treat a sick dog or cat intelligently.

In making these remarks we wish it to be clearly understood that we in no way recommend our readers to compete with the properly qualified veterinary surgeon, but should such make an objection, we would respectfully remind the profession that diseases of anything but horses and cattle are treated with neglect at the veterinary colleges, and the majority of practitioners have little or no knowledge of dogs and cats.

THE DISEASES OF DOGS AND CATS AND THEIR TREATMENT.
By A Veterinary Surgeon.

EXTERIOR OP THE DOG AND CAT.

The skin of both these animals differs from that of other domesticated animals. Horses and cattle perspire profusely upon very slight provocation, but such is not the case with the animals now under consideration. The dog, who from compulsion or inclination takes violent exercise, does not break out into a sweat, but pants, as it is commonly called, and obtains relief from the rapid evaporation of the lips or flues. Pussy declines long continued and violent exertion altogether. In pursuing her prey, there is more of the wisdom of the serpent; and some catty folks go so far as to say she has the same power of fascination; however that may be, whether engaged in love, in sport, or in war, she never travels far, though she can go incredibly fast to the next tree or area railing, and she does not sweat either from fear or exhaustion. This is a fact that should be borne in mind in the treatment of skin diseases.

The thickness of the skin varies much on different parts of the body. It is thickest along the course of the spine, where are situated those larger and coarser hairs, which in both dog and cat become erect when the creature is angry or apprehensive of danger from another animal. Under the arms and thighs the skin is thinnest and the whole of the belly is covered with a thinner integument than the upper half of the animal. The skin of the tail is also thicker on the upper than under surface, and erectile hairs are found on the upper surface chiefly, as will be seen by careful examination of pussy’s caudal appendage just after an encounter with a dog.

Skin diseases are not so numerous in cats and dogs as in human beings, but a larger percentage of them suffer at some time or other of their lives. The commonest of all is

MANGE.

This term is applied by the general public to all sorts of skin diseases, and more particularly to one that is not mange at all, but eczema. True mange is of two varieties, sarcoptic and follicular.

Sarcoptic mange is caused by a parasite, analogous to the itch insect of man. Its scientific name is sarcoptis canis, and a similar parasite is the cause of scab in sheep, and mange in the horse. Sarcoptis catis, differing but slightly in form, causes the same diseased condition of the skin in the cat.

The sarcoptic mange mite feeds upon the serous discharge his presence produces, or perhaps we should be more correct in saying her presence, since it is only the female that burrows in the epidermis, while the lordly male waits the result. The activity of the male is chiefly conspicuous as a progenitor of
His evil race, and he may attain to grandfatherhood in a couple of days. Although this creature is said to have been correctly portrayed in engravings 200 years ago, we are still unable to pronounce with certainty, when a mange case is submitted to us, unless we use the simple and easy means of a magnifier.

It is only the work of a minute to scrape off the scales from a bad part, and mount on a slide with a drop of water or liq. potassae. You may be sure of capturing a male or two on the surface; and on the principle of every Jack having a Jill, you may be quite sure that the other sex is represented below the surface. To treat mange for eczema, and vice versa, is inexcusable now that everyone almost has some acquaintance with the microscope.

Suppose, then, that a case of sarcoptic mange is clearly diagnosed, how are we to cure it? By removing the cause, certainly; and to do it where it is of long standing we must, get rid of a lot of broken down material — scabs of serum and broken hairs and dirt and dead parasites and excreta.

An alkali that will cause the cuticle to swell up, and come away, can be readily found in soft soap, and the mistake too commonly made is to use too much soap and insufficient rinsing. After a bath of this kind, and when the animal is nearly dry, is the time to apply your external dressing, as the rubbish has been cleared away, and the skin is open to remedies that will kill the pregnant female, whose escape is the cause of recurrent mange, when the doctor flatters himself he has cured it by the general improvement that is to be seen.

As the foregoing remarks on mange apply to cats as well as dogs, we may explain here that the best way to give a cat a bath is to put her in a wicker basket only just big enough to accommodate her, and pour the bath fluid first over her head, and then dip the basket in a vessel containing the medicated bath fluid; it is hardly necessary to remind readers that the bath water must not be allowed to fill the basket to the top and drown the patient, but the head being previously wetted there will be no dry part left for fugitives to escape the general deluge which should overwhelm the tribe.

For a medicated bath for dog or cat suffering from sarcoptic mange, there is nothing better than an infusion of quassia with soft soap. A three per cent, solution of hyd. bichlor. is effective and clean in use. The danger of absorption is very remote. A 10 per cent, solution of potassa sulphurata is effectual, hut the offensive odour is a decided objection.
An eight per cent, boric acid solution is clean and reliable, but should be repeated in two or three days.

The old remedies were mostly objectionable because greasy, offensive in odour, and calculated to stain the coat. One of the best is that recommended at the Royal Veterinary College 20 years ago. It may only be used for dogs, and consists of

Ol. olivae.
Ol. terebinth.
Ol. picis, p. ae.

Two applications at three days’ interval are recommended. Whatever agent may be selected, it is well to finish the treatment with a bath of glycerine — one to 40 is sufficient.

FOLLICULAR MANGE

is also due to a parasite, but of a different order. Demodex folliculorum is its name, and its habitat those large glands of the skin in which the erectile hairs are rooted, and which we have elsewhere described as extending from the neck to the tail. It is not an insect proper, as it has eight legs, and belongs to the Arachnidae. It lives head downwards in the sebaceous follicles, and may be found with eggs in the same follicle. This disease is not so contagious as sarcoptic mange, and healthy dogs have been kept together with subjects affected for a long time without contracting it, while it may be readily taken by a dog rubbing his back on the staves of a chair where an infected animal has just before done the same thing and squeezed out one of the parasites. This form of mange is distinguished from sarcoptic by the slowness with which it progresses, the parts it affects, and the comparative absence of scratching and irritation. In sarcoptic, the thin and nude parts of the skin or else of the face and head are first affected, while the line of the spine is the first part besieged by the demodex folliculorum.

The microscope is not necessary to decide this form, though its use will prove interesting in comparing the parasites.

For treatment, what we have said of the other form of mange applies with double force to this. If it were necessary to remove effete material with thorough washing in sarcoptic mange it is absolutely indispensable in attempting to cure the variety under consideration, because it goes deep down into the follicles, and by its presence causes the production of an excess of sebaceous matter and detrita. To effectually deal with it the dog or cat should be clipped as close as a machine will do it, then soaked in oil for a night, next washed with an abundance of soft soap and water until the surface looks red and bare, when it should be well rubbed with an ointment of

Chrysophanic acid - gr. v.
Lanolin - ad oz i.
M. ft. ung., or hyd. bichlor. lotion 5 per cent.

A well-tried but nasty smelling application, first introduced by Professor Williams, of the New Veterinary College, Edinburgh, consists of

Ol. creasoti – 3 iv.
Liq. Potasssae – oz i.
Ol olivae - ad oz viij.
M. Ft. lotio. To be applied alternate days for a fortnight.

In bad cases of mange very great debility may accompany it, and cod liver oil in small doses be given either in a spoon or upon the food. Most dogs and some cats will eat it. That is, you may get dogs to take it with some favourite food, and cats with sardines. Physicking dogs is easy enough by simply making a funnel of their cheeks and pouring in a fluid medicine, holding up the head till a gurgle and a lick of the nose tells you it is gone down, but “the harmless, necessary cat” is so easily alarmed it is well to adopt her own methods of stratagem rather than force. Liquor arsenicalis in doses of fim one to five minims daily with the food often prove to be just the thing needed in these cases and adds a lustre to the new coat, not unknown to carters and others who use it as a substitute for “elbow grease.” It should not be used after the coat has began to grow in a healthy manner.

Arsenicum is prescribed by homoeopaths for this affection of the skin and may be given as globules or liquid.

Ung. hyd. viride, ung. sulph., ol picis et olivae, p.ae., are all good but greasy remedies, unfit for the household pet or lady's lap dog.

When prescribing for a kennel of hounds or sporting dogs these messes may be very well, or the now favourite remedy of paraffin 1 part to 8 or 4 parts of seed oil; but we have seen a few dogs killed by paraffin, and would in no case advise it for cats.

ECZEMA

is so commonly confused with mange, that a learned M.D., in writing for the instruction of the British public, describes it under one heading, and says it is caused either by parasites or impurity of the blood. It is doubtless an impurity of the blood that produces the eruption known as eczema, but if caused by a parasite, then it is not eczema, and this should be quite clearly understood by everyone who takes upon himself to doctor his own dog or anybody else’s. The microscope will settle it for him.

Those parts of the body which are comparatively free from hair are generally affected first. Redness and irritation is followed by little vesicles in clusters; these break and form sore patches or scabs, which by their presence seem to irritate the contiguous parts, and cause the invasion of what was before healthy skin. A variety of causes have been assigned by different observers, and it used to be attributed to an acid condition of the blood, to be combated by the administration of alkaline bicarbonates. A large measure of success attends such treatment in dogs and cats, but the most successful remedy internally administered is potassae tartras acida in doses of from 2 to 10 grains twice a day. Magnes. sulph. exsic. in like quantities has often proved a cure, especially with gross feeders.

The dose for a cat should be half the above quantities, and in both animals the powders must be administered by throwing them upon the tongue. A towel should be wound round the neck of the cat to prevent her striking out with the front feet, which is the only difficulty in giving powders to feline patients; they pretend to be very miserable for some time afterwards — great ropes of saliva hanging from the lips to the ground, but one need take no notice of it. Eczema is not infectious, and care must be taken not to mistake it for mange, where several dogs have contracted it; like causes having produced like results, and not parasitism. In prescribing for other folks’ dogs, one must disregard their statements as to the food. Nineteen out of twenty people who declare that their dogs have nothing but biscuits are quite mistaken, and a little cross-examination
will elicit that an occasional tit-bit is given, and further enquiry will probably enable the prescriber to ascertain that every member of the household feeds the dog without letting anyone else know it. Ladies are especially guilty of giving sugar and other things to their pets, and will assure the professional attendant that the patient has had nothing to eat for a couple of days, when its breathing is laboured by a loaded stomach.

A complete change of diet should be insisted on. One of the most fruitful sources of eczema in young dogs is the drinking of cows’ milk not previously scalded. Water is the drink for dogs, and it is a mistaken kindness to give them milk and tea, of which latter some become inordinately fond, and will take medicaments in it, while refusing them in all other vehicles.
Simple cases of eczema are generally to be cured with simple remedies, and if greasiness is no objection, an ointment of

Zinci. Ox - gr. v.
Ung. lanolini - ad oz j.
M. Ft. ung.

applied daily will allay the irritability quickly and facilitate the removal of scabs. For house pets and cats, who have no respect for cushions and hassocks, a lotion should be used of

R., Acid boracic - gr. v.
Glycerin. - drachm ss.
Aq. - ad oz i.
M. Ft. lotio, bis die applic.

There is, however, a chronic form of eczema, which is frequently called red-mange, but is not parasitic in origin. It is a much more serious affair than ordinary acute eczema. Beginning in the same way it goes on to an erysipelatous condition, and constitutional disturbance is so great that death often results.

Pustular patches and ulcerated areas may be seen on cases of long standing, and there is no difficulty in diagnosing it. The case has probably been aggravated by treatment as for mange, and after a course of paraffin and turpentine and other irritants, applied with the boldness that characterises gamekeepers and amateurs generally, it is no great pleasure to undertake the treatment of a dog rapidly declining in constitution. The first thing to be done with such a case is to wash the animal tenderly with curd or other neutral soap, and dry him with a soft Turkey towel, applying the following, lotion:

Acid hydrocyanic. - drachm i.
Glycerin. - oz. i.
Aq – ad Oi.
M. Ft. lotio.

This should be dabbed on and allowed to dry twice a day.
The diet must be nourishing, frequent doses of beef tea or meat essence (no salt should be used); bread crumbs and boiled milk; eggs and farinaceous puddings, etc.; and for drugs, liq. arsenicalis, in doses of from 2 to 8 minims, twice a day. If hydrocyanic acid lotion does not allay the irritation, boracic acid or zinci. ox. or lap. calam. may be dusted on the sores, but we recommend the first named as having answered the purpose when others have failed. Lanolin made thin with other emollients can also be recommended. The bath may have to be repeated.

Chronic eczema in cats is not of frequent occurrence, and when it is met with is caused by suppressed sexual desires; caged cats of the fancy varieties, especially females, being the subjects. The treatment that suggests itself is a natural one or an operation, but if neither of these remedies commend themselves to the owner a course of saline medicines, as mag. sulph., is the next best thing, with a reduced dietary and plenty of grass to eat. Couch grass {Triticum repens) should be kept wherever dogs and cats have access. Town cats and dogs will eat it from a vessel if freshly gathered. It excites vomition, and in the case of cats enables them to get rid of maw worms (Ascaris mystax). It is probable that this salad has alterative properties also, as the most careful observers agree in attributing to it curative powers, and have fresh supplies daily in their hospitals.

ERYTHEMA.

Erythema is a redness of the skin accompanied by irritability and swelling, but does not produce vesicles as in eczema, or pustules as in the various pocks. In dogs and cats it is most often met with in the winter, especially where salt has been used to sprinkle the roads. Snow will cause it without the presence of salt. Frosted grass coming in contact with the belly may often account for erythema. Considerable constitutional disturbance accompanies it at times — loss of
appetite, increased temperature and tenderness on pressure, restlessness and bad dreams.

It is very amenable to treatment, a saline dose or two, as pot. bicarb, gr. iij. to gr. x., or the acid tartrate of
potash will be found excellent treatment unless constipation is sufficiently marked to require an aperient, in which case a dose of cascara sagrada, m. 5 to 20 (liquor), or tinct. jalapae m. 2 to 8, for a cat or small dog.

Doses for St. Bernards, Great Danes, mastiffs and suchlike breeds may be calculated on the human scale, except with those drugs like aloes, of which a small dog can take as much as a man. Special notice will be taken of the peculiarities of our patients as to their being refractory to particular medicines.

To give immediate relief to the skin, evaporating agents may be recommended as

Ammon, chlorid. - drachm j.
Spt. Vini - drachm j.
Tinct. opii. – drachm i.
Aq. - ad oz ij.

M. Ft. lotio. It is essential to see that the bowels are open and exercise insisted on.

RINGWORM

in dogs and cats is of two kinds, each having for its cause a vegetable parasite. The commonest form is that produced by the Tricophyton tonsurans. It is not only contagious as between one dog and another, but from animals to man and man to animals. It is not frequent in dogs and cats, not to anything like the extent it is with cattle, and this is fortunate for the owners of pet dogs and cats whose children would be in constant danger from fondling these creatures. Few of our readers but can call to mind some obstinate case of ringworm in the human subject, and that perhaps among farm hands who have contracted it from horned stock. Yet it is not at all difficult to cure in animals, and will even die out in some seasons without treatment at all.

The distinct ring from which this affection of the skin derives its name makes it unnecessary here to describe it with exactness. Those who would have a scientific knowledge may scrape and mount a specimen in the usual way for the microscope, and ascertain with certainty for themselves if the outward character of the sore leaves any doubt in the mind of the prescriber.

Dirty and insanitary conditions favour its propagation, and its progress is rapid among the ill-fed and weakly of all species. When debility accompanies ringworm, mineral tonics should have the preference. One to 10 grains of ferri. carb. sacch., or ferri. sulph. 1 to 5 grains, or ferri. iodid. half to 8 grains.

For outward application tinct. iodi. daily until the edges begin to be raised. After this a bath and a dressing of ung. lanolini. Ung. hyd. biniod. 1 in 10 is an effectual dressing, but must be rubbed in thoroughly and the surface wiped clean with a soft rag, as dogs and cats are always liable to lick off dressings, and do not desist because a thing is nasty. Chrysophanic acid, again, is a reliable remedy. The old ung.
sulph. answers in many mild cases, but is not so trustworthy as either of the before-mentioned ointments.

Favus (Achorean Schonleinii or Favus tinea favosa) is very rare in dogs. It has a peculiar smell, which has been compared to the urine of the male cat. Mice being the most frequent subjects it necessarily follows that, of the domesticated animals, cats are the most liable, and it affects the front paws. When dogs get it it is about the face and head — the two animals seizing or holding their prey in such a manner as to communicate to those parts mentioned.

Treatment must be preliminated by thorough washing to remove the thick crusts, which prevent remedial agents from having immediate effect. Liq. potassae painted on with a brush or a solution of common soda will make the scales swell up and let go their hold; friction with a bone knife or wooden spatula may be applied, but great care should be taken to avoid fingering these places as the most serious cases in men have been brought about in the curing of animals. The spots should on no account be made to bleed; better to apply several dressings than run the risk of contagion through impatience. Glacial acetic acid applied with a camel’s hair pencil or a 5 per cent, solution of hyd. bichlor. repeated for several days have proved destructive of the fungus, but considerable time is required to repair the damaged skin. The iodides are good remedies, but given a well-washed skin with an alkali, the corrosive sublimate lotion is likely to effect the speediest cure.

TICKS

cause a deal of pain and irritation to dogs as well as cats.
They are peculiar to certain districts and almost unknown in others. Besides the dog tick, those large ticks found upon sheep and deer will also fasten upon dogs, sawing through the skin with a powerful apparatus provided for the purpose and distending themselves with blood.

They are very difficult to destroy, and hand picking is the best treatment, though a tedious plan, especially in thick- coated, long-haired dogs and cats.

Mercurial preparations destroy them, but should be used with caution. White precipitate, rubbed smooth and dusted over the animal, brushing the hair backwards, has been found to answer well, but brushing it out again should be thoroughly performed, and for safety, a muzzle should be employed between the time of dusting on and brushing out again.

If a bath can be used, the season, etc., being suitable, it should consist of soft soap with an excess of alkali, either soda or potash being used. Dry powders are to be preferred as alkaline washes destroy the natural secretion and dry up the skin, and if the hair is white naturally, a yellowness follows, although it may be remedied to the eye by a judicious use of the blue bag.

Borax leaves the least effect upon the hair, and should be selected for Maltese and white poodles, cats, etc.

FLEAS

In some seasons, among dogs and cats, whose toilet is not a constant concern with owners, cause a great deal of trouble; not content to run over the body with that irritating agility known only too well to our readers, they form nests or colonies from the nape of the neck to the root of the tail, and many a fair owner takes such cases to the veterinary surgeon under the impression that the animal has mange. Parting the hair backwards will discover the excreta in large quantities, together with other debris, while the enemy may be seen retreating in all directions on being disturbed. They are easily enough destroyed by washing with infus. quassiae and sapo mollis, or any of the dog soaps in vogue, and the only thing necessary is to begin by wetting the face and head.

For delicate dogs and refractory cats, Persian powder may be used, but it makes the creatures look very bad afterwards, and is not nearly so effectual as washing.

LICE

are to be found in nearly every dog of the fashionable poodle family. The lady owners insist upon calling them “ticks,” but it is nothing more than a fashion — lice they are whether called “by any other name” or not. Their method of propagation makes it necessary to give three baths at two days’ interval to get rid of them effectually, and yet at every fresh dipping these dogs are found to be infested again, with very few exceptions. Fortunately for the owners these parasites have no inclination to change their hosts, or poodles would not remain fashionable, despite their superior intelligence and aptitude for tricks. [Note: this was probably due to poodles often having “corded coats” rather than trimmed coats.]

The same remedies will destroy them that have been recommended for ticks and fleas.

WARTS, SCURF AND EXCRESCENCES.

Having spoken of the commonest skin diseases in dogs and cats, we will just glance at those occasional conditions that make one ashamed of his dog instead of that feeling of pride in a well-kept and properly-trained animal to which very few people are strangers. Some dogs, but very rarely cats, have what one might call a warty diathesis — they come and go - and there is more come than go about them in some cases, hut no reason can be given, though generalisations have been attempted by authors of medical works who are not yet able to explain why charms and incantations remove them. It is admitted by the talented author of "Minor Ailments” that “they have a close relationship to the nervous system.” So did our grandmothers believe, in their vague way, but this does not seem to account for animals losing their warts between the time of noticing them and getting the remedy. For those warts which do not thus disappear we recommend removal. There are two principal kinds of warts met with in dogs and requiring quite different treatment. The one resembling human warts are proliferation m of the papillae, cauliflower-like in composition, but divided and examined microscopically they consist of squamous epithelium piled up in heaps and twisted into all sorts of shapes. When allowed to grow large they gradually grow an artery of supply and nerve tissue as well, so that removal is extremely painful. The best method of removal is to take a pair of close pointed tooth forceps, such as are used for upper stumps, and having secured the wart, destroy it by strangulation, a slow but continued twisting round and round, so as to break the vessel of supply, and afford a natural plug to prevent haemorrhage. The blood from a wart is credited with the power of producing others in its course, but it is a popular delusion. The same idiosyncrasy, or constitutional tendency, that produced one wart is liable to produce another, and not the blood stream from a benign growth.

A touch of liquor ferri perchlor, or collodion, hyd. Bichlor, acid tannic, acid gallic or other styptic will generally suffice to arrest haemorrhage, and the cicatrisation of the part will so quickly follow as to make it difficult to trace the operation after a few days.

To those persons who will not consent to remove warts in this way, we would say before applying any caustic, take care that the wart is thoroughly softened with hot water, as one application of caustic will then have more effect than three on a dry surface.

Nitrate of silver is expensive and unsightly, and in the hands of amateurs too frequently remains on their hands as well as on the warts. Hyd. sulph. flav. is little known, but a most reliable agent for the purpose. Chloride of zinc is probably the best of all caustics, and will remove an excrescence in a shorter time than any other agent.

Ligaturing is, of course, a good plan, but warts with a spreading base in the hairy patients we are considering are difficult to get at and secure. If ligaturing is decided on, it should be done with the strongest of thread, wetted and tied in a “doctor’s knot.”

Encysted warts cannot be removed by external remedies, but must be laid open with a keen knife. They are frequent on the bellies of dogs and occasionally on the head, spine, and other parts. They are composed of a fibro-cartilaginous material enclosed in a cyst or sac, and when cut down upon boldly, jump out as if glad to be released. Sometimes the serosity in which they are nourished is considerable in quantity, and makes them look much more serious than they really are. No after treatment is required.

Besides warts and other excrescences above the level of the skin, there is a bran-like scurf, a dandriff it might be called in man, that makes some dogs and cats too, life-long subjects of disappointment to their owners. A dry, unthrifty skin that is always peeling and is frequently an outward manifestation of chronic indigestion, or something even worse.

In attempting to treat this condition which has been described as ptyriasis, care should be taken to ascertain the history of the case. A dog that has been dressed with paraffin for mange will be covered with desquamating epithelium, which may easily be mistaken for the disease under consideration.

It is associated with, if not caused by, oxalates in the blood, mid generous diet and exercise is the best treatment, unless worms are the origin, and in that case they must be expelled before any treatment can avail. If the ordinary urine examination shows oxalates — calcium oxalate usually — then lithia should be given in doses of 2 grs. to 10 grs. of the carbonate, or a like quantity of sodae salicyl., or homoeopathic doses of arsenicum or sulphur.

LOSS OF COAT.

As in the case of men and women losing their hair without ordinary causes to account for it, so do show dogs and cats often begin to moult just before a show, to the great chagrin of the would-be exhibitor. Besides the ordinary coat shedding or moulting in spring and autumn, bitches and she-cats moult after giving birth to young; about the time of weaning it is most noticeable, and for this natural process there is no remedy, and should be no objection. The loss of coat at other times is annoying, but generally traceable to unnatural conditions.

Long-haired dogs and cats seem to have been originally provided with such coatings for the sake of warmth, and when a long-coated collie is crossed with a Gordon setter to produce a golden tan, and then kept warm and pampered indoors, nature sets about adjusting the clothing to the circumstances by thinning out the coat.

The remedy then is exposure to cold, friction to the skin, hard brushing, exercise and poorer fare. The process that makes the hair remain on a dead skin has much the same effect on a live one, and a strong solution of alum exsiccat will often make it hold till a show is over for which the dog may have been entered and fees paid. No artificial remedies will avail except for temporary purposes, and hygiene must rule.

THE EAR.

The skin upon the outside of the ear is very thin, and the hair short and soft. The inside is but a reflection of skin, though provided with special glands not found in other parts. Sebaceous and ceruminous glands are provided to keep supple and to supply with wax the meatus. It should be remembered that animals have the power of moving the ears, and that very constantly. There is much expression in the ears of both dogs and cats, and to facilitate these movements these sebaceous follicles or glands, as they are variously called, produce just sufficient unctuous material to render them soft and pliant, while the ceruminous glands supply wax for the same reasons as in man. Interference with the function of these glands is the origin of

CANKER.

Heredity has much to account for in cankered ears, some families being prone to it, and some breeds more than others, while no breed can be said to be immune. Water-dogs have always been considered most liable to canker, but if a hundred poodles and a hundred water-spaniels were taken at random it is a question whether the poodles would not show a larger percentage of bad ears.

Because canker has an offensive smell, like the disease known by the same name in horses’ feet, it was treated on wrong principles by the same men who understood the nature of the fungoid growth in horses. It is not a fungus in the dog or cat requiring caustic remedies, but has its origin in inflammation of the lining of the ear in which the glands before mentioned become involved, and instead of secreting a soft emollient material they pour out an offensive irritating matter, which inflames and ulcerates the surrounding parts.

The treatment consists in removing the cause, and this is best done by pouring into the affected ear a little warm oil — ol. amygd. dulc. for preference as being thin and free from extractive - and gently manipulating the base of the ear to break down the concretions of wax, dirt, dead hairs and diseased products. This should be repeated for two or three nights, when it may be cleaned out with warm water and neutral soap; then carefully dried with cotton wool twisted round the end of a bone penholder, taking care not to bruise the tender tissues. This done, a lotion as follows will be found to answer well:

Acid boracic - 10 grs.
Zinci. Oxyd - drachm ss.
Gllycerin - drachm iv.
Aq - ad oz. iij
M. Ft. lotio. Nocte maneque utendum.

The practice of using strong solutions of or ointments containing sulphate of zinc, copper, etc., etc., cannot be too strongly condemned as both useless and barbarous.

Where an ointment is preferred, lanolin may be combined with the above remedies, or with half a drachm of emulsified creasote to the ounce.

Another good ointment is:

Camphorae - drachm ss.
Pot. Nit - gr. x.
Lap. calam. – drachm ss.
Adip. vel vaselini - ad. oz. j.
M. Ft. ung.

Canker of the ear is confused in the minds of many persons with an abscess in the flap of the ear, between the skin lining it and the cartilage which gives it stiffening. After fights or other injuries, such as hunting thick hedgerows, the ear is observed to be hot, painful and swollen, and closer examination shows that a fluid has accumulated in the part above described. If allowed to remain it increases in size, but does not point and break like an abscess containing pus. The pressure of the fluid within arrests the circulation, and the ear withers away, ruining the dog’s or cat’s appearance for life; cats are almost as liable as dogs to this affection of the ear, but true canker is less frequent in the cat.

For treatment there is nothing but bold surgery; it is no use to prick it; however carefully the fluid be evacuated, it will refill in a single night, and each time with a fluid of greater density. The skin on the inside of the ear must be boldly lanced from top to bottom of the swelling, and to prevent the rapid re-union and refilling, a pledget of tow, cotton-wool or other material inserted to prevent union. If the case is already two or three days’ old before treatment is attempted there will be found a membrane lining the cavity, and this should be removed mechanically, and the wound dressed with either of the following:

R Acid carbolic – drachm i.
Glycerin – drach i.
Aq. camph. – ad oz. i.
M. Ft. lotio.

R Resina pulv.
Pot. nit
Magnes. carb. pond. p. ae

Ointments are difficult to keep on the wound, and if the above lotion be selected it should be used frequently. If the case is not within easy access it will be better to use the powder, as once a day is sufficient. Not to heal but to hinder the reparative process is the method of treatment productive of the best results.

Injuries to the cartilage are quite another matter. The skin is disposed to repair itself too quickly, while cartilage has in it no disposition to renew or replace lost structure with new material. Dogs with pendulous ears, of which the bloodhound may be taken as representative, get ulcerated tips to the ears through violently shaking the head. The shaking is caused by canker and the ulcers by the shaking, hence the confusion that has arisen and the origin of the term external canker. Ulcerated cartilage must be excised with as much regard to appearances as each individual case will permit; the new edge may or may not heal up. Styptics, of the collodion type, are the best. A preparation composed of collodion and tannic acid, answers well. The difficulty in this and many other diseases of the smaller animals is to prevent them from doing injury to the parts when absolute rest is required. Canker caps and various other contrivances have been tried, but anything that confines the offensive odour reacts upon the ears, and exposure is in the opinion of most authorities the best. If the ear is confined in a cap or bandage because of an ulcerated tip, the probability is the dog will rub his head along the wall till he gets any sort of appliance off, and then the last state of that dog is worse than the first. Among the minor ailments of dogs, cats and monkeys, there is nothing more troublesome to treat than sore ears and tails.

SORE FEET.

Apart from the many pricks and wounds from thorns, broken bottles and sharp flints, the feet of dogs especially are liable to become sore; following a carriage, or after a long day’s work, the pads are found to be worn away, and the sensitive structure rendered hot and painful with the bruising that has succeeded when the natural horny skin has been worn away.

For this soreness, fomentations, poultices, and rest are essential, but the sporting dog may be got to work a day or two sooner if his feet be soaked in a solution of alum or boracic acid, or painted with tinct. myrrh, co.

A distinctly different kind of lameness is produced by the sore feet of winter when in towns the roads are salted to thaw the frozen paths. This is not wearing away of the pad, but chaps and cracks chiefly between the toes, where the skin is thin and readily inflamed. Treatment with a 10 per cent, solution of salicy. soda is recommended for house dogs, and for sporting and country dogs generally, ung. boracis or lanolin, or washing with an acidulated lotion (5 per cent. acid hydrochlor. dil.), and after careful drying to dust between the digits with pulv. amyli, 1 pt.; pulv. zinci. ox., 1 pt. Cases of long standing, or those neglected at first, will require, in addition to careful cleansing with warm water and soap, to have a mildly caustic application to induce a healthy action in the cracks that gape open and cause great pain, besides being receptacles for grit and dust.

Sore feet of yet another kind are quite as common, and at all seasons of the year. The sores are between the digits and caused by an eruption of vesicles, which, for want of a better name, will continue to be called eczema. The pampered pet is the most frequent subject; the same dog that is lame from overgrown nails will often be lame from this eruption. Saline aperients and topical remedies, as recommended for eczema, will generally bring about a cure.

DISEASED AND BROKEN NAILS

are generally, but not always, the result of neglect. The sporting dog gets sore nails, especially those known as dew- claws, from the wet or frosted grass getting between the claw and the leg. Many good sportsmen have them removed while the pups are quite young, but their absence in some breeds would disqualify the dog for the show bench. If a painful dew-claw will not yield to fomentation and poultices it bad better be cut out. It is not a difficult operation, and two or three days suffices to heal up the wound. The rule to be observed in operating is to hold the claw as clear of the leg as possible, and to take away the minimum amount of skin. Bind up the wound with a pad of carbolised oil (1 in 20 to 25), and over it a light bandage, taking care not to tie it tight; a few stitches are always preferable to tape or string, which has a knack of getting tight and causing the foot to swell. The pain and lameness of a dew-claw in lap dogs is often caused by the nail having grown in a circle and pierced the pad; the obvious remedy is to cut it short. It should be borne in mind that nails, like horns, grow a vascular inside, and a long nail cut short will bleed considerably. If the owner has sufficient patience to keep cutting back the nail a little at a time, it may eventually be reduced to reasonable proportions without bleeding. The probability is that the person so careless as to let it grow long enough to lame the dog will not be thoughtful enough to give the necessary attention to reduce a nail by degrees. To stop haemorrhage of the cut nail, a touch or two with a hardened caustic point is sufficient; any other styptic will do, as liq. ferri. perchlor, zinci chlor., cupri. sulph., etc.

There is a disease, coronitis it may be called, affecting the secreting band of the nails of the foot proper. It is very troublesome to treat, but poulticing first and varnishing with a thin paper varnish when dry, has been found to answer when more scientific treatment has failed. In speaking of sore feet and nail diseases, we have made but small reference to cats, because they pick their way so daintily over bad roads that they seldom suffer as do dogs. True it is that no weather will hinder pussy from going out, but she walks warily, and uses the same old footprints in the snow time after time. Cats’ nails sometimes split, and should be cut and filed. Some cats of the “third sex,” [note: neuter] who never go out of doors, suffer from overgrown and ingrown nails, and must be treated in the same way as dogs.

THE EYE AND ITS APPENDAGES.

The chief anatomical difference in the eye of the dog and of man is the presence of a large retractor muscle at the back; and in the front, or rather the inner corner, instead of that little body known as the caruncula lachrymalis, will be found a somewhat dense membrane, called variously cartilago nictitans and membrana nictitans; either name is applicable since a portion of it is membranous, while the remainder is of denser material, like cartilage. When the lids are open and the retractor muscle at rest, not much of this membrane is to be seen, but on the entry of a fly or other foreign body, the muscle draws back the globe of the eye upon the cushion of fat behind it, and the membrane sweeps the eye to clear away the intruder. The human hand being capable of removing foreign bodies, this caruncula lachrymalis is sufficient for our purposes, though in London fogs one may be forgiven for envying the cat whose membrana nictitans is even more developed than in dogs, and only equalled in birds.

There is another difference, and that more conspicuous in the cat than the dog — we refer to the tapetum lucidum or bright carpet. The retina of the night marauding feline tribe is specially luminous, enabling them to see in a very poor light — not in absolute darkness, as many may suppose. It may be observed that most animals see better in the dark than man. Who shall say that savage man did not once possess a tapetum lucidum, which has disappeared with the advent of candle makers? It is not our province to discuss this subject, but it is a notable fact that defective sight and increased artificial lights have characterised the last half of the century.

Injuries to the eye, the lids, the haw, etc., are common enough with dogs, but not so frequent with cats; the latter are often the cause of injured eyes in dogs.

Torn eyelids should be brought together by very fine sutures and a wet pad bandaged over that side of the face. Keeping it on is not always an easy matter, but to prevent a dog from injuring himself by rubbing or scratching with front paws, or from biting his legs or any part of the body, a simple contrivance may be made by securing a stout piece of millboard or floor-cloth and cutting it round according to the size of the dog; for a small dog it need be 10 ins. or 12 ins. in diameter. Having ascertained the exact size of his neck, a hole should be cut in the centre and then slit through from the centre to the circumference, in order to get it on the dog’s neck. To secure it there, holes should be punched, and a leather boot-lace passed through them. This Elizabethan frill answers many purposes, and must be so wide that the patient cannot get his mouth beyond the edge. To induce a torn eyelid to heal, it is essential to bring the edges into apposition and to secure for them rest. When these conditions can be obtained — always a difficulty with animals — a fairly good mend may be expected, but a large proportion leave a tongued process, and always a blemish for life.

The haw (membrana nictitans) is subject to inflammation, swelling, and ulceration, and in bulldogs and some other breeds there is a predisposition to the formation of little cartilaginous tumours.

Cocaine is a most valuable remedy, as it reduces the sensibility, and enables one to make a careful examination for foreign bodies or the application of caustic agents. A 2 per cent. lotion should be dropped in a minute before attempting to handle the lids.

An increased display of the haw in cats must not be mistaken for disease of that structure, but is a common symptom of debility. In almost any illness a cat or a bird will show more of the haw than in health. In acute inflammation of the eye a darkened room should be chosen, both for the rest of the eye and the inclination the patient feels to sleep and get through time when there is nothing to occupy his attention.

OPHTHALMIA

is a term applied to any inflammation of the eye, but to treat dogs and cats successfully one should be able to distinguish between a superficial inflammation (conjunctivitis) and deep-seated forms, which are producing changes of structure.

All ordinary inflamed eye from external violence, dust, draughts, etc., should be treated topically with fomentations of warm milk; low diet, and an aperient dose. There is no necessity when giving an aperient to choose the stickiest and most unpleasant to administer; the favourite old remedy of castor oil and syrup of buckthorn may surely be so classed. Aloes in very uncertain, and produces so much nausea as to be generally lost. Pulv. glycyrrhizae may be given in gravy or or other food; cascara sagrada is efficient without being sticky or greasy, while mag. sulph. and pulv. sacch. may be thrown
On the tongue, and taken up in the saliva easily enough. We have elsewhere recommended mag. sulph. exsic., because
The bulk is much reduced, but it has the additional advantage that when given as a powder it cannot be thrown out of the mouth by shaking the head, whereas the crystals can be so got rid of.

In simple ophthalmia one or both eyes will be closed, and highly sensitive to light — tears provoked at the thought of an examination. On opening the lids the vessels will be very red and distendd, but all the fluids discharged will consist of tears and not matter.

In periodic, constitutional, or deep-seated inflammation, the symptoms are not so acute as a rule. It is more gradual in its invasion, a weakness of the eyes, and a grumous or puslike discharge not large in quantity, and with a tendency to adherence of the lids is marked. Not so much objection is made to an examination, and the membrane will be found generally suffused with redness of a brick-like colour instead of the bright red of acute inflammation with its well defined vessels. If a view can be obtained of the inner structures a cloudiness or orange-tinted yellowness may be detected. To get a good view a little atropine should be dropped in, and five minutes afterwards cocaine, as by the one dilation of the pupil is produced, and by the other diminished sensibility to handling.

Constitutional remedies are required for this form of ophthalmia, and the iodides have long had credit as curative agents.

After an aperient dose, potassas iodidi, gr. i. to v. bis. die., and applied to the lids with care, ung. liyd. nit. mit. alternate days. The meibomian glands which line the edges of the lids should in health secrete just so much unctuous material as to prevent the overflow of tears, but when these are involved in the general inflammation they produce an irritating matter that causes the lids to stick together, and confine the matter upon the surface of the eye, the presence of which is so irritating as to produce ulceration of the cornea.

Ulceration of the cornea is not a frequent result of traumatic or of constitutional ophthalmia, but is a sequel to distemper, and will be again referred to when treating of that malady. Cats of the common breed are not often the subjects of the above, but the fashionable long-haired cats, of which some 500 are exhibited at the Crystal Palace annually, are much more delicate and occasionally troubled with entropium and ectropium, which, in plain English, is turning in or turning out of the eye lashes. Dogs of the bloodhound and King Charles spaniel class are also the subjects of this uncomfortable and disfiguring departure from normal conditions. It is not always easy to induce cats to hold still while a bend in the opposite direction is given to the hair by a pair of forceps, or while manipulation of the lids is going on; the perverse hair or hairs must be somehow induced to follow the proper course or else be removed, since their presence produces inflammation, and in time opacity of the cornea; tears also run down the face, scalding the skin and causing a veritable eye sore. These eye sores are also caused by occlusion of the lachrymal duct, which, may be a consequence of distemper or congenital in some breeds. All the snub-nosed dogs, as bull dogs, King Charles and Blenheim spaniels, pugs, etc., are prone to tear-stained faces.

Little sebaceous tumours upon the margin of the lids or fibrous tumours upon the haw, if interfering to any extent with the surface of the eye, must be removed under the influence of cocaine. The tumour should be secured by a needle and thread passed through it, holding it away from the eye, and with a sharp knife or scalpel, always cutting in a direction outwards. Very little after treatment is required. If any amount of irritation is produced it should be treated as ordinary inflammation with warm milk or water fomentations.

Puncture of the eye-ball by a cat’s nail or other cause may cause the escape of the aqueous humour. It cannot be brought together by sutures, as the remedy would be as bad as the disease. It is a remarkable fact that if rest can be obtained for the injured member that repair takes place and a fresh supply of aqueous humour is secreted. Advantage is taken of this in removing from the eyes of horses a filaria, which in some climates finds its habitat in the aqueous humour and swims about in it. Perfect rest, a wet pad with a soothing lotion of liq. plumbi, or an aqueous preparation of opium and belladonna alternately is to be advised. If the anterior chamber is not evacuated by too large and ragged a rent, and repair does take place, there will as certainly be an opaque line left on the cornea, after every means has been adopted, to cause absorption of superfluous material. These opacities of the cornea are confused in the public mind with

CATARACT,

which is an opacity of the lens, either the substance or the capsule, and called lenticular or capsular.

There may be cases in which the one or the other are alone affected, but in everyday practice we generally find both together. It is only in books that diseases fit exactly into the squares made for them; it would be more convenient to the student, as well as the practitioner, if they would follow a definite course and attack one structure at a time.

The removal of cataract is not practicable, as dogs and cats cannot be trained to use spectacles.

More frequent than cataract is a change in the vitreous humour. Nearly all dogs and cats which live to be very old have dim vision from this cause. This humour, which is so named from its resemblance to molten glass, becomes foggy, a yellowish cloud settles upon it, and becomes denser and denser as extreme old age is reached. No rejuvenating process has yet been discovered by which this can be averted. If it occurs in dogs and cats as a result of debilitating diseases, iodide of iron in small doses, one eighth to 2 grains daily for a long time, may do much to cause its absorption. With the return of vigorous health it becomes clear again.

AMAUROSIS

Is the name given to paralysis of the optic nerve. The eye is clear and bright, and the tyro easily deceived in purchasing an animal with this grave defect. Fortunately, it is not very common. The subject of it is worthless and incurable. Total blindness is the usual result.

IRITIS

Is inflammation of the iris, that movable curtain which gives colour to the eye. It is composed of two orders of muscular fibre, the radiating and the circular, and by the contraction of the former the pupillary opening is enlarged, and by the latter diminished. It is an involuntary muscle, and the size of the pupil depends upon the degree of stimulation of the light. The cat is the best subject for examination. Her pupil dilated at night in a low medium of light shows the tapetum lucidum before referred to, while it shrinks to the size of a pin’s head when she lies basking in the sun.

When inflammation of this structure takes place, bands of lymph form and arrest the muscular contractions which regulate the pupil. It is not so frequently met with in dogs and cats as in horses, and not so often in them as in man. Rheumatic and syphilitic sequelae appear to account for its greater frequency in man. When it occurs in animals, bleeding from the eye-vein is recommended, and a course of mercury, with aperients and a generous diet, fresh air and exercise, and a room from which direct sunlight is excluded, Salicine and its preparations have an absorbent effect, even more so than the iodides which were until recently in great favour. The dose for a dog or cat is from 2 to 8 grains of sodae salycilas daily.

Iritis seldom exists by itself in cats and dogs, but the iris becomes involved in the inflammatory processes that are associated with distemper.

DISPLACEMENT OF THE EYE-BALL

is not such a rare accident as one might imagine, and we have known it happen to a pug-dog in giving a dose of castor oil. A blow on the orbit is sometimes sufficient to produce it, and it is not confined to those prominent eyed dogs as pugs, Blenheims, and King Charles spaniels, but occasionally happens to long-faced animals, as greyhounds and the terrier class. It is a ghastly sight, that of a dog with his eye laying on his cheek, but not so hopeless a case as to forbid efforts to replace it. If quite recently done, no time should be lost in securing the dog and slitting the outer canthus or corner of the lids, and by gentle pressure with oiled fingers endeavouring to replace the globe. It has often been done and should certainly be attempted, since extirpation can be effected when return has failed. A pug was once taken to a West End doctor to have his teeth scaled, and while struggling to evade the operation his eye came out, and was replaced so rapidly that he went home with his mistress, who brought him back two days later “because he had a cold in one eye” which she attributed to a draught under the door; no greater damage than a slight inflammation resulted. In treating a dislocated eye-ball, the first thing to be done is, of course, to replace it, next a wet compress — belladonna or opium, or liq. plumbi, lotions, as elsewhere advised.

For the treatment of other injuries. Even if the sight is lost it is better to retain the eye than to extirpate it, since the cavity left is so unsightly, and the division of the optic nerve, whose fibres cross its fellow of the opposite side, causes a predisposition to failure of the remaining eye. If there is no choice but removal the ordinary treatment for wounds is to be adopted.

HAIR ON THE SURFACE OF THE EYE

is a curious disfigurement occasionally met with in dogs, and less rarely in horned cattle. A little warty substance of yellowish tint grows upon the cornea, and from it distinct hairs spring up. There is no effectual treatment, but careful removal with a fine edged scalpel, first transfixing the body of it with a needle and thread; operations of this kind are almost impracticable without anaesthetics, and as they are easily and safely administered, we had better describe the methods than advise an operation so delicate to be undertaken by anyone without them.

ANAESTHETICS

have not hitherto been used as frequently as they should upon the lower animals, not even among advanced veterinarians, who are beginning to take shame to themselves for the unnecessary suffering of their patients. There are several reasons for this. We will not here consider why horses, cattle and other domesticated animals so seldom have the benefit of chloroform, our concern at present is with cats and dogs.

Dogs are notoriously bad subjects for chloroform, and the pretence of keeping a dog anaestheticised for two hours while vivisectional experiments have been performed is nothing more than a pretence. No dog will survive chloroform for two hours or for one, and very few will recover from complete anaesthesia so produced for ten minutes.

AEther is the only safe anaesthetic for dogs, and it should be administered by preparing a cardboard cone with open ends, and introducing sponge saturated with the fluid. The patient must, of course, be secured, as he will fight against the inspiration of any anaesthetic. Quick and deep inspirations should, if possible, be obtained, and insensibility is rapidly produced. There are dogs occasionally met with which cannot be quickly subdued with aether, and such subjects may have a fifth part of chloroform added with safety and success. As soon as the muscles are completely relaxed, the cone should be removed and no time lost in operating, as experience teaches that the more rapidly anaesthesia is produced the more rapidly is sensibility restored and the less the subsequent effects. Anaesthesia appears to be produced by the rapid deprivation of the blood from the nerve centres, the rebound being in proportion to the rapidity of the action. It was formerly insisted that safety was to be sought in a free admixture of air, but those who have had most experience of anaesthesia prefer to rush their subjects under and out again as quickly as possible. Of course there are cases — tedious operations for the removal of tumours, etc., with numerous small blood vessels to be picked up and secured, necessitating the continued insensibility of the patient; in such cases he had better have a few whiffs again.

The pulse can be, entirely disregarded, and only the respiration watched; the flank does not rise and fall with regular sequence throughout, but if interrupted for more than one inspiration the cone should be removed at once, and a flick of the ear given with the finger; this slight application will bring back signs of life, and the operator will soon learn to judge of the necessity for giving more or withdrawing the effects of his anaesthetic.

The A. AE. C. mixture, that is alcohol, aether and chloroform, so much liked for children, does not suit dogs or cats;
they do not readily succumb to it, and show signs of drunken headache, nausea, and loss of appetite afterwards.

Cats are of all subjects the best for anaesthesia; they take chloroform well and recover completely and rapidly. They cannot and need not be held in order to administer it. They should be put into a bag; the only precaution is not to “let the cat out of the bag” when introducing a sponge saturated with chloroform, or if for a long operation a fifth part of aether may be added. Cats go naturally, so to speak, into a bag, and should be sat into it, they do not like to go in head first. A Gladstone bag that will shut up quickly answers best, and no air need be admitted. After about 60 seconds the bag should be tilted, and if the tenant tries to right herself she has not had enough chloroform; if she is felt to fall over with the movement of the bag she should be quickly taken out. If no movement is felt the bag should be cautiously opened to see if she is sitting bewildered, or only waiting for an opportunity to escape. If after an operation under chloroform or aether a cat or dog does not quickly become conscious they should not be hurried, provided the respiration is at all steady; to come to gradually in fresh air is better than by artificial aids. If it is feared that the patient is too far gone, a cold douche to the head and ammonia sprinkled round will have a rousing effect. If a drop of cold water inside the ear causes shaking of the head there is not much to be feared. In bringing animals too quickly out of anaesthesia there is a danger of them hurting themselves while only half conscious,
and particular care should be exercised not to let them bite the sponge, as they cannot let go again; this also applies to the operator’s hands.

Before administering any anaesthetic the stomach should be empty, and in the case of abdominal operations the bowels also, or the straining to evacuate the rectum may produce very bad results.

From the diseases of the eyes and the anaesthetics to be used in operating upon them we pass down the face to the nose.

CRACKS AND ULCERATION OF THE NOSE

are generally caused by too much indulgence by the fireside, inducing at first dryness, then cracks, and finally obstinate ulcers, which take on a cancerous appearance and become incurable. Cats as well as dogs are subject to this malady, and from the same cause.

Treatment to be successful must be undertaken in a place removed from an open fire. The patient should be confined in a cage or on a chair, and the nose frequently anointed with cold cream, vaseline, lanoline, lard, fresh butter, or any similar emollient free from salt. Water is really the best remedy, but its application is the difficulty. It has been done by confining a wet swab inside a leather muzzle, but the patient is very impatient of its presence, and will remove it with front or hind feet unless the Elizabethan collar already mentioned is kept constantly on him.

Nasal troubles are not confined to the outside; hitherto we have been considering the exterior of the cat and dog — skin, ears, eyes, feet, etc. Beginning with the nostrils, we propose to consider the air passages and breathing apparatus, including those parasites and abnormal growths found within the nasal chambers and respiratory apparatus. The widespread teaching of anatomy under the name of animal physiology in our public and private schools permits us to assume, without suspicion of affectation, that the majority of our readers have at least a superficial acquaintance with the structure of the human body, and in asking them to apply that knowledge to quadrupeds we would only direct their attention to the chief differences. The modern schoolboy does not suppose that the heart swings like the pendulum of a clock in a cavity containing food, and impeded only in its action by excessive doses of plum-duff, in which it struggles for sufficient space to move. Nor does he believe that swallowing a piece of cotton will cause premature death by twining round his heart, as our grandmothers led us to believe. We remember the fallacies they taught, while forgetting their wholesome precepts.

POLYPUS AND SNUFFLES.

Polypus is a soft, fleshy tumour, growing within the nostrils, generally high up, but sometimes in view, and gives rise to snuffling and difficult breathing. It bleeds profusely on being interfered with, but this must be disregarded and the offending body removed. The most useful, though not very scientific, instrument is a small button-hook, which should be first greased and then carefully introduced up the nostril, when it should be turned gently but firmly to break up the growth as much as possible, and when the haemorrhage has nearly subsided, the exterior should be anointed with lard or vaseline, and a solution of chloride of zinc injected; a 10 per cent, solution will do well, but to prevent excoriating innocent parts a final syringing of soap-water and glycerine should be performed.

Iodoform is also recommended, and the insufflation of finely powdered burnt alum. Ligature has been commended, but if the reader will examine the nostrils of the biggest dog he can find he will see that its application is impossible.

OZOENA

is a fetid discharge from the nostrils, and may be caused, by the irritation of polypus, or of decayed teeth, abscesses in the thin plates of bone within the head, or as the result of chronic catarrh, or lodgment of foreign bodies, or

WORMS IN THE NASAL CHAMBERS.

There is a parasite recognised as belonging to the sheep and called pentastoma teniodes, but occasionally found in the dog. It causes snuffles and such acute annoyance when moving as to make the dog behave like a demented creature. Frequent sneezing is another symptom. If a discharge from the nose exists without ascertainable cause, or the other symptoms, above described, lead to the suspicion of worms, a few doses of snuff should be tried; it cannot do harm, and may result in expulsion of the uninvited guest. Injections of 10 per cent. solutions of ferri sulph. may cause him to quit his lodgings.

SNORING

may be attributable to the same cause, but the usual source of snoring is the relaxation of the soft palate; though not belonging properly to the respiratory apparatus, we speak of this condition of the velum palati here, because snoring is commonly looked upon as a defect in breathing — and it is. Old pugs are especially addicted to snoring, and while awake to making a noise which is described by school boys as “snorking.” Astringents applied on a mop to the back of the palate have a temporary effect, just long enough to keep down the noise during a visit from one’s mother-in-law, or while the dealer is selling the old dog for a young one, but there is no radical cure for it. Acid tannic or glycerine and borax are perhaps the best things to use.

CATARRH AND INFLUENZA.

Cats and dogs suffer from common colds and from influenza as do human beings. Influenza is most infectious as between one cat and another or from dog to dog, but is it infectious from cat to man? The household cat has been accused of all sorts of things, from witchcraft to the conveyance of diphtheria, but does she convey those influenza colds of which it is often remarked, “When the cat has a cold everybody in the house has one?” That black cats bring luck to a house, diphtheria to the baby, and necromancy to the “wizards who mutter and peep,” we can readily believe, because we were told so when children going to bed, and the notion took root “in the witching hour of night, when churchyards yawn.” Besides coming home ragged and torn, they catch the most frightful colds, and get no sympathy, as do human beings, when their nocturnal follies have laid them by the heels. When a cat sneezes she is promptly turned out of the room, while, if she coughs, everyone thinks she is going to be sick, and her ejectment is even less tenderly performed. Nevertheless, she has her feelings, and if we could read her thoughts, we should find she has but a poor opinion of our intelligence in behaving in such a manner to a creature in need of nursing and extra comfort. The symptoms of a common cold are too well known to need description, and the form of influenza met with in our patients is not the prostrating fever known by the same name in men and horses, but an aggravated cold, a profuse discharge from eyes and nose, accompanied by sneezing, coughing, loss of appetite, and staring coat.

Treatment consists in comfortable surroundings, in which to get through three or four days of great discomfort, without again getting wet, or being exposed to the conditions which brought about the disease. With due respect for those persons who vaunt specifics for the cure of influenza, it may be justly urged that if it is caused by the invasion of a specific microbe, which no remedy will kill, that would not also kill the patient, then no means of cutting short the disease will be certain till an antagonistic microbe can be found and employed to hunt the evil doer. The progress of bacteriology leads us to hope that in this direction lays a great future for medicine, which has not during the past 50 years kept pace with surgery, but and until the life history of such microbe is ascertained, and an antagonistic one bred to combat him, we shall have to go on using those remedies which experience teaches, or tradition says, modify the acute symptoms. These for cats and dogs are much the same as for human beings. We have seen the defluxion of mucus from the nose, and tears from the eyes in bad colds cut short by homoeopathic mercurius. The cough arrested by spongia or bryonia, while those who have at the initial stage of rigor began on bi-hourly alternate doses of aconite and belladonna, declared that the attack has been made altogether lighter. How would it have been without any treatment? This is the stumbling block of all curative medicine. Preventive medicine has its converts by the million, and the effects of surgery can be seen by all, but medicine given for the cure of disease is a speculative art; it cannot be called a science since there is nothing exact about it. Homoeopathic treatment recommends itself for dogs and cats for the same reason as for children; there is no tweaking of the nose, while a nauseous powder is placed upon the tongue, to be vomited amidst screams and tears the next moment.

COUGHS

we put in the plural, as there are many causes besides catarrh of which coughing is a symptom or stage in the progress of catarrhal inflammations.

Coughs may be roughly divided into two qualities, hard and soft. The former are generally attributable to irritation in the larynx or fauces, while the latter are symptomatic of deeper structures being involved.

With an ordinary sore throat a dog coughs passionately, as though angry, with something more annoying than actually painful — a trumpeting, harsh and frequently repeated cough, finishing up with a sound more akin to expectoration, which, in fact, often takes place, only that the mucus brought up is swallowed instead of ejected from the mouth.

A soft cough, such as accompanies inflammation of the lungs, is such a soft sound, that persons not accustomed to animals do not recognise the fact that the animal has a cough at all, though they may have noticed that he puffs his cheeks out from time to time.

For an ordinary dry, hard cough, spongia or bryonia is recommended. Chlorodyne in doses of from 1 minim to 10 minims has been found an excellent remedy, but counter-irritation to the throat, and a laxative for the bowels should be also used if this plan of sedative treatment is preferred. A wet compress instead of a liniment is a good remedy. Ol. terebinth, ol. sinapis, ol. caryoph or lin. ammon. briskly rubbed into the throat produce slight vesication. Nausea, as evinced by dribbling, may be disregarded; it is a common result of anything nauseous to the taste or objectionable to the sense of smell. It is more easily provoked in the cat than the dog; both exhibit their disgust in the same way, and not like horses who turn up the upper lip.

INFLAMMATION OF THE LUNGS

is more frequent now than in former days, and the probable reason, both in dogs and cats, is that they have been bred for points rather than constitution. Nature exacts a penalty for what is called scientific breeding, though a disregard of constitution would seem to take such breeding out of the realm of science. Dogs are bred from near relations in order to develop certain peculiarities, which fashion declares to be correct to-day, and discards in two or three seasons. All through the fancy stock — the aristocracy of the show-bench — there is a tendency to delicate and feeble constitution. The prize pigeon, bred by careful selection in order to develop particular feathers or colours, becomes scrofulous. The hero of the poultry pen begets pullets which will not lay or sit. The beautiful long-haired cats are frequently sterile, or such bad mothers, their progeny die unless provided with wet nurses. Dogs cannot be reared because malignant distemper kills the valuable pup, while passing by the worthless mongrel. Cows develop milking properties by increasing the deaths from; milk fever, and pedigree shorthorns become tuberculous to a fearful extent, while racehorses produce hereditary roarers.

Besides the soft cough, which is not, taken alone, diagnostic of inflammation of the lungs, there is a high temperature (as much as 106—7 Fahr.) evidenced by curling up in a corner, loss of appetite, and staring coat, cold ears, rheumy eyes and dry nose. The respiration is short and hurried, and if a short- coated animal, the ribs are seen in the rising and falling of the chest. Some persistently sit on their haunches with turned out elbows.

PLEURISY,

especially in dogs, may occur alone, but with cats it is generally associated with pneumonia.

The pleurae lining the chest and investing the lungs are subject to acute inflammation from cold, exposure to east wind, going into the water in cold weather, or oftener still, getting dry by sitting about, instead of by exercise and movement. All varieties of dogs and cats are liable to pleurisy, but more especially the long-haired cats and sporting dogs, and such as delight in swimming. Pleurisy, pneumonia and pluero-pneumonia, require pretty much the same treatment, and we take them as a group for that reason; the chief difference in the symptoms of pleurisy and pneumonia is that in the former the breathing is more painful, the flanks go in and out like bellows, and there is greater difficulty in moving. In the treatment modern practitioners are not altogether agreed. The most advanced scientists, or, at least, some of the most prominent, do not hold with counter-irritation, but the bulk of experienced men claim to have proved its great value, and it is probable that when some modern theory can be found to fit the practice there will be a general return to the plan of blistering the sides of the ribs with mustard or turpentine, or lin camph. co.

Hot water continually applied and covered with oiled silk, to prevent evaporation, is excellent treatment, but difficult in its execution — so few people will take the necessary trouble with a dog or cat, whereas the blister can be quickly applied, and the result rapidly attained.

Internal remedies calculated to allay coughing and moderate the temperature should be given, such as

Chlorodyne m 1 to 5.
Liq.ammon.acet. minim v. to 20.
Aq. camph. – oz. j.
4 tis horis.

If there is great resistance and consequent distress in giving the above, homoeopathic treatment, with bryonia and aconite alternately may be tried.

The consequences of pleurisy and pneumonia are many, as adhesion of the lungs to the sides of the chest and front of the diaphragm, chronic cough, consolidated lung, and general loss of respiratory power. Pleurisy may exist with apparently little distress in some dogs when effusion is taking place into the cavity of the chest, and it is only when the quantity of fluid has accumulated that breathing becomes distressed, and the animal sits on his haunches with front legs wide apart. If in a case of this kind a trochar and canula is inserted between the ribs (9th or 10th) rather low down, on withdrawing the trochar an astonishing amount of fluid will pour out of the canula. We have seen a quart taken from a collie dog at one time, and the operation repeated at intervals, each longer than the last, till the dog perfectly recovered. Such immediate relief is gained by this process that it should be more often resorted to, and the reason it is not done more frequently is because it is seldom successful with the horse, and veterinary surgeons base their conduct of dog cases on their knowledge of horses.

BRONCHITIS

in dogs and cats is distinguished from pleurisy and pneumonia by the rattling sounds in breathing over a surface of loose and thickened mucus and broken down epithelium. Animals have acute or chronic bronchitis as with man, and the same fogs and atmospheric conditions that oppress the owner oppress the dog or cat. It was seldom that bronchitis attacked the old English tabby, though he was exposed to the same conditions of bad weather, and was morally no better, than his descendants, but pulmonary diseases are quite common nowadays among the fancy cats so delicately nurtured and bred from Persian, Angora, and other foreign progenitors, and these creatures have in course of time tinctured the blood of the indigenous cat, if we may so speak of animals originally imported from Egypt, but long since acclimatised. Any mean-looking cat may have a kitten with long hair nowadays, and show the gentle blood of the sire in facial expression as well. There is no doubt but what with the improvements brought about by cat shows, and the greater distribution of the long-haired varieties, the cats of this country will be quite changed in a comparatively few years. Counter-irritation, which we have recommended in other pulmonary affections, is equally desirable in bronchitis, but the throat and front of the chest should receive the chosen liniment, instead of the sides of the chest, as in pleurisy, etc.

The same remedies, with the addition of expectorants, of which the best are antim. pot. tart, and ipecac. A very good mixture is the following:

Antim. pot. Tart - gr. i.
Yin. ipecac. – minim xviii
Acid hydrocyanic dil. (B. P.) - minim ij.
AEther – minim 8.
Syr. tolu - oz. j.
M. Ft. Mist. Drachm ss. for a cat and from 1 to 4 drms. for dogs three times a day.

Another is

Ammon, carb. – grs. 8.
Ext. belladonn. – gt. iv.
Spt. aether. nit. – oz. ss.
Aq. Chloroformi – ad oz. j.
M. Ft. Mist. Dose, for cat, drachm ss., and for dogs, drachm i. to drachm iv.

HUSK

is so nearly akin to bronchitis as to be mistaken for it. It is an extremely infectious disease, nearly always present in dogs’ homes and hospitals, and is one of several reasons sufficiently serious to make the bringing together of a number of dogs or cats a questionable benefit to any person or animal concerned, except, perhaps, the doctor, and he, if he knows his business, is in constant dread of getting it into his kennels.

Husk is a soft cough, due to the presence of a parasite Filaria bronchialis in the air passages, and stragglers may be found in any part of the air passages from nasal chambers to the small bronchi. Their favourite situation is the great bifurcation or junction of the large bronchial tubes; here they most breed and haunt,” like the martlet, “because the air is delicate,” and the particular kind of mucus is to be found, in which they form nests and propagate with great rapidity; their presence acts as an irritant, and the cough is very troublesome. In such a position it is difficult to get at them except by inhalation. This is practised with calves and lambs by shutting them up in an atmosphere of chlorine gas. If carried out with judgment, this is effectual with dogs and cats, but they are rather more susceptible to its irritating properties. A safer plan of treatment is to inject with a subcutaneous syringe through the trachea a few drops of terebene, taking care to choose a point well below the larynx, as it is only the lining of the larnyx that is so intensely sensitive; perfect safety is found lower down. Tonics should be given to counteract the wasting and debility so commonly associated with husk.

A Pill of
Ext. gent. - gr. i.
Ext. belladonnas - gr. quarter.
Quince - gr. quarter.
M. Ft pil. cap. i, bis die,

or an acid tonic mixture, is helpful. To allay bronchial coughs of the chronic kind, a mixture of equal parts of Lemon juice and glycerine is a capital remedy.

ASTHMA,

in its chronic form, is by no means rare in over-fed and elderly dogs. It is partly due to chronic congestion of the bronchial tubes and partly to structural changes in the lung cells, brought about by the pressure of an habitually overloaded stomach, and indulgence in sweet cakes and unsuitable food. The breathing is thick and wheezy, and the cough so like asthma in old persons as to be readily recognised. Dieting is the chief consideration in attempting any treatment. No heavy meal should be at any time given; no sweatmeats or indigestible food; plain lean meat in just sufficient quantities to maintain the animal’s strength; an occasional dose of oil — licking out a sardine tin will do well enough, and save the trouble of physicing. A pil saponis co, or the lemon and glycerine mixture, for foggy days and times of more than ordinary difficulty of breathing, or a mixture of hydrocyanic acid and aether, half a drop of the former to two drops of the latter, in a drachm of syr. limonis or cod liver oil.

CONSUMPTION

is met with in in-bred dogs, and the conditions that develop it are close and ill-drained kennels. The dealer’s back-yard is a focus from which dog diseases spread, but in the case of consumption there is hereditary tendency to the formation of tubercle, as in man. It follows also upon exhausting illnesses. There is no cure for it in dog or cat, and if the tubercle bacillus can be conveyed by milk, there may be danger in children cuddling consumptive pets. Neither supposition is yet proved; but with a disease in an animal at once incurable and hereditary, prudence points to a merciful death.

DISEASES OF THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM.

In considering the diseases of the digestive system, all the parts or organs employed, from the seizing of food to the ejection of undigested material, must be included. The lips of the horse, the teeth of the dog, teeth and claws of the cat, are the organs of prehension, while the trunk serves the same purpose in the elephant. If any of these parts are injured or diseased the digestive system fails more or less at the beginning. Injuries to the lips, chaps, thorns, splinters of bone, etc., may be the reason why a dog or cat appears to be indifferent to food, at least for a time, and the lips, gums, and. teeth should always be examined. Both dogs and cats are born without teeth, but they make their appearance within a fortnight, being just below the gum at birth, or in some few actually through. Seldom is there any difficulty in cutting the first or temporary teeth; it is not with these that teething fits come, and the restlessness that characterises the human infant (not to mention his poor mamma).

Except for being narrower, thinner and more sharply pointed,
the teeth of cats are much the same as dogs, both in their kinds and in the time and method of their growth.

The first set is complete in a few weeks, on an average nine weeks, and they begin to be replaced by permanent ones at 14 or 15 weeks old. The general arrangement of the tooth in carnivora is an outer layer of enamel varying in thickness, a material less dense underneath and called dentine, and within this a pulp cavity having nerve and blood vessels. The great difference between the teeth of our domesticated animals should be generally known, at least to those who have anything to do with animals.

While, as we have said, the teeth of dogs and cats resemble very much in composition the human teeth, a totally different arrangement is found in horses and cattle. These are provided with miniature grindstones, which, unlike the millers, do not have to be freshly cut from time to time, and the reason they retain their rough surface is that they are composed of layers of different materials varying in density, and consequently not all undergoing the same degree of attrition. There are three principal materials of which the horse and ox’s tooth is composed — enamel, dentine and crusta petrosa; but another point must be noticed, and that is the growth throughout life of the teeth of graminivorous animals. In horses, cattle, sheep, and goats the teeth continue to grow as long as the animal lives, or they would be worn down to the gums before the creature reached maturity; but with our subjects, the cat and dog, we have altogether different teeth adapted for different natures. The dog has teeth to seize and hold his food, whether living or dead, likewise the cat; but puss makes more use of her nails, which she keeps in good trim for the purpose of seizing her prey first. The act of prehension in the cat may be simultaneously performed by teeth and nails, and if closely observed in pouncing upon a mouse, it is chiefly done with the talons, which also serve to catch him a great many times afterwards when torturing her victim for her own amusement, or her kitten’s instruction — horrible trait in a creature so otherwise gentle. Dogs’ teeth serve to tear food better than to grind it. Open a dog’s mouth, reader, and look at the molars, so called — at how few points do they meet when the mouth is closed; they are as unlike as possible to the teeth with which animals are provided when nature requires the food to be finely comminuted as a preliminary to digestion.

The nature of the dog is to gorge himself with meat when he can get it, and submit, with cheerfulness, to long abstinence between meals. It is important to bear this in mind. These figures are intended to illustrate the dog’s teeth, and compare their composition with those of the horse.

Nature has dictated his habits and provided him with teeth for tearing and mangling his food alive, or dead, and it is natural to him to bolt it with but a very slight amount of mastication — then seek a quiet corner and digest it while sleeping.

There are persons, not necessarily interested in the sale of biscuits, who, nevertheless, would persuade themselves to believe that the dog cakes of different brands, now so much in vogue, contain all the elements of food necessary for healthy dogs — much the same thing has been said of haricot beans for man. No doubt he could live a long while on beans, and so can a dog on biscuits, but the biscuit mania of to-day is the swing of the pendulum of 50 years ago when dogs were fed on filthy raw offal from the butchers, uncleaned tripe, lights, liver, and even intestines. Especially was this the custom at one time among gamekeepers and kennelmen, many of whom now use a fair proportion of biscuits. The fact of a certain amount of meat (previously exhausted for other purposes) being combined with biscuits does not answer the objection that a biscuit diet exclusively is too great a departure from nature. The changed habits of domestication may be fairly met by a mixed diet of cooked food, table scraps, and anything that is going — supplemented with the piece de resistance of dog cakes; they are all much alike, and it is not our business here to advertise the makers or “damn with faint praise” a particular brand. Observant readers will not consider it beneath their dignity to watch the excreta of their own dogs, and will find on a diet of biscuits only that the dung is soft, and consists of almost unaltered material, merely broken down, and softened by the intestinal juices, but not digested — a very large proportion of digestive labour for small results. Digestion in the dog and cat begins in the mouth with insalivation of the food, and the process with which most of our readers are familiar in the human subject goes on in the same way with the animals under consideration, except that in the dog there is twice as much hydrochloric acid, and it is presumed a greater power to assimilate flesh food and not tire of it.

Examination of the teeth of any animal suffices to show its habits from the grinding surfaces of the solipeds and ruminants to the composite mouth of the man, whose taste is omnivorous and teeth suited to all and every purpose.

It is presumed that our readers are familiar with digestion as taught in the schools of to-day under the head of physiology, and we need not follow the course in the dog or cat, though we cannot diagnose and properly treat the diseases of these animals without a proper understanding of digestion and familiarity with the habits and peculiarities of each class. The undigested food which in all animals is from time to time ejected from the bowels has this peculiarity in dogs — that, provided the dog is healthy, and on a mixed diet, his dung should be decidedly hard. The healthy dog does not evacuate a soft mass, as may do a healthy cat*; he should require exercise to excite the peristaltic action, and then not defecate without a moderate effort at expulsion. Dogs fed exclusively on biscuits are habitually too soft in the bowels; their ordure in consistence resembles that of the horse fed on mashes or grass, and the muscular; condition of both horse and dog are proportionately relaxed.

[* It is not intended by the above remark about cats that they are healthy when habitually relaxed, but that they may show greater variation than dogs without any departure from a good state of digestion.]

The difficulties in connection with dentition seldom arise; till the fourth or fifth month, when the tushes of the permanent set come through; they may be nearly grown as early as five and a half months, or imperfectly developed at nine months, and, taking an average of seven months for the new tush to have attained its growth, and the old one to be cast, a dog’s age can be told with sufficient accuracy for ordinary purposes. The everyday swindle of selling pups at two months old, warranted over distemper, and not to grow any more, would never be practised again on an intelligent person who will compare illustrations of temporary and permanent teeth.

It is during the cutting of the permanent corner teeth, elsewhere called tushes, that puppies most frequently have fits and other constitutional disturbance. These teeth are often cut before the temporary ones have been absorbed, and it is no uncommon thing to find a dog at any age with a temporary alongside the permanent, and having a strong attachment. They are found even in old dogs, discoloured as with dead bone, but still requiring considerable force to remove them. This should always be done, as there is a disposition to lodgment of food and other things. Healthy pups get rid of their milk teeth in playing at tug of war with the hall mat, or my lady’s seal-skin muff, slippers or anything else. It is a capital game for the development of eye and wind and muscle, the removal of temporary and loose teeth; the owner of the “properties” is the only one who fails to be amused. Big bones help the shedding process, but little ones should always be avoided, as they are readily splintered and cause much harm and many deaths, as we shall show in speaking of accidents, etc.

When a dog has done teething he has about* 42 teeth — 12 incisors, six upper and six lower, four tushes, two upper and two lower, and six so-called molars, above and below on both sides. The teeth have not, as a rule, completed their full development till the dog is a year old, but the cat’s are as perfect at nine months. Although cut in about the same time she passes from the kitten to the cat without the hobble-de-hoy stage, in which pups, especially of the large breeds, are so awkward and grotesque. Soon after maturity, and in most dogs, a little tartar begins to form on the upper and outer surface of the tushes, and later on upon the other teeth. By these indications a good observer can continue to make a very good guess as to a dog’s age till he reaches three or four years, after which there is an increasing space between the incisors, the tables become worn, the points of the tushes round instead of sharp, greyness of the chin, etc. These little signs, carefully noted, enable one to judge the approximate age of dogs, but one’s calculations are often upset by the tricks dogs have of carrying stones and sticks, thereby wearing out their teeth prematurely.

[* Sometimes two pre-molar teeth in the lower jaw only are found, besides which dogs do not all develop their proper number, as in the case of “wisdom” teeth in man.]

We have already spoken of the necessity for removing temporary teeth, whose fangs will be found to be almost entirely absorbed, but the tushes should be extracted as soon as the permanent ones show through. The operation is more likely to be successful than when jammed by a permanent tooth, which latter may be injured by the forceps.

The accumulation of tartar upon the teeth of pet dogs, and more or less with all dogs, is a source of discomfort, bad breath and premature loss of the teeth. It is easily chipped off with a scaling instrument, or, if large accumulations, it may be pinched with forceps, when it comes off in masses. If allowed to remain, the gums become inflamed, ulcerated and recede, leaving the mouth foul, the teeth loose, and the victim, once fondled as a pet, becomes an intolerable companion. Nearly everybody who reads these lines knows, or has met with, old dogs with evil breath, but, somehow, people never think of the remedy, which is so easy, but will buy all sorts of advertised medicines and try to palliate it with charcoal biscuits, which, in all probability, the dog will not eat. There is a man in the West End of London who earns several pounds a week by scaling dogs’ teeth and extracting loose and diseased ones, and the five shillings he charges is as easily earned as it is well worth the money to the owners. A mouth wash of

Tinct. myrrh. - minim xx.
Borax - gr. xx.
Aqua camph. - ad oz. ij.

M., should be applied to the gums for a few days, and a bad old mouth may be made as clean again as a puppy’s. The disposition to form fresh incrustations arises from indigestion, and should be treated with alteratives and salines. A powder which has been found very successful is the following:

Antim. nig. - gr. one eighth
Mag. sulph. exsic. – gr. v.
Pot. Nit. – gr.j.
Carbo. animalis – gr. v.
M. Ft. dosis.

This is for a pet size — double this dose for a sporting dog, or three times the quantity for a St. Bernard, mastiff, or Great Dane.

Some dogs escape the formation of tartar and retain good teeth to a great age, but they are very few and not confined to any breed, or any method of feeding or management, though there are not wanting individuals so self-satisfied with their own treatment as to believe that any dog would have good teeth if fed on the same biscuits, etc. There is a vagabond dog belonging to the quack referred to as a dog dentist, now some ten years old, and with a perfect set of teeth, as snowy white as they are ordinarily at eight months, and this animal “boards himself,” visiting all sorts of places and people, absenting himself for days together, so that a special diet at least is not the reason of his well-preserved mouth. The mastication of hard biscuits, served dry, demands a great deal of the teeth, and occasional fractures result.

It is very rare, indeed, to meet with a decayed tooth in a dog. Other diseases are common enough, but if you take as bad a mouth as you can find, and clear away tartar and debris, a clear case of caries will not be found in 1,000 bad mouths. The enamel may wear down upon the crown or points, it may show necrosed spots or irregular indentations, but the injuries done or alterations made will be found to fall short of exposure of the dentine or of the nerve. Though injured in a variety of ways the enamel is not broken through. Decayed teeth are spoken of in all the standard works on dogs, besides the many amateurish books which devote a few pages to diseases, as a wind up to a treatise on sports and doggie tales. Find a genuine case if you can.

Teeth fall out prematurely with dogs for the same reasons as with man, nor has the use of the tooth brush much to do with it.

Cats are but very little troubled by their teeth, except in extreme age or at the critical period of cutting the tushes when they are subject, but not nearly so liable, to fits as puppies. In old age the molars get loose, and remain so for a very long time. The patient suffering of the cat fails to attract notice or excite sympathy, and the loose tooth is retained till it falls out, as it were, by its own weight. Notwithstanding the fact that cats are so much more careful in feeding than dogs, they are even more frequently injured by splinters of bone, fishbones, pins and other foreign bodies getting lodged between the teeth or firmly fixed in other parts of the mouth. When a foreign body becomes thus fixed in the mouth of a cat she is first angry, next frightened, then sulky, and finally resigned to her fate. A few ineffectual attempts to dislodge the offender with the paws, a rub or two of the face on the mat, and then she retires to a quiet corner, as is her wont when wounded, to suffer alone. If the accident is not observed at the time, nor the ropes of saliva hanging from the mouth next day, with mouth a little wry and swollen face and anxious look, then these acute symptoms abate, though the bone remains. Nothing is eaten, but the cat waits on; whether supported by hope or a philosophy we cannot understand, and do not meet with in dogs, who shall say! but this we do know, that a cat will go without eating for weeks, until a splinter or foreign body sloughs out, if it has not been got rid of in any other way.

The behaviour of the dog is at first the same, but if he fails, as he generally does, to remove a foreign body from his mouth, he either attracts the assistance of human friends, or their sympathy alone will enable him to bear it for a time till left alone; then, if he cannot get rid of it, he will scratch and rub and ramp at his face till the skin is all raw on his face, ear and muzzle. Dogs have often been taken to veterinary surgeons as having developed a malignant skin disease in one night, and it has been self-inflicted in this way. It is painful to add that the cause has not always been diagnosed by those who have not made dogs a speciality.

Treatment, of course, consists in removal by forceps or other means. Cats should be secured by rolling them up in a soft bulky wrap, such as a small blanket, leaving only the head out, and the mouth drawn open by two tapes securely held. Gags do not answer, and the tape trick can be done better with practice than at the first attempt. The after treatment consists in a lotion of alum and soft food for a day or two. Repairs take place in the mouth very rapidly, from no matter what cause the injury may have arisen.

SALIVATION.

Salivation, when met with in dogs, is not so often caused by the continued administration of mercury internally as by the use of unguents or mercurial applications. The most abused, perhaps, is ung. hyd., and from time to time in veterinary practice animals of all sorts fall victims to the absorption by the injudicious or accidental administration of mercurial preparations. In the case of dogs, the foetor of the breath is just insufferable, the flow of saliva in quantity beyond the conception of anyone who has not witnessed it, and the falling out of the teeth quickly follows.

If diarrhoea is not already established, the treatment should begin with a moderate dose of castor oil, to remove the acrid matters in the prima via; then frequent doses of albumen and gelatin in milk, white of eggs beaten up with white sugar and milk, and bismuth carb., with mag. carb. pond, in doses of from 2 grs. to 10 grs., according to weight of dog, every four hours. The body should be clothed for warmth, but the freshest of air, even cold air, should be allowed, and gentle exercise. The gums should be painted with tinct. myrrhae daily, and no tooth removed because loose, since many will be saved when the other symptoms have passed away.

INJURIES TO THE MOUTH.

The tongue, besides being liable to injuries from violence, is subject to inflammation of a specific character, and known as blain. It commences with swelling of the tongue and discharge of saliva, too sudden to be mistaken for salivation; there has been no languor or previous illness apparent, though there must have been an incubatory period. No investigator has as yet found a microbe as the specific cause. Horses, cattle, and sheep are subject to blain, and more than one outsider has supposed that that was what Orme suffered from when all the world was interested in his health. A large vesicle is rapidly formed on the side and under surface of the tongue, which breaks, leaves a large ragged surface, and heals up again without leaving any bad effects as a rule. The pain may be much diminished by treatment, the duration shortened, and the reparatory process hastened, besides preventing ulcers of a somewhat chronic form.

The vesicle as soon as formed should be lanced, and the sero-sanguineous fluid allowed to escape; immediate relief is thus obtained. The mouth should be washed out, and if possible the tongue painted with a solution of salycilic acid or acetum, besides frequent washings with warm water. In a low hours the skin begins to slough from the tongue where the vesicle was situated, and a raw surface is left. At this stage there is no remedy to be named in the same day as alum. It may be applied as crystal or a saturated solution. So much is done towards forming a new covering for the sore tongue in one night that very little is left for subsequent treatment. Soft food, as milk sop, for a day or two, is all that is needed.

An accidental cause of inflamed tongue is the lodgment of food or foreign bodies as tin-tacks, pins and needles in the fraenum, which attaches the tongue to the floor of the mouth. If the offending body can be found it needs only removal for a rapid recovery. The little orifices to the glands will occasionally get a plug of something the dog has been biting or playing with, and this part should be carefully examined wherever a tongue is inflamed.

The tongue suffers sadly sometimes; both in kittens and puppies when in a fit the teeth are unwittingly closed upon it; being very vascular the haemorrhage is considerable. Interference is seldom necessary, as the same disposition to heal rapidly that characterises the lining of the oral cavity is shared by the tongue.

The sides of the tongue in both cats and dogs suffer ulceration from another and worse cause, namely, diseased and ragged teeth. These ulcerations are foetid, and to be cured the cause must be removed. The inside of the cheek suffers in the same way, and such ulcers must be dressed with solid. argent. nit., repeated twice or three times, at intervals of two or three days, to ensure a new and good surface.

Foreign bodies, besides lodging between the teeth and under the tongue, more often become embedded in the back of the mouth, in the region known as the fauces. To get a view of these parts when a needle is suspected, the dog or cat should be secured, and the tongue firmly, but gently, seized with a dry cloth, held between the thumb and first finger of the left hand, while a pair of forceps is used to depress the dorsum, and if viewed, seize the offending body. The frequency with which pet dogs and cats get needles inside of them can only be realised by those veterinary surgeons, who have made a special business of attending to the diseases and accidents of pets. Not only do puppies, kittens, and grown-up animals generally swallow needles and pins with thread or without, but, in rolling on the floor upon their backs and sides, they get pierced with needles, which after days, weeks, months, or years, come out in the most extraordinary situations. A dog was taken to a vet. recently with an enormous abscess on the back, which when lanced was found to contain a needle, threaded with twist for making button holes. Splinters of wood, nails, tin-tacks, and fish-bones, which have been prevented by the rolling movements of the tongue from remaining fixed in the mouth, will get embedded in the fauces, as the tongue has there no power to move them.

The gullet of the dog, like that of other animals, is a muscular tube with a membranous lining, collapsed when not in use, brought into action by the presence of something in the fauces to be swallowed. When the morsel in the month has passed a certain place swallowing becomes involuntary, and with greedy dogs, thinking more of the morsel to come than the morsel to go, begin to swallow large pieces of meat, etc., not sufficiently broken down to pass down the oesophagus

CHOKING

follows. Cats do the same. The gobbler tucks his head into his chest, throws his whole body into a, spasmodic effort to vomit, and failing to get rid of it that way, tries to swallow again, and often succeeds in one way or the other — upward more often than downward. The cat probably leaves it, but the dog is not offended, and goes for it again. If the dog or cat does not soon relieve himself, no time should be lost, or the creature will be suffocated. He should be secured, and an attempt made to reach the body, and bring it up, if possible. If after careful examination it is decided to be beyond reach, a probang should be used to push it down. It is not likely that a probang will be at hand in an emergency of this kind, but one can rapidly be improvised, with a sponge tied on to a cleft stick, or better still, flexible cane or whalebone, which, should be dipped in oil and then pushed gently and continuously, without jerks or stoppages, till it is felt that the obstruction has been pushed on out of danger. Sometimes it can be felt from the outside and judicious squeezing and manipulation will alter its shape or direct its course, giving just that additional amount of force which the muscular tube failed to supply. Greedy children may learn by an accident
of this kind, but dogs do not, and the pup once choked is more liable than others, because his greediness is an established fact, but his judgment is not; in one point he has an advantage over the child — no anxious mother will slap him on the back.

The bones of game birds, poultry, or fish should never be given to dogs (cats are more careful and less valued as a rule), not only for the reasons just named, bat because they crush them up and cause constipation. The very hard and nearly white dog’s dung, which old-fashioned dyers still collect, is the result of bone feeding. If the owner of a dog likes him to be amused with a bone he should provide a large one that cannot be broken up — not soft mutton chop or brittle poultry bones, which easily splinter and cause so much damage.

If the gullet is injured by any foreign body the best remedy is rest. The dog or cat patient can go without food for a couple of days with but very slight inconvenience, and, if necessary, for a week or two by giving nutritious enemata in one or other of the many and convenient forms now amply provided, and of reliable composition. If a bone, pin, needle, marble, or any of the thousand and one things within reach of a pup is known to have been swallowed he should be fed on coarse oatmeal and sardine oil for a couple of days, avoiding an aperient, but softening by diet the whole digestive tract.

Sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease, and the hasty and unpractised hand, in trying to use a probang, will rupture the oesophagus; an alarming accident, yet generally curable with perfect rest. There is a greater liability to stricture afterwards. The oesophagus of the dog is so large in proportion to his size that he can easily swallow substances too large to pass through the small intestines unaltered.

The stomach, in a feeder so indiscreet as the dog, is frequently out of order. Cats and dogs are both subject to frequent vomitings, without being actually ill; their indiscretions in diet are promptly cured, in many instances, by eating grass and exciting vomition, or by prolonged abstinence.

GASTRITIS,

or inflamed stomach, is comparatively frequent in both dog and cat. The animal is observed to vomit frequently a frothy fluid. At first the food is thrown up, next the gastric fluid, which is secreted in great quantities, and this is followed by blood-stained mucus. The course followed by the disease depends largely upon its causation. In the simple attacks with which veterinary surgeons are familiar, the lining membrane is much inflamed, and the gastric and peptic glands involved. The gastric fluid is extremely acid and abundant, and, to judge by the patient’s behaviour, we should suppose that “heartburn” is a prominent and painful symptom. The cause may be, and often is, an undigested bone, piece of coal, a button or other hard object, which the pylorus will not let pass; very hard dry biscuits will sometimes cause it. If no more irritating cause than the above give rise to gastritis, it is not likely to end fatally. The offending body will be either vomited, dissolved, or allowed to pass the pylorus. But if a fish-hook or like body swallowed inadvertently, and fastened in the stomach, be the cause, then a fatal result may follow, as the vomiting goes on and pus, followed by gangrene and death. Besides the vomiting, the dog or cat usually chooses a cold stone-floor, and stretches along on the belly, apparently getting some sense of relief in this way.

Great thirst accompanies this disorder, and the cold water so eagerly swallowed is quickly brought back again almost unaltered. The fatal cases are brought about either by a foreign body fastened into the stomach as above suggested or else by irritant poisons accidentally swallowed with food or intentionally administered. From the fatal form cats more often suffer than dogs, as their nocturnal habits make them enemies even among people who love dogs, and would not think of poisoning a neighbour’s dog, whiles congratulating themselves very likely on having rid the neighbourhood of a tom cat. We may remark, inter alia, that “toms” are not responsible for a quarter of the noise so much objected to, and that females are the chief offenders.

Treatment should be directed to allay the irritability of the stomach and arrest vomiting as soon as possible, since the repeated retchings do a lot of injury. Plenty of ice-cold water should be kept beside the patient, allowing him to drink freely, and keeping the vessel clean of his “slobber” — for food, none at all; he wants no food till at least a day and a night after sickness has entirely ceased.

Direct gastric sedatives are to be found in hydrocyanic acid and bismuth. Alkaline bicarbonates, especially of potash, have been recommended, but there is an objection, inasmuch as too much carbonic acid is given off when the stomach is so extremely acid, and distension follows if not quickly relieved by eructations and flatus from the rectum. Opium and its preparations are not so suitable as cannabis indicus for getting the patient to sleep away time while the stomach rests. The degree of nausea that would produce actual vomition in a dog when awake will not be sufficient to waken him up for the purpose. He will groan and twitch and dream of a rat behind a door or a rabbit gone to ground an instant too soon, but if his stomach can be kept quiet by sleep, time will be in his favour instead of against him, as it is so long as frequent vomiting goes on.

If sickness abates, and the symptoms of fever and lassitude with it, great care must be taken in putting any further work upon the stomach — fluid food only for the first two or three days - not milk, as is often recommended, because the stomach is so excessively acid, but, rather, some preparation like beef tea, broth, red gravy, or meat juice, free from salt or seasoning of any kind. This is more likely to be digested and retained without causing new trouble than is bread sop or the softest and lightest of puddings, which may presently follow before taking the invalid back to his ordinary diet. Any hard, dry, or indigestible substance should be avoided, at least for a time. Perfect recovery is usual, and there is no great tendency to recurrence in those accidentally produced cases, though there is in the case of cats with bunches of worms in the stomach, or dogs with diseased livers and stomachs debauched with spicy food.

The bowels are generally constipated and should be relieved by soap enemata. When gastritis arises from corrosive poisons the whole digestive tract is likely to be in sympathy and diarrhoea a concomitant symptom.

INDIGESTION.

Indigestion, in the case of a race-horse, may produce a profound sensation among many thousands of people; in yourself, the commiseration of friends; but dogs or cats suffering from indigestion seem to be only objects of ridicule. The man who looks for sympathy when suffering from a drunken headache denies it to the dog or cat whose indiscretion should find readier excuse.

It is popularly supposed that dogs seldom have anything else the matter with them, and that dog doctors treat them with stick and abstinence only. When a dog refuses food his lady owner thinks him ill, and he is ill, for the glutton does not become abstemious for virtue’s sake, and dogs that can have as much as they like to eat every day soon become sated, and are not more subject to indigestion than those who only “chasten their bodies with fasting whenever they’ve nothing to eat,” but gorge themselves when they get a chance.

The symptoms and results of indigestion are many. Among the more common is the frequent eructations to which pugs are prone — intestinal flatulence, which finds release in an opposite direction, and gives even more offence to the olfactory apparatus of the occupants of the apartment. Cats also are very guilty of these offences against decorum. [Note: the writer is referring to farting!]

These are often cabbage eaters, or fond of asparagus stalks and things of that sort. The meat-eating dog may be gross and bleary-eyed, morose and smell doggie, but not often flatulent. The remedy for flatus of this kind is simple. Change the diet; give food that is not watery and bulky; and for medicine a few grains of sodae carbi or mag. carb. (pond), and pulv. carbo. animalis; mag. carb. levis and carbo. lig. are so inconvenient with dogs and cats and liable to be spilt. An aperient of tinct jalapae minim v. to oz ss, or cascara sagrada should be given if constipated, but flatulent dogs are seldom costive. The same remedies apply to cats who do not eat green vegetables much, but are compelled sometimes to eat unsuitable food with the result of being dyspeptic.

Indigestion is a very large subject and allied to malnutrition, often the cause of it. Parasites not only bring about an ill-nourished condition of the body, but by their presence injure the organs of digestion in which they are situated and so produce dyspepsia before commencing their work of stealing the products of digestion. Of their method of propagation, life history and effects, we shall speak in another place, but when indigestion has to be treated, parasitism must be in the mind of the doctor who undertakes the treatment of animals, big or little. Many cases of indigestion in dogs and cats are traceable to the liver. Failure of the liver, or pancreas to secrete a fluid, sufficient in quality or quantity, results in indigestion in dogs as in men. The dog’s liver is larger in proportion to his size than any other domesticated animal, and excessive secretion with regurgitation of bile into the stomach is one of the causes of bad breath and the eructations before mentioned. Abstinence is the remedy. No other and no better is needed. The biliary matters pass away and the stomach is again fitted for food. Constipation is the result of indigestion, so also is diarrhoea. That diet has much to do with the evacuations has been before stated in connection with the biscuit question, but with a reasonable diet, constipation will result if the liver does not pour into the duodenum that fluid which prevents decomposition of the ingesta and stimulates the peristaltic action of the bowels. Diarrhoea may be caused by an excessive and irritating quantity of bile in the intestines.

INFLAMMATION OF THE BOWELS

in dogs is generally a sequel to some other disease as distemper, but is occasionally met with from chills, blows, impactions, and causes not traceable. It is technically divided into inflammation of the lining membrane and muscular coat, or layer of submucus tissue and involuntary muscular fibre, by which the vermicular movement is carried on; it is called muco-enteritis or enteritis, or if the inflammation affects the covering membrane of the intestines and lining membrane of the abdomen, it is called peritonitis. Inflammation of the peritoneum (peritonitis) in dogs and cats is seldom seen except as the effect of outside violence, or as a result of surgical operations.

Enteritis or muco-enteritis. — The symptoms of enteritis in the dog and cat are those of colic or gripe, but having no periods of remission, continuous acute abdominal pain, tenderness of the abdomen on pressure. The pulse is small, quick and irritable, the conjunctival blood vessels injected, nose hot and dry, ears and other extremities, cold or opposite legs cold. In colic these are not present; there is an absence of pain on pressure; massage relieves instead of punishes the sufferer. In enteritis the patient, if a dog, cannot find the right place, gets up and looks at his flank, if lying down, and is no sooner up than he desires to be down again. Occasional yelps of pain and dejection of countenance render him an object of pity. The urine is very strong in odour, scanty in quantity, and high coloured; the bowels are constipated in enteritis pure and simple, but in muco-enteritis there is diarrhoeic discharge and casts of mucus from the intestines which have been mistaken for worms. A case of enteritis may be expected to terminate in one of three ways — gradual recovery, chronic ulceration of the bowels, or death from gangrene or collapse.

Treatment. — Theory says do not give purgatives, and experience replies, more die without than with aperients, but that the choice of agents has much to do with it. Calomel, 2 to 10 grains for one dose, and one only, in the first stage has saved many lives, if one may so say of any drug in any disease. It appears to act as a febrifuge, reducing temperature, and causing a subsidence of pain and not purging, but simply relaxing the bowels, as would a mild dose of castor oil, though without that febrifuge action so much needed. In any case of enteritis an examination of the rectum should be made with an oiled finger to ascertain if there be present hard dry faeces, which act as a plug; these should be removed by enemata of soap or salines. Opium has been recommended in doses of one-half to 4 grains, but its action upon dogs is very uncertain, small doses of cannabis indicus giving more satisfactory results. Minute doses of ipecac, and chloral hourly, or better still, homoeopathic doses of arsenicum and bryonia alternately. For outside application to the whole belly there is none better than a flannel dipped in turpentine, kept on for several hours, and renewed if no relief is given. If counter-irritants are not applied either in the form mentioned, or as a liniment, hot water or poultices, then massage, should be frequent. Lay the animal on his back and gently knead the belly with the knuckles of both hands, beginning on the first row of knuckles, turning the hand over like a wheel, the back of the hand, of course, on the patient and away from the operator; both hands being used in the same direction first, and then reversed. The pressure should not be great, but a crawling motion sufficient to compress slightly the bowel immediately underneath. These directions, if read by an old-fashioned practitioner, may be laughed at; but let him try them when next he is “at the end of his Latin.” When a patient begins to recover from enteritis much care must be exercised in diet. If he will take them, let him have farinaceous puddings, milk sop, boiled potatoes — no green stuff and no meat — for a week or ten days. If the mucous membrane has been greatly affected, a pill daily of one-half to 2 grains of ferri. sulph., with a like quantity of ext. anthemidis, will have a sufficiently astringent and tonic effect. The excreta should be carefully watched, and upon the least return of abdominal pain arsenicum should be given, and massage resorted to. Clothing should be worn if convalescence takes place in cold weather, or the coat of a long-haired dog has had to be cut off for convenience of treatment.

PERITONITIS

Peritonitis, as we have elsewhere observed, is commonly the result of violence, or may follow upon abdominal operations, and, in female animals, from difficulties in parturition. The symptoms are restlessness and abdominal pains; lying on the side stretched out at full length for a long time together, except when acute pain causes the patient to get up and pursue a vain search for a place of greater ease.

“It is a poor relief to gain,
To exchange the place but keep the pain.”

The same small, wiry, irritable pulse which characterises enteritis, and an even greater sensibility to outside pressure. The whole of the viscera are surrounded and invested with this peritoneal membrane, and if the inflammation, which we call peritonitis, is not confined to one injured part, or one side, the prospect is bad, indeed; since the intestines, to carry on their function, must be always in undulating motion, the investing membrane must be in constant pain by this movement, when inflamed.

Treatment consists in endeavouring to combat the attendant fever, and by external applications divert the inflammatory action. Anything that will excite an increased amount of blood to the surface is calculated to draw it from, the peritoneum, which from the outside of the flank is not far distant, the walls of the belly being not very thick, especially in cats and some breeds of dogs. Mustard and strong liniments, which are admissible with other internal inflammations, do not answer so well in a genuine case of peritonitis, and if only the necessary nursing can be secured, there is nothing like hot fomentations, such as tinct. opii drachm j to each quart of hot water, applied on thick spongio piline, with oiled silk or other appliance to prevent evaporation. Letting it get cold is the evil, and hot-water applications would be much more frequently prescribed, and with great benefit, if prescribers could depend upon their instructions being efficiently carried out. Arsenic, which as everyone knows, causes intense abdominal pain in poisonous doses, has been found in homoeopathic quantities the best remedy for enteritis and peritonitis. Alternate doses of aconite and arsenicum, or, if there be a prejudice against homoeopathy, then the equivalent of a grain of opium and one-quarter grain of camphor and 3 or 4 minims of chloroform.

In any of these abdominal inflammations if opium be chosen as the sedative or anodyne, oil in some form or other should be given, or constipation is the result, and a most untoward one in such diseases. If all appetite is not gone a dog or cat will often drink the oil in a sardine tin with the effect of just sufficiently softening the contents of the intestines. Aperients may not be given of anything like aloes, scammony, buckthorn, etc., but oleaginous fluids and enemata of soap. If oil does not succeed sufficiently well, and days have passed without a motion, repeated small doses of mag. sulph. in large quantities of warm water, should be given. The beneficial effects sometimes seen from giving salines in acute inflammations of the intestines and other abdominal organs is probably attributable to osmosis, and at some future time will probably be thought scientific treatment by those who still adhere to opium despite its disadvantages.

Peritonitis has the same kind of sequelae as pleuritis. In pleurisy (pleuritis) we look for adhesions of the lungs to the chest, and in peritonitis, adhesions to the walls of the belly, and as between the intestines. The lymph thrown out from an inflamed serous membrane, wherever situated, has a strong inclination to form bands, which, at first soft, afterwards become dense and inelastic, and hold the parts attached very firmly. When the intestines are thus bound in cords instead of having perfectly free, gliding movement, there is ever afterwards a greater liability to trouble of constipation or impaction interfering with the ordinary functions of the bowels.

COLIC

is one of the results of imperfect moving bowels, though caused by many other things, and chief among them undigested food, cold water drunk while the animal is hot, worms of various kinds, the presence of calculi, and twisted bowels.
Colic is not a common disease of adults, dogs or cats, but nearly everyone who reads these notes will have seen puppies scream with colic, and kittens wake out of a troubled sleep and appear cramped, lash their tails and back as if demented. It generally passes off quickly, but the considerate owner will not think it too much trouble to give a diffusible stimulant such as ess. zingib. minim v. to drachm ss. and followed by an aperient of the oily kind.

When colic is long continued it may end in or have had its
origin in twisted bowel, as a post-mortem examination will show.

Intussusception is when one portion of the intestine becomes telescoped into the portion before or behind it. There is no method of ascertaining this condition during life; the symptoms are those of colic, and unless by struggling, the invaginated intestine comes undone the animal will certainly die. If this condition is suspected, that is to say when a case of colic does not yield to treatment, the patient, if not a very large dog, should be stretched upon a table, and manipulated with the hands as elsewhere advised, the front and hind legs made to pass over each other, the hind feet brought up to the ears, and quickly returned to a position as far behind the body as they can go. The nose should be pressed in between the hind legs, making both ends meet as it were, and again stretching out hind and front legs, spread-eagle fashion. These movements, alternated with massage, are calculated to undo an intussuscepted bowel, and excite that peristaltic motion which will carry away a simple obstruction.

If colic of the quiet and continued kind exists and the bowels are not open, it may be from impaction of a foreign body that has produced a zone of inflammation and adhesive material. Calculi will do this. They may have been quiescent for a long time in a portion of the intestine, where they had plenty of room, but having been carried on with ingesta to another portion met with a curve, they cannot pass. If there is ground for supposing that an impaction of this kind exists, no violent remedies in the way of purges must be resorted to, as the obstruction may be a pin or splinter of bone which has passed the sentinel at the pylorus, and even wound its way through the small intestines to become lodged when in a comparatively safe position.

Treatment. — No solid food, and little of any kind. A few teaspoonfuls of beef tea or gravy will sustain the strength, and be absorbed before reaching the obstruction, unless it be in the duodenum, when the patient’s life would be short. The obstruction must be removed, and not forced into a tighter wedge by violent muscular contractions of the bowels induced by purgatives. The whole course of the alimentary canal must be oiled. Repeated doses of oil, olive or linseed, too much to be quickly emulsified and digested, and not enough or nauseous in quality to cause sickness; injections per rectum also and frequently. If the least movement takes place, the foreign body, or hardened dung, whatever it may be, can then be carried on as the way is prepared. The desperate dose, too, if tried in despair, will be less likely to kill in a well-oiled but empty canal. Obstructions, such as splinters of bone, may pass from one part of the bowel to another without causing stoppage, but lacerating the lining membrane, and causing bloody stools — stools streaked with blood, more properly speaking — for there is a great and important distinction between the two. Quite another kind of treatment is necessary here; the lining of the canal must be painted with bismuth, or other agents, to enable the sharp-pointed body to pass over it without injury. Repeated doses of bismuth trisnit or subcarb., no matter which, with glycerine have the desired effect, and should be administered per rectum as well as per oram.

CONSTIPATION.

Constipation, or stoppage, from the mechanical causes above mentioned, account for many deaths among dogs and cats; but there is nothing so common among dogs as constipation of a most uncomfortable nature, and too frequently disregarded by thoughtless owners of dogs. Eating bones is nearly always the cause. If a dog can have bones he can crush he will invariably do so, and the undigested portion loads the rectum as a greyish plug, so hard that a man may tread on such a deposit and scarcely break it. The straining the poor dog finds necessary to evacuate such faeces can be easily imagined.

Treatment of simple constipation should be begun with enemata. In giving clyster to dog or cat, great care should be taken not to frighten them. The enema to be selected should be an india-rubber bottle, as it requires only one hand, while the other hand is employed in holding up the tail, and steadying his hind parts. An assistant should hold him by the neck. If the would-be doctor is so situated that he cannot get help, he may do it alone by securing the dog to a fence or wall with a very short chain, and then go to the length of it with the dog; if kept at the end of it he cannot turn round and bite. With big dogs one may stand astride of them, pressing the knees in front of the hips of the dog and facing “astern.” The nozzle should never be of glass for fear of accidents, but bone, vulcanite, or metal; the last named should not be used for anything, but soap or saline solutions, oils, etc., as any chemical action upon the metal is to be deprecated. The anus as well as the nozzle of the bottle should be greased, and in pressing the ball the action should be firm and continuous, not fast or jerky; if gently performed there is no trouble next time, but, if rashly thrust into a rectum already packed, there will be much trouble on the next occasion. Cats are bad patients for the enema — easily frightened and not easily restrained, except by those who know “pretty Fanny’s ways.” They should not be thrust into a Wellington boot as tradition requires, but be rolled up in several folds of any soft material.

Of aperients for ordinary constipation we select the following; Mag sulph., sodae sulph., jalap as pulv. or tincture, cascara sagrada, castor oil and linseed or olive (equal parts — castor oil alone is so viscid and inconvenient), syr. rhamni, ext. coloc co., pil rhei co. Of the above, those most likely to be vomited are the pil rhei co. and ol. ricini. The dog and cat are very easily nauseated by aloes, and seldom retain a dose long enough to act as an aperient. We have a decided preference for mag. sulph., which may be sweetened with syrupus simplex for puppies and kittens.

PILES.

We have said that dogs are particularly subject to constipation, and we now add piles to the list of canine ailments. Here and there a cat will suffer, but it is not a common thing as with dogs. When the subject of haemorrhoids is at stool, he will often rise from his attitude of defecation and run a few yards, the while yelping with pain, then try again until he is relieved of his load, but not the pain, as may be judged from his anxious face and drooping tail, towards which he looks back now and again. Blood stains and mucus will be found on and about the anus, and more or less of a vascular tumour, or portion of everted rectum; this gradually returns in the majority of cases until the next stool. The dog continually licks the part, and worse still, sits upon the pavement, and by walking with his front legs drags his bottom along the road, excoriating the already painful enlargement.

Treatment of such a case should begin with ordering a laxative diet — no bones, no hard dry innutritious biscuits, but oatmeal porridge, moderately coarse, a small amount of green vegetable, with gravy, to induce the patient to eat it; sardines, cod’s roe, etc. If a Japanese pug, fruit is needed; they are great sufferers from piles, and chiefly because they do not eat enough fruit in this country. Figs, raisins and apples pulped up with meat and other favourite food may be given; curries and spices of every kind are provocative of piles in dogs. Diet is the chief thing with dogs, and most cases are curable if sufficient trouble is taken.

For medicines, liq. hammamelis, internally, and as an ointment, ung. gallae co.; pulv. ferri sulph. introduced on an oiled finger, or alum exsic. and pulv. amyli, P.B., applied in the same way. Neglected piles cause fistula, and this is a serious business. Pipes form and run in all directions from the rectum; as a rule they take a downward and inward course in the perineum, but whether they go up or down, or laterally, they must be bottomed with a probe and boldly slit through. Tinkering with injections of hyd. bichlor. and other things is generally time lost, as one or other of the sinuses fails to be destroyed, and spreads its branches anew, only to break out when the patient seems to be almost well. There is not the least danger in bold surgery here, the only danger is of not cutting enough.

FISTULA

in dogs often makes itself known by a greenish discharge from the anus. A very careful examination must be made, squeezing the parts and using the probe freely in order to find the sinuses. To accomplish their destruction is essential to healing, and if the direction a sinus takes makes it next to impossible to use the knife, a needle threaded with strong twine should be passed through the pipe by the aid of a director and brought out through the skin, making a wound for the purpose and getting a drain. The twine or tape used has to be dressed with hyd. bichlor. pulv., and quickly destroys the structures with which it comes in contact. Two or three such dressings, with intervals of two or three days usually suffice. A slough having been produced, the ordinary treatment for wounds follows, but no final and effectual repair will take place if the sinus is not destroyed. Besides haemorrhoids and fistulas we meet with cases of eversion of the rectum from time to time; the cause is constipation, or in weakly pot-bellied puppies and kittens, long continued diarrhoea. As much as 2 inches or 3 inches of rectum will protrude, and by exposure and violence of the patient present a horrible appearance, dark red to purple, and so enlarged as to look like a tumour, and impossible of return to the tyro in canine surgery. It is not, however, at all difficult to replace; the trouble comes in when defecation next becomes necessary.

The best method of returning a protruding gut is to take the dog up by the heels, letting him stand on his front feet, while the operator stands astride of him, grasping his tail firmly with the left hand, while with oiled fingers he gently, but forcibly, presses back the bowel. It would never go back but for the fact that the sphincter muscle of the anus becomes relaxed. This muscle acts again in favour of the doctor as soon as the gut is returned, but to secure it a couple of strong sutures must be placed deeply (to prevent tearing) in the sphincter ani. There is an instrument called West’s uterine and anal clamp, which answers the purpose better than sutures. It is provided with steel teeth, which nowhere meet, and around which circulation takes place freely, and suppuration is avoided; it can be worn for a long time and until the danger of eversion is past. However much bruised and lacerated the rectum, it generally repairs itself when replaced, and the more readily if dressed daily with an emollient and astringent combined, as liq. hammamelis dest. and glycerine, equal parts. Remedies having any powder in them, like the opium and gall ointment, do not agree so well as solutions or ointments without insoluble matters. A soothing ointment, where much pain is present, is the following:

Recipe: Liq. Plumbi – minim x.
Vaseline - ad oz j.
M. Ft. ung.; or lanolin and olive oil, equal parts.

Where the rectum is again exposed after several replacements, a more powerful astringent and contractor, in the form of liq. ferri. perchlor, must be cautiously used alternately with a saturated solution of alum sulph. Neglected cases cure themselves, as with pigs in the sloughing away and shortening of the gut, but it is a long and painful process which the humane owner of an animal ought to anticipate by one or other of the remedies we have suggested, unless for a cat, when calcarea and sulphur {homoeopathic) should be tried alternately.

PERINEAL ABSCESS

is more frequent than fistula or everted rectum, but having for its origin the same causes, namely, constipation and injury by rubbing the itching anus along the ground. This is a most painful condition, and the subject of it keeps his tail down and moves about so stiffly as to be suspected of rheumatism, crying out when lifted and yelling with pain when unloading the rectum. Unfortunately for the patient it is seldom discovered till a good deal of swelling has taken place and the enlargement is being licked by the dog, who shows an increasing difficulty in sitting down.

Treatment consists in hot fomentation. If the subject be a little dog or cat, it may be gently sat in a bowl of soapy warm water to soften to the utmost the inflamed and very likely matted parts. The situation makes it next to impossible to apply a poultice, but the abscess should be encouraged to point by painting it with ol. tereb., and repeating fomentations until a thin place can be felt, when the lancet should be boldly plunged into it, and the contents set free, gently squeezing out the matter with a sponge dipped in

Acid carbolic - 1 part.
Glycerine - 4 parts.
Aqua dest. - 20 parts.

If the abscess is properly emptied, it will heal up very quickly with dogs and rather less so with cats, because dogs lick vigorously and cats sulk. If it does not heal quickly in a dog it is because his licking is so strong as to break the soft granulations. In such a case the Elizabethan collar should be put on his neck, and he will be unable to make ends meet, except when at intervals it is removed to allow him to clean the part. Profuse granulations should be suppressed with solid nitrate of silver, applying, after cleaning the surface, with soap and warm water. A laxative diet should be observed, and during the formation of the abscess a few small doses of oil will save the patient a great deal of pain in the act of defecating.

Continuing our remarks on diseases of the digestive system in dogs and cats, we may observe that of all the organs taking part in digestion the liver is the most subject to disease in dogs. Cats do not escape, but as the subject of jaundice, the dog is, of all domesticated animals, the most frequent sufferer.

JAUNDICE

is caused by the bile passing into the circulation of the blood through some obstruction of the liver. It may be a sequel to inflammation of the liver or to distemper, or any poisonous matter or injury from chill, external violence, or other cause capable of interfering with the passage of bile into the duodenum. The liver is very large in dogs, and besides gall-stones, parasites, and other obstructions, the stimulation of the liver with hot and excessively fatty foods, indulgence by the fireside, and from that to icy-cold water immersions renders the dog more liable than animals like the cat, who seldom goes into a pond, unless in a bag or with a brick attached.

Running dogs, as greyhounds, fox terriers, etc., have been generally regarded as the most liable to jaundice, but a very long experience of town pets of all breeds enables us to speak with confidence when stating that all dogs are equally liable, and that over-feeding and heated rooms are as much a cause in pet dogs as exposure to wet and over-exertion in sporting dogs. When the veteran sporting dog retires to a life of ease he is even more liable to jaundice than when an active workman. When a number of hounds in a kennel get jaundice at the same time it is generally caused by some bad stuff they have had, in the shape of a horse that has died, or the filthy food called “greaves” (the refuse of candle factories) that has brought it about. Sudden changes from the dry biscuit to a lot of flesh that must be eaten up to prevent it going bad is a form of false economy, too often discovered after a lot of hounds have been smitten.

The symptoms are nearly always overlooked by dog owners, who take a dying dog to the vet. without ever having looked at the white of his eye or the inside of his mouth — points that should be examined in every sick dog or cat to ascertain by their colour whether an animal is suffering from acute inflammation, fever, or haemorrhage. Excessive languor is one of the symptoms, depression of spirits, loss of appetite constipation, colourless faeces, rapid loss of flesh are others.

If diarrhoea exists with it, as is sometimes the case, the faeces are offensive and greenish in colour, and mixed with mucus. The urine in a decided case is diagnostic. It is more or less thick at first, and afterwards saffron colour, staining walls and posts, and proving to the least observant of dog owners that there is something seriously wrong. Vomiting of dark, frothy fluid is a common symptom. The nose is dry, the circulation in the ears and feet irregular — now hot, now cold — the tongue is furred and the breath unpleasant; but most characteristic of all the symptoms is staining of the visible membranes with the yellow colouring of bile. The white of the eye on turning up the lid, the lips and inside of cheeks, inside of ears, under the armpits and inside of thighs, the thin, hairless portions of skin are all stained yellow, a colouring which can be seen between the toes, and even through the thick pads of the feet. What at first seems to be only indolence develops into sleepy prostration; the dog gets so thin along the back, and wasted about the head as to call attention to himself when almost beyond recovery, and hence the common idea among doggie people that jaundice or “yellows” is incurable. It is not so; in any stage but the last it is hopeful where no prejudices exist against bold doses of calomel. A dog of, say, 20 lbs. weight, can take 4 grains of calomel every morning for three days. Not only should all fatty food be withheld, but very little food of any kind be offered, even if the dog will eat it, which, if he does eat, is probably only an acknowledgment on his part of the kind attention of his nurse. It is no use in this or any other disease putting food into a stomach whose functions are suspended; food can only be of service where it can be assimilated. The careless person who will neglect a dog till nearly dead is, above all, anxious to stuff it unnecessarily when once aroused to do something for the patient. After three doses of calomel, of which probably one was vomited, saline laxatives should be given. Liq. ammoniae acetatis, pot. bicarb, with mag. sulph. or a little saline, say 10 to 30 grains daily, or half that quantity night and morning, with a milk diet, or plain lunch biscuits scalded and flavoured with a little meat essence or other non-fatty preparation of meat, or gravy freed from fat and mixed with bread crumb.

In speaking of jaundice as generally curable, we do not, of course, include those cases that arise from abscess in the liver, stone, inspissated bile, and other mechanical obstructions, which are rare as compared with functional derangement from excessive production of bile and temporary blocking of the ducts. If treatment is successful, there is a rapid diminution of the symptoms in two or three days, better spirits, less sleeplessness, an appetite for plain food, and better formation of faeces, but the staining of the membranes will be weeks before it disappears, and occasionally a permanent tint is left in the eyes. Saffron tinted urine will continue to be passed for some time after the dog is convalescent. If the cause of jaundice is not removable there will be increased fever and prostration, all the symptoms before described being aggravated, and the once yellow colour of the membranes will pass on to orange before convulsions or coma preludes death. Pregnant bitches have jaundice in a mild form from pressure of the gravid uterus; it generally passes off with exercise, and an aperient. Among huntsmen bleeding is still a favourite remedy for “yellows,” but on what principle adopted, is more than the practitioners of it can tell one.

Patients should not be allowed to lie in a corner all day or before a fire, but compelled to take moderate exercise, and kept in a place where there is plenty of fresh air. It has been stated by veterinary writers that jaundice is often induced by aloetic purges administered by gamekeepers and other amateur dog doctors, but the statement lacks confirmation. If one dog gets jaundice from the excessive use of aperients, it may be safely said that 100 get it for want of a purgative.

INFLAMMATION OF THE LIVER

is not so easily distinguished from jaundice, because the interrupted functions cause bile staining in the tissues. There is, however, more acute fever and pain over the region, particularly on the right side, tenderness on pressure, enlargement, loss of appetite, constipation, foul breath, flatulence, and rapid wasting.

Treatment.— Blister the sides with mustard or turpentine, and afterwards keep hot cloths applied until satisfied of having induced a diversion of blood to the skin.

Calomel should not be given, but the bowels kept open by soap enemas. No oils, no fatty food, but salines, as mag. sulph. and pot. bicarb., gr. x. to drachm ij., in at least an ounce of water night and morning. Abscess of the liver may be the cause or the sequel to inflammation of the liver. It is seldom correctly diagnosed, and generally terminates fatally by rupture into the abdomen, followed by peritonitis or pyaemia; but an occasional imperfect cure takes place by the matter of the abscess becoming hardened and shrunken and enclosed within a membrane. As it shrinks, and the pressure is relieved, a limited portion of the liver regains its function, and the animal lives on as in tuberculous and other deposits which may occupy a large part of the organ.

An acute attack of inflammation of the liver may settle into chronic hepatitis. This condition, whether as a sequel to acute hepatitis, or having its origin in some other way, is most frequently met with in the morose old pets who have become accustomed to the best position on the hearth-rug, and the choicest of tit-bits administered by ladies who have suffered themselves to be enslaved by a gouty old pet in whom no one else can see anything to admire. If the fair owners will consent to a physicking and abstinence, the useless life may be prolonged, but they generally will not. They will give powders that assist digestion more or less, and help to get rid of effete material both by the kidneys and bowels, but it is a question whether with many owners they do not give these powders to enable their pets to eat even more than they could without them. We could, but we may not, name a celebrated quack who has a most enviable sale for these alterative powders, ladies paying half-a-crown a dozen.

Recipe. Pot. nit. – gr. j.
Antim. croc. – quarter gr.
Sulph. sub. – gr. ij.
Mag. sulph. (exsic.) – gr iij.
Carbo animalis – gr. j.
M. Ft. Pulv. Omni mane cum cibo.

The powder may be thrown upon the tongue without loss if the patient will not eat it in some savoury morsel. Skin, kidneys, and bowels are all called upon by the above agents, and the breath made more agreeable by the carbo animalis.

Fatty degeneration of the liver is not so infrequent as veterinary authors have generally supposed, because so few. post-mortem examinations worthy of the name are made. The value of a dead dog is his manurial value on the one hand, or his skin for stuffing by the few who care to see an old friend caricatured. In the first case no post-mortem is made, and in the second he is sent to the taxidermist without the trouble and expense of one. Again, the owner feels a sense of sacrilege in allowing the surgeon’s knife to be used on a dead pet, while not thinking of the ruder methods adopted by the artist who will presently make the dog “live again,” though but in dumb show, and so it happens, for various reasons, few autopsies are made. The conditions favourable to fatty degeneration of the liver are over-feeding on rich food, want of exercise, and the confirmed habit of sitting by the fireside. Instead of a rich chocolate hue, a pale granular surface is presented when the liver is cut up. During life an irritable, sleepy, lazy disposition has characterised the patient. Cats occasionally, but not often, suffer in this way. When a cat is the victim, it will be a neuter cat, as entire males get more exercise. The entire female cat has so much business on hand in rearing kittens that all her fat is converted into milk for her numerous progeny.

Biliary calculi have a tendency to form in dogs more than in other domesticated animals; there is a tendency to crystallisation and aggregation of cholesterin in the passages of the liver, and the majority of these escape into the bowels, and are passed away without harm. If a dose of calomel is given to a fat old dog, and the excreta washed and filtered, the inquirer may verify the above, for, in the absence of calculi, he will be almost certain to find solid bile products. If a calculus is too large to pass, acute pain, resembling colic, is evinced, and an area of inflammation set up which may cause, as before hinted at, either hepatitis or jaundice. Reduction of the volume of the liver should be attempted by leeches applied to the right hypochondriac region, by osmosis from the frequent administration of salines, and by fasting; with these aids a stone of considerable size will occasionally pass through a duct whose calibre is less than the object passed. Mineral acids, especially nitro-hydrochloric, have long enjoyed the credit of being lithontriptics, but the action must be very slight, if any, upon a calculus that is so unwilling to dissolve outside the body when dropped into the acid. If the component parts are so comparatively insoluble in direct contact with acids, how infinitely small must be the action upon them by an agent acting through the medium of the circulation, and undergoing we know not what chemical changes in digestion.

The spleen is occasionally the cause of death in both dogs and cats, and an occasional happy guess has been dignified by the title of diagnosis of a condition known as splenitis or inflammation of the spleen. Its enormous enlargement may lead one to hazard a conjecture that the bulging is not from the liver but the spleen. The symptoms are confused with those common to acute fevers, without eruptions, and having no specific course. Vomiting is said to be accompanied with yellow frothy mucus, but there is nothing distinctive or symptomatic in that to enable us to diagnose it. The functions of the spleen in health have never been clearly made out. It is an enclosed gland without ducts, and if it is the seat of manufacture of red blood corpuscles, it has no special conduit for conveying them into the circulation, but it is to be presumed that they migrate as they become mature. The spleen of the dog, like that of other domestic animals, shows in a marked manner the effect of anthracoid diseases; the whole volume of the organ, saving its dense fibrous envelope, may be converted into dark tarry looking fluid in the rare instances in which a dog may fall a victim to anthrax.

If on post-mortem examination the spleen is found to have undergone this physical metamorphosis, the microscope should be called into requisition, with a view to settle the presence or otherwise of the bacillus of malignant anthrax. Flesh eating animals are not easily infected with anthrax, and the few cases met with in dogs and cats, and not artificially superinduced, are derived from eating the flesh of cattle that have died of blackquarter, which is quite a distinct disease from malignant anthrax and splenic fever, though equally fatal. Symptomatic anthrax usually affects the flesh only of one limb or a portion merely of the victim, the carcases have hitherto been only too often used for human food* after removal of the “struck” portion, but even the latter is thought good enough for dogs, and only rarely proves fatal to them, unless a vegetable diet has been their custom previously, when they are rendered more susceptible. The bacillus in question is distinguished from that of malignant anthrax by being shorter, thicker, and rounded at the ends, and, according to Klein, showing a bright oval spore on some of the ends, which he asserts is never present in malignant anthrax bacilli.

[*An Order in Council now makes it compulsory to bury in their skins under 6 ft. of earth the carcases of such animals, and a heavy penalty is incurred by infringement of the law.]

DISEASES OP THE URINARY AND GENITAL ORGANS.

The kidneys of the dog are large in proportion to his size, and their office even more important than in animals which freely perspire. Inflammation of the kidneys (nephritis) is met with sometimes in dogs inordinately fond of swimming or exposed to exceptional hardship. The dog-cart is responsible for a good many inflammations, and this among them. The dog gets wet through to the skin, and when tired out is put into the cart and driven home after a day’s sport, getting chilled as he lays on the floor of the vehicle, with the added probability of keen draught and night air. Strains in jumping and blows, falls, etc., account for other cases, while the presence of renal calculus has also to be reckoned with occasionally. Remedies injudiciously given for worms have been known to produce nephritis, conspicuous among these being turpentine and cantharides.

Symptoms. — A peculiar stiffness and straddling of the hind legs, crouching, tenderness over the loins, difficulty in urinating, the water being high coloured and quickly showing a sediment, which, if examined microscopically, exhibits well-formed casts of the malpighian cones of the kidney. The urine is often stained with blood or sanious matter resembling it. Temperature taken per rectum ranges as high as 106 Fahr. in bad cases, mucus membranes injected, nose hot and dry, and tongue furred.

Treatment. — Bran or linseed poultices made hot and constantly renewed all along the loins, or a strong liniment, but not one containing cantharides or turpentine, as there is special danger of absorption in nephritis. Leeches are recommended, but they do not readily accept the office. Mustard is a safe and efficacious application where poultices cannot be conveniently applied. Clysters of warm water frequently thrown up the rectum have a soothing effect. Mucilago acaciae, linseed tea, and barley water acidulated with a little lemon juice should be given as drenches in tolerably large quantities every few hours. Diuretics should be avoided, unless cantharides in homoeopathic doses can be so called; this latter agent has proved eminently useful in the hands of some practitioners whose exceptional experience entitles them to respect.

Hsematuria, or bloody urine, has for its cause pretty much the same list of accidents — blows, overjumping, straining, calculi, etc., as nephritis. Broken blood vessels or torn structure, caused by the ragged edges of a stone. There is pain in passing urine, evidenced by grunts and sudden suspension of the act, and again fresh attempts, pain and tenderness on pressure may be present, but is not an invariable symptom, as in inflammation of the kidney. Blood and mucus may drip from the penis when not in the act of passing urine, but leaking away as it were. Blood coming from the kidney is equally mixed with urine, but if it come from the bladder the urine passes first, and blood follows with the last few drops of urine and sedimentary matter.

If the urethral canal is wounded and blood comes from it, there is an absence of the other symptoms described in connection with nephritis, and injury to the kidney or its vessels; it passes without reference to the act of urination.

Treatment. — Avoid diuretics, and to open the bowels use clysters of soap or glycerine. Two to 10 grains of gallic acid, or a like quantity of acetate of lead for a dose, the gallic acid with drachm measures of glycerine and the acetate in linseed tea. Decoct, quercus drachm j. to drachm iv., tinct. kino co m. x. to lx., or cinchona decoction. Any of these remedies are indicated, or if homoeopathic treatment is preferred give two doses of cantharides, followed by phosphorus.

Renal calculi, before mentioned, in connection with kidney inflammation, are not by any means rare in dogs, but are usually small and often numerous in the same dog; they are said to be formed upon a nucleus of some foreign matter, but how it can get there is rather a puzzle. Section of very large numbers has failed to show us a nucleus other than crystals of uric acid mixed with mucus or effete material, such as is always found in the pelvis of the kidney. Renal calculi consist of phosphate of calcium, ammonium and urates. They are not very soluble in acids, as animal matter is mixed with the mineral constituents, and they must be dried and crushed before a solution can be made with a view to chemical tests. Their presence in the kidney creates irritation, inflammation of the substance of the kidney (nephritis), haematuria or abscess.

Symptoms are intermittent; now and again the patient suffers acute pain, straddling behind, stiffness of the loins, lameness, carrying one leg, tenderness on pressure, bloody urine, etc., and as suddenly gets well again, with or without treatment, but it generally ends badly. It would seem that calculi block the ureters and get shifted again in the struggles of the animal rolling upon his back, etc.

Cystitis, or inflammation of the bladder, is more often caused by a ragged stone in it than by kicks and blows, although they are by no means rare causes. The symptoms are more like those of acute colic than inflammation. There is not the quiet resignation to suffering that marks the dog with inflammation of the kidney, but sighing and looking round at the flank and restlessness. Sympathetic fever runs high; constipation and vomiting mark its course; and one may reasonably suppose acute headache from the general demeanour of the patient, and the absorption of urea into the circulation, poisoning the nerve centres, and even producing paralysis. There is great thirst, and the urine is passed with pain and in drops; it varies greatly in colour and density, sometimes containing mucus from the lining membrane of the bladder, or pus, or it may be blood-stained.

Treatment. — Patients of a manageable size should be seated in a warm bath, and when removed quickly sponged dry and wrapped in numerous folds of flannel. Of all sedatives belladonna has the most soothing effect upon the bladder. It may be applied as emp. belladonnas by clipping the loins and upper part of flanks, and given internally in doses of m. ij. to xv. of tincture. If there is total inability to pass urine, even with the assistance of the bath, it may become necessary to pass the catheter. It used to be supposed that the bone in a dog’s penis prevented the passage of the catheter, but such is not the case; the bone is there and the penis in situ is curved in such a manner as to make it impossible to pass an instrument through the urethral canal unless it would take the form of a letter S. Every doggie individual, who would understand the treatment of sick dogs, should take the opportunity of examining the penis of a dead dog and the genital organs of a bitch; he need not know the scientific names or be able to give a description with technical terms, but he can convey to his own mind a general outline of anatomy, which, when supplemented by reading, will stand him in good stead when called upon in an emergency such as we are supposing. A veterinary surgeon cannot always be had, and, we say it with shame, there are but few who have ever passed a catheter in a dog — they prefer horse and cattle practice, and leave dogs and cats to a few specialists and many quacks. A vet. in large practice, with two qualified assistants, all three called in a cab one night for the writer of these lines to come and pass a catheter on a Pomeranian dog, which had passed no water for three days and nights; but it was too late, the bladder was ruptured, and the animal of course died. We will briefly describe the methods of passing the catheter on male and female dogs and female cats.

A male dog should be muzzled by three or four turns of wide tape round his face, crossed under the neck, and tied in a bow at the back, so as to be easily released. Two persons are required, one to hold him on a table on his back, with hind legs held firmly in one hand and the front legs in the other, while pressing the head and neck firmly with the elbow. The position will require shifting from time to time, and a nervous person is no use for an assistant. Men of the gamekeeper type are the best, or the groom who came from the country. Having secured the animal, examine the opening into the sheath, and with the left hand grasp the thick part of the penis firmly while pushing back the prepuce with the thumb and index finger of the right hand till the vermiform process of the penis is visible; great resistance is offered by the retractor muscles, and at first the dog is much alarmed, and should be soothed by the voice, and made to understand that you are at least not angry with him whatever you may find it necessary to do. The penis must be seized with the right hand and drawn out with gentle but continuous effort until the muscles relax.

There is a slimy secretion on the sheath that makes the penis very difficult to hold unless a dry powder or cloth is used; a piece of old calico is to be preferred, as the most innocent of powders will leave so much matter in the wrong place. The very pointed shape of the penis causes most people to look for the orifice of the urethral canal in the wrong place. It is quite at the tip, and remains closed in the usual way, so that it is easily overlooked in a penis in which the skin is already drawn forward. A small catheter should be selected, even if it have to be replaced by a larger, as it is much easier to pass a second one if the first is too slow. The point of the catheter should be anointed with lard or vaseline, but it is better still to begin the operation by injecting a small syringe full of olive or almond oil up the urethra to facilitate the passage of the instrument, which should be held close to the penis to avoid bending, and pushed till it reaches the bulbous enlargement, when a decided resistance is felt, and continued for some little time. Gentle but continuous pressure will cause it to give way unless the catheter selected is too large; then it passes on till the sudden curve of the penis is reached, so it passes over the pelvis. At this stage a finger should be gently pressed on the point of the instrument, which can be easily felt and guided in the upward direction, which may be further assisted by an oiled finger being pushed into the rectum; the rest of the journey is easily made, and the sphincter of the bladder offers but very slight resistance. The stilette should then be carefully withdrawn and the urine should commence to flow. The wire, or whatever is used to stiffen the catheter, should be oiled before using, as it sometimes happens that when the instrument has been successfully passed into the bladder the stilette will not draw, partly through sticking to the sides and partly from the curve it has to make. Some of the celluloid catheters now sold are stiff enough, yet sufficiently soft when warmed by the body to do without a wire. As soon as the contents of the bladder cease to flow freely the operation should be stopped, as it is not advisable to empty the bladder entirely. It cannot contract upon nothing, and its function is more likely to be restored by being only half emptied and the over pressure relieved.
Passing the catheter on bitch and cat presents some difficulties, but not insuperable to one who will spare no trouble to relieve pain, and, try to save the life of an animal deserving consideration.

It is essential to know where the meatus urinarius is situated. On the floor of the vagina in small dogs and large cats, about an inch from the labiae, a reflection of membrane covers it, acting as a sort of valve, in addition to a sphincter muscle Of involuntary non-striated fibres. A view can be obtained by dilating the vagina by a proper instrument, or, if none better be obtainable, a small pair of tongs such as ladies use for toilet purposes may be introduced and gently opened laterally, when the meatus may be seen and its position borne in mind. The catheter should be curved sharply and held in a position above and behind the animal, taking the same preparatory precautions as recommended for the male. To those who have not attempted to interfere with the vagina of a cat it will be surprising to find how readily she will permit the introduction of an instrument, but in cases of violent opposition on the part of a patient, the simple expedient of putting her under chloroform may be resorted to. The danger of chloroform is funk. There is no real danger, and advantage should be more freely taken of it, as we have elsewhere advocated.

RUPTURE OF THE BLADDER

may be caused by blocking of the urethral canal, but is more often the result of a blow or fall when the bladder is full of urine, and the dog too much engrossed in pursuit of sport to give himself the necessary relief. It is a grievous thing to have to add that many cases of ruptured bladder occur through a fear of punishment on the part of house-dogs unable to get out, and forgotten by thoughtless persons, who would be the first to chide a dog for yielding to Nature’s demands in the house. The symptoms are utter collapse, running down pulse, sighing, reeling gait if made to walk, and death, without intermission of the pain and distress. Retention of urine is most painful and extremely injurious; it causes chronic inflammation, and sometimes paralysis of the muscular coat. Among the causes of retention of the urine may be mentioned kicks and blows to the perineum, inflammation of the urethra, clots, calculi, diseased penis and paralysis.

Bladder stones are more frequent than kidney stones, and are sometimes the cause of cystitis and colicky pains, which pass off again. While in the bladder, if not rugged or having processes upon them, and large enough to prevent descent into the urethral canal, they may remain for years without giving trouble or being discovered. They are apt to form in large numbers, but of very small size, and descend into the canal, blocking it up, and leading to several of the diseases we have already described, as well as results to the canal and penis. When stones are lodged in the urethral canal it is generally in the unyielding part that runs through the penis bone.

The first symptoms are uneasiness, restlessness, and constant attempts to urinate without results, and this is the time to afford effectual aid. It is best done by injecting warm oil rather forcibly, holding the end of the penis for a little time to keep the oil in the canal; a small catheter should be passed, and the calculi may be moved into a place of safety, or some of the softer ones broken up. It happens sometimes that they are merely piled together in a position from which pressure of the urine above keeps them packed, while the catheter immediately upsets the arrangement, and small stones no bigger than a millet seed will pass out in the stream of urine, and immediate relief be obtained. Larger stones lodged in other parts of the canal must be cut down upon and removed whole. When any surgical interference with the urethra has been necessary, it is desirable to give it as much rest as possible, to allow it to heal. It should be injected with warm water and glycerine, 1 part in 20, and the patient kept on short commons, and not allowed to drink anything but mucilaginous fluids, as barley water, linseed tea, milk, etc., and these in only barely sufficient quantity to slake his thirst, since the less urine there is to be passed the less often will the canal be used, and the demulcent nature of the drink will have some modifying influence on the scalding effect that urine produces on a wound or injured membrane. There are many speculations as to the causes of calculi in the urinary apparatus; one thing is remarkable, that young dogs are not by any means exempt, as there are many cases in animals no more than a year old.

Besides calculi and other injuries to the penis, enlargement of the prostate gland and stricture, dogs suffer from a species of gonorrhoea, which is called bolanitis; it does not come from the urethra but the prepuce. It may be the result of excessive venery or a symptom of debility, as in distemper and other wasting diseases, or of indigestion, especially in lazy old dogs, which have an unpleasant habit that leads to local irritation.

Treatment must depend upon the cause. In a young but debilitated animal, tonics internally — preferably iron and quinine — local cleanliness, and a mild astringent lotion of liq. hamamelis or glycerine and borax. In old, luxurious dyspeptics a drastic purgative is indicated, plenty of fresh air, cold bathing and thorough cleansing of the prepuce with warm water and soap, followed by a mildly caustic lotion of argent, nit., 3, or 4 grains to the ounce of aqua dest., or liq. ferri, very dilute. If fomentation and cleaning out of the prepuce is repeated, a powder of equal parts of zinc, sulph., zinc, ox., and acid tannic may be inserted within the prepuce, but it must not be left more than a day without careful washing. Old bitches are particularly liable to a mucopurulent discharge, which, at first painful, settles into a gleet, and is very objectionable in several ways in a house dog. Treatment should be constitutional and local, as in dogs, unless it arises from other causes peculiar to the sex, as inflammation of the ovaries, tumour, polypus, etc.

Difficulties in urination, which may have been regarded as stone or kidney disease, are sometimes found to be caused by warts on the penis, which being removed by any of the methods advocated for warts on other parts, the effect ceases. Ligature is to be preferred in this situation for fear of injuring other structures.

The scrotum suffers irritation and inflammation from accidents and from an irritability developed by excessive intercourse, as in the case of prize dogs kept for stud purposes; sores upon the integument, which have become confluent and attracted dirt, attain to so large a mass as to have been dubbed cancer. It is not cancer, however malignant it may become either from neglect or self-inflicted injury. It happens, too, that a scrotum once injured is always in the way; the dog sits upon it, hits it in getting over fences or going through hedges, etc.

Warm fomentations frequently applied, or a poultice if it can be kept on by a many tailed bandage brought over the back, both sides of the tail, under the belly, and in front of the stifle joints, and fastened over the loin with a crupper piece under the tail. A muzzle must be put on the dog’s neck, but even with this appliance he will most likely get it off. When the scab has been soaked off and a clean raw surface exposed, it should be dusted over with zinci. ox. two or three times after each fomentation. If the sores remain indolent, and pale weak granulations continue, then a fourth part of pulv. resinae may be added with advantage to the oxide. Ung. zinci. ox. is an excellent dressing, but anything of an unctuous nature is more likely to be licked off than a dry powder.

ORCHITIS

is more often caused by injuries or invasion from inpammed scrotum than by excessive intercourse or suppressed desire, although both of these may be occasionally responsible for its causation. A glistening, tight skin, exceedingly tender to the touch, is a prominent symptom; the scrotum appears to be stretched over the inflamed testicle and is hot to the touch.

Fomentations and laxatives, combined with small doses of potass, iodid. from one-eighth to 2 grains, will generally effect a cure in recent cases, but neglected it passes on to a chronic enlargement, with induration and comparative insensibility. Hydrocele may be a sequel. This is best let alone unless the scrotum is so enlarged as to cause friction by chafing against the thighs as it hangs down between them. If treatment is attempted, a pneumatic aspirator should be used to draw off the dropsical fluid, and a day or two afterwards, before any great accumulation can again take place, an injection should be made into the scrotum with a subcutaneous syringe (choosing a different place from that used for the aspirator). The fluid to be injected should consist of a 5 per cent. solution of iodide of potassium.

Despite the best treatment it sometimes becomes necessary to castrate the animal; this, of course, is an effectual cure. We have hitherto treated principally of the diseases of the male generative organs, but those of the female give us more trouble in connection with the all-important subject of breeding. If this matter could be left out of account bitches would be much less trouble than dogs, but we can have no dogs without bitches, a fact in nature sometimes forgotten by those who refuse to have a bitch at any price, and quote the old adage of “if you have a dog, have a dog,” but someone must have a bitch, and she will require the veterinarian’s help occasionally.

OESTRUM.

OEstrum, or the period of “heat” in the bitch is irregular, while it may be said to be very regular in the cat, occurring every 21 days or thereabouts. As a general rule, bitches come in season twice a year, spring and autumn, but there are many exceptions to the rule, some only once a year and others three times, while a few are habitually in a condition resembling oestrum, yet rarely becoming pregnant. We may here describe the symptoms of heat. The generative organs are externally enlarged the labiae majora distended to three times the ordinary size, and at first a glairy mucus, then a sanguineous discharge and a gradual return to the ordinary condition, the whole period covering 10 days to a fortnight on an average, although some bitches will be three weeks from first to last. The period of oestrum with cats is usually only three days, and it need be no longer, considering how often it recurs, in the rare intervals in which she is not pregnant. The subject of breeding can be left to fanciers, but the mesalliances that frequently happen call for the subsequent interference by the veterinary surgeon in a variety of ways. Whether an immediate and copious injection of zinci sulph. or alum sulph. has the effect of sterilising the spermatozoa is a moot question. It is worth trying, because many bitches so treated have not become pregnant. Again, a bitch may be found to be ill the day after intercourse, the genitals greatly inflamed, and the bitch altogether feverish” and without appetite. Warm injections of dilute glycerine or warmed oil used in the same way are to be recommended, and if very, restless, and in much pain, a little extract of belladonna may be rubbed down and added to the injection.

Except for a few cases of jaundice, it may be said that as a
general rule bitches and cats are never so healthy and happy as when pregnant. With them there is no morning sickness, no vapours or apprehensions, and the more sport and exercise they get the better, until too heavy for anything but a constitutional walk; this can be taken up to the last day.

THE PERIOD OP GESTATION

in bitch and cat is nearly the same, being reckoned roughly at nine weeks. Careful account of large numbers give the following averages - Bitch, 63 days; cat, 55 days.

Besides the illnesses incidental to parturition the female organs are liable to disease — from the ovary at one end to the labiae at the other. Virgin bitches, as well as mothers of families, are liable to ovarian diseases, as also are cats.

INFLAMMATION OP THE OVARIES

when acute is attended with much pain, and is not at first easily distinguished from other forms of abdominal pain, but soon finds expression in a discharge from the vagina. It commonly settles into a chronic form, and the conduct of the bitch or cat becomes very disagreeable, as she is always sexually excited, yet not becoming pregnant. From the remote position of the structures affected — ovaries and Fallopian tubes — it is useless to attempt treatment; if only the animal will become pregnant and give birth to young, a physiological cure is wrought, and the increased vascularity of the organs is diverted to a more fruitful purpose. The only remedy, as a rule, is an operation for the removal of some parts of the genital organs, which we shall describe fully in a chapter on emasculation.

OVARIAN TUMOUR,

so common in the human subject at a particular period of life, is not rare in bitches and cats; and as we have not the sanctity of human life always haunting us in veterinary practice, we do not hesitate to recommend operation when a tumour is clearly made out, since it will not be worth the risk of trying to breed from such an animal. Ovarian tumours may be compound and contain several cysts within a somewhat solid matrix, but they often consist of only one large cyst, which may break and be absorbed, remain at a certain stage of growth, or decrease in size by becoming solidified, seldom causing death, but rendering the patient more or less useless by having a large and pendulous belly, and by its pressure and displacement of other organs, pressing forward on the diaphragm and interfering with respiration in an animal from whom the greatest activity is necessary to usefulness in any capacity but that of watch dog. Cysts can sometimes be evacuated by an aspirator without recurring.

ABORTION

is frequent just in proportion to the high breeding and value of cat or dog. The mongrel bitch may be kicked and cuffed and subjected to all sorts of malign influences without bad result, but the Japanese pug and the prize Persian cat are shy breeders and frequent subjects of abortion. Avoidance of excitement and regular exercise are to be enjoined. There is nothing to prevent abortion when once premature labour pains come on; and it is better for the foetus to be expelled than to remain in utero dead, as may sometimes be the case when sedative doses arrest the process. One exception may be taken to this, namely, that a bitch or cat may carry some living and some dead occupants of the womb up to the time of parturition. Remarkable instances are on record of dead animals in utero remaining for months and years, and instances are on record where a dead foetus, outside the womb, has become encased within a membrane and remained unsuspected till after death. The average bred bitch and cat are less subject to monstrosities and departures from normal processes than other domesticated animals. The eight-legged or two-headed lamb, which many country people still think worth stuffing, is very, very rare among dogs or cats, an extra claw being the most frequent of any of the departures from the ordinary rule.

EVERSION

of the vagina happens to some bitches at each period of oestrum, and, of course, precludes sexual intercourse and pregnancy. It should be promptly returned by the same means as recommended in cases of eversion of the rectum, the “clamp” described for that purpose being better still, and originally used for the labiae of the female animal. Pessaries have been recommended by persons who write about, but do not practise among dogs; in theory, the idea is excellent, but, in practice, it will be found that the bitch will never rest all the time a foreign body is in the vagina or uterus, but will strain a dozen times more than if let alone. There is nothing like the clamp, which causes a shrinking away instead of an effort at expulsion. The food during such a time should be nutritious, but in small bulk, in order to leave as much belly room as possible. The bowels should be kept soft, not purged; the straining effort necessary to pass hard faeces is sufficient to force out the vagina if not held by a mechanical appliance such as we have named.

Eversion of the uterus is a still more serious affair, and requires some manipulative ability to return it. It should be carefully cleansed with warm water, and the softest of sponges, and returned with oiled hands, afterwards attaching the clamp. Treatment should be directed to keep down fever and prevent straining. If there are puppies to be considered, sedatives must be given with caution, but in the case of valuable progeny, a foster mother should be found for a day or two, while the bitch is kept sleepy by repeated doses of chloral, opium, or cannabis indicus. The contractile action of ergot upon the human uterus suggests the like treatment, but it does not appear to influence the womb of bitches either in large or small doses, and fails to produce abortion. Rest to the injured parts is all that is needed, and the sucking of the pups, or some other pups obtained for the purpose, brings about the necessary contraction. The superfluous material of the womb undergoes fatty degeneration, and is utilised in forming milk. If an operation is performed in three or four weeks from parturition, and the uterus thereby exposed to view, it will be found to have shrunk to its normal unimpregnated size in a bitch that has been suckling the while; but in a bitch or cat, whose offspring has been consigned to the bucket, it will not have wasted by half as much.

INFLAMMATION OF THE UTERUS

(metritis) happens after a difficult labour, or malpresentation, when mechanical aid has been given — sometimes without. Beside the ordinary symptomatic fever that accompanies any inflammation of a large internal organ, there is a discharge from the vagina of a foetid muco-purulent nature, fulness of the abdomen, standing about as if afraid to lie down, scalding pain in urinating, and very likely suppression of milk.

Treatment. — A good soft bed is indispensable to an animal afraid to lie down, and this should be the first consideration, besides coaxing and commanding the patient to avail herself of it. Injections of

Recipe. Liq. plumbi - 1 part.
Liq. opii. sed. - 1 part.
Glycerine - 2 parts.
Aq. dest. – 20parts.

should be gently propelled into the passage, remembering that the orifice is intensely sensitive, and any further irritation leads to retention of urine for fear of the scalding pains. Pessaries would seem to be here indicated, but do not succeed, as before said, and the attendant must be satisfied with injections, not too hot either. It is a comfort to the patient to be sat in a hip-bath of warm water, and it will induce urination. Opium should be given internally, either tinct. opii minim j to minim x., or liq. opii. sed., with each dose giving half to two drachms of olive or linseed oil, and watching the state of the bowels, aiding them with soap enemata to the extent of never allowing hardened faeces to accumulate. Solution of permanganate of potash may be injected if there is much foetor, but preparations of carbolic acid should be avoided. Long continued inflammation or injuries which may, in rare instances, cause ulceration of the uterus, is best treated by operation through the flank — hysterectomy.

POLYPUS

in the vagina is rare, but a pediculated fibrous tumour, commonly called polypus, is not so seldom seen. It has attachment to the lining membrane of the vagina and can generally be removed effectually by seizing it with forceps or the fingers, and by gentle traction getting it within view, sufficiently to get a ligature round; this tied very tight, but without the aid of caustics of any kind, will effect its destruction by arresting the blood supply. If it does not succeed in two or three days the ligature has got slack, and must be renewed; the ends should be left long enough to be easily found. After removal, a little simple ointment, or mildly astringent application, as glycerine and acid tannic, will be all that is required, it being generally a very easy and satisfactory operation, as it has probably existed for some time, and by its presence created a certain amount of discharge and unsightliness, all of which is rapidly removed. Displacement of the uterus and hernia are rarely met with, but there are cases on record, as also dropsy of the uterus, a disease of old maids among the canine family; it is rare to meet with it in bitches that have had pups. Old cats are often a “bad figure” from the same cause.

PARTURITION.

The act of parturition is nearly always accomplished in safety by wild animals, and the difficulties appear to increase with domestication. The higher the state of civilisation of animals or of man the greater difficulty of birth giving; it therefore follows that the more valuable of our patients are those most likely to need our aid. This assistance it should be a pleasure to give to those who love animals. If you have had no experience, you may take that of the writer, and believe that it is attended with much less that is disagreeable than in the higher calling of the human accoucheur. Unnecessary interference is to be deprecated, but timely help saves many a valuable life and brings credit to the surgeon, or satisfaction to the amateur endowed with sufficient sympathy to render assistance at such times.

Mr. Blaine says:— “Great numbers of dogs die every year in bringing forth their young. A life of art has brought the human curse upon them, and they seem, in common with their female owners, doomed to bring forth in sorrow and pain.” If labour pains are frequent, the expulsive effort strong, and yet no result, an examination should be made, an oiled finger introduced, and exploration made to satisfy the accoucheur as to the presentation. It is usually held to be correct for the head and front legs to be presented first, and should be in the mare and cow, but with multiparous animals, they as often come one and one, that is to say, first a front presentation, then a hind, or two or three pups or kittens may come head first, and others present their tails to the world’s admiration before launching bodily into it. It does not much matter which end comes first so long as the legs are extended to the world end; if they are not, means must be adopted to get hold of them.

Mr. Woodroffe Hill says : “A breech presentation, rarely happens;” but having witnessed hundreds of such presentations, there must have been some mistake, we think, in setting up his opinions in type. The same author also advocates ergot; we, however, insist that a large experience and consensus of veterinary opinion is against ergot, even at the risk of being dogmatic.

There is much difficulty with small dogs and cats, as the passage is not large enough as a rule to admit two fingers, and allow them to work. It is easier by far to, say, seize hold of the legs than to grasp the soft slippery limbs of the pup or kitten. Pieces of string, a button hook, a pair of surgeon’s bone forceps, hooks, both blunt and pointed, will do a great deal in the hands of an experienced person, and one soon finds out what is needed to be done. There are besides ordinary breech presentations, positions in which it would be a physical impossibility to deliver a youngster, as in the case of three legs being presented; one at least of them must belong to the wrong end, and only experienced fingers can tell a hind leg from a front, which to pull forward and secure with a cord, and which to push back. In the case of twin calves, we have known the front legs of one calf and the hind legs of the other to be presented. Bitches and cats, as a rule, are so sensible at such times that they rather assist than retard the person who is willing to help them. If once a firm hold can he got of the foetus, it can, with care, be got away, except it
has been dead some time, and the tissues, already softened, keep breaking away each time that a ligature has been laboriously secured round a limb.

Of all the peculiar attitudes in which a kitten or puppy can be presented, there is, after all, no such difficult case as a big bullet-headed pup tightly jammed a long way in; the dam has done her utmost and given it up, the liquor amnii leaked away, and she will certainly die if the foetus is not removed for her. The life of the pup or kitten must then be made a secondary consideration, and a hook inserted in the mouth, pushed back into the skull, if possible, in order to get a sufficient hold, then, before trying to move it, a syringe-full of warm water with one in 40 or 50 of glycerine, should be rather forcibly injected. Use gentle traction, taking care to stop the moment the hook begins to tear away, and in its place, if possible, fasten a wire button-hook into one of the orbits, and try again if some movement is made. The mother will try again, as any motion, artificially induced, excites new efforts on the part of the involuntary muscular structures of the womb, and probably some voluntary effort as well. That labour can go on while under the influence of chloroform seems to indicate that it is all involuntary, but nurses say “try,” and human patients say they do. Your benedicts must decide this for themselves.

Forceps are specially made for small animals, but where there is room enough to use them there is not much need for them. The want of space is the whole difficulty, both of the mother and the accoucheur. It is to the smaller and more delicate breeds that the professional man is most often called. The dilatation of the vagina, and of the os uteri of the cat is greater in proportion to her size than it is in the bitch, and if at no other time, we can call her a good patient; she usually is when in difficulties of the kind we are considering. She is not so liable to bad effects from protracted labour, either during or after a bad labour, and may have several kittens, with intervals of hours and days, and yet bring them forth alive, and give them every attention in the intervals of labour pains; indeed, the manner in which she passes from licking the last kitten to attending to the delivery of the next parcel, must have suggested the proverb that “Care killed the cat, and not the number of her kittens.” Among the troubles incidental to parturition may be enumerated fits, milk fever, abscess, etc.

FITS

are usually the result of taking away all the young at one time — a cruel practice, which ought to entitle anyone guilty of it to the attention of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Alas! that prevention of cruelty seems to be subordinated to hunting the lame cabby, and the hoarse costermonger, who often work in more pain than the animals belonging to them. The offspring of a mesalliance in the bitch, or the too numerous progeny of the common cat, are thoughtlessly destroyed by people whose sickly sentiments deem it cruel to perform operations, that once done, and under the influence of anaesthetics, prevent the murder of several families per annum of innocent kittens, and finally of the old cat herself.

A fit caused in this way is best treated by a warm bath, an enema, and a few doses of alum, 1 to 5 grains, night and morning, as this has a drying effect. Food of a milk-producing character should be withheld, and the udder stripped with the finger and thumb at irregular intervals; withdrawing a part of the milk relieves the pressure, but imperfect and irregular milking soon causes the supply to cease, as cowkeepers know to their cost. It may not be out of place to mention here that, as many valuable bitches and cats have an insufficient supply to bring up the young, so much valued, no one should dry off a female without making an effort to find her a berth as wet nurse. A sixpenny advertisement in one of the animal papers, especially the Exchange and Mart, will be nearly sure to provide the poor creature with a home, and remunerate the owner too.

MILK FEVER

in other animals takes the form in dogs and cats of what is called parturient eclampsia. It comes on between the fourth and fourteenth day after giving birth, and with bitches which have had large healthy pups drawing very vigorously at the paps. The symptoms are sitting on the haunches with a vacant stare, rapid breathing, so fast, indeed, as to be uncountable; pulse correspondingly hurried; temperature, three or four degrees above normal; frothy saliva dribbling from the mouth, with occasional unsuccessful efforts to swallow, walking with a staggering gait and failing to recognise persons, falling down through inability to control the hind limbs; the muscles then become so rigid as to simulate strychnine poisoning.

Treatment: Warm bath and enema of ol. ricini, muc. acaciae, and syr. rhamni amply diluted with warm water. A bitch of 20 lbs. weight may be given 10 grains chloral, a cat or very small dog 3 to 5 grains. After a good sleep, recovery is usually rapid and complete; if during the seizure the young are nearly all taken away, and only one, or at most, two left to prevent the udder from going wrong. This condition (parturient eclampsia) is the result of excessive lactation, and the very opposite to the cause of ordinary fits, though, according to popular ideas, it much resembles a fit.

INFLAMMATION OF THE UDDER.

Inflammation of the udder, which among farm animals is called garget, may result in bitches and cats from several causes. Sudden removal of the young, neglect to draw one or more teats when there is abundance in those with a larger nipple, chills from leaving the young to go foraging. In cats the most frequent cause is drowning all the kittens at once, or if inflammation occur later, it is about nine or 10 days afterwards. We have said elsewhere that cats are nearly always pregnant, and the period of oestrum comes on about the time the kittens open their eyes. However devoted the mother may have been during the first week, there is nothing that will detain her from going abroad again about this time to tell her friends no doubt the number and markings of her progeny, and how like they are to their dear papa.

The symptoms of garget are swelling and tenderness of the udder, the skin being shiny and feeling hot, the teat stopped up, and the animal feverish and indifferent to food. The use of milk syphons, however small and well-constructed, are to be deprecated, as there nearly always follows paralysis of the sphincter muscle, and leakage, or else occlusion from the- inflammatory action following upon unnecessary force or impatient manipulation. Hot fomentations, frequently applied, vigorous milking of the teats not implicated, aperients, exercise, low diet, and inunction with ung. lanolini in preference to other things. Goose grease is a favourite old remedy, and has its advantages; its objection is that it sometimes excoriates the skin which on this part of the body is very thin. Homoeopaths recommend bryonia in the early stage, belladonna when abscess threatens, and mercury for the hard swellings that remain when inflammation subsides.

Despite early and energetic treatment an abscess will sometimes form, and must be induced to point by poultice or fomentation or sharp ammoniacal liniments, as the sooner it determines to a point, and is evacuated by the lancet, the less damage will be done to the gland structure, which at all future accouchments is disposed to take on inflammation. When lanced or broken of its own accord it should be dusted with pulv. resinae, and poulticed till there is no more pus, and granulations show strong and healthy effort on nature’s part to repair the breach. A certain amount of induration follows, and should be felt for when one is about buying a brood bitch. It may be the reason that she is sold. More notice should be taken of such a defect than the eloquence of the vendor, who, if a lady, will dwell upon the amiable qualities of the bitch or cat she is so anxious to sell, but reluctant to part with, because she “has no room,” as stated in advertisement.

MAMMARY TUMOURS.

Many old, and some young, bitches and cats have mammary tumours, nor does it depend on the family troubles they have had, since maidens have milk in considerable quantity at certain seasons. Kittens and pups are sometimes reared by virgins, whose maternal instinct is sufficiently strong to induce them to take up the duties so shamefully abandoned by the aristocracy of the canine and feline world. These tumours are usually of a benign type, and should be let alone unless they grow very large, cause pain, or cause the skin to be broken. They are not difficult to remove, but precautions against hemorrhage should be taken. A long, bold incision should be made, longer than the whole extent of the tumour. There is nothing gained by trying to get it through a small orifice, and much more time is occupied in operating. Such tumours are situated wholly within the milk glands, and these attachments are seldom deep or strong. They should be rapidly dissected out, and any blood vessels cut through can be ligatured, leaving the ends of the ligature long for future removal. If the vessel shrinks within the tissues a drop or two of liq. ferri perchlor. or touch of the actual cautery, will be necessary; superficial haemorrhage may be disregarded, only vessels of any size being taken up or stopped.

If the wound is large when the tumour is removed a pledget of styptic tow, or ordinary tow, dusted with acid tannic, may be pushed into it before bringing the edges loosely together and bandaging round the body with moderate pressure. To perform any operation with confidence experience is necessary, but the fear of hsemorrhage is always exaggerated, except among the few surgeons, who are constantly using the knife. The plug used as a styptic should be removed next day, and clots washed away with liq. hyd. bichlor. B.P., or a weak solution of permanganate of potash or salicylic acid, and a pad with ung. simplex bandaged over the wound. Healing is generally rapid, and the eschar left scarcely noticeable.

We have seen these tumours removed by ecraseur, but prefer a keen knife and rapid separation to crushing and bruising tissues. The risk of haemorrhage is, of course, less, but it is a lazy expedient for the apprehensive operator, and more painful afterwards. In a few instances the udder is so injured that a quarter (called a quarter because the udder of the cow is divided into four distinct glands) will slough right out and be lost. In such a case discolouration of the whole gland is observed, then a line of demarcation between the living and dead tissue. Antiseptic applications are indicated, and the early detachment of the slough by bathing with warm water in which a small proportion of carbolic acid in glycerine has been added. The raw edges left when the slough has been detached require to be treated as an ordinary granulating wound. A puckering of the skin and unequal appearance in the udder is of course left, but the remaining mammae are even less liable to suffer on a future occasion than in the case of induration before mentioned.

DISEASES OP THE HEART AND BLOOD VESSELS.

Many dogs are found dead without having been ill, so far as owners and friends are aware. Post-mortem examination in such cases often reveals fatty degeneration of the heart; the sarcolemnatous sheaths will be found, upon careful scrutiny, to contain fat globules. There is no remedy for it, even if suspected during life. It is either the result of over-training, or a life of indulgence. Valvular disease is extremely rare, though rheumatism is common enough, and the pathologist naturally expects to find heart lesions in the subjects of rheumatism.

Aneurisms are rarely found, even in hounds and sporting dogs, which tax the heart and blood vessels so severely as to lead one to expect fatty and calcareous degenerations. If there is any explanation to be offered for the dog’s comparative immunity from diseases of the vessels, such as his mode of life is specially calculated to develop, it must be found in long domestication and adaptation to his environment. If horses were allowed to do nothing and eat as much as they like, and were then galloped as dogs are at uncertain intervals, half of them would die of congestion of the lungs, and the other half be ruined by laminitis.

Apoplexy is rare, for the reason that degenerate vessels are seldom met with, but cases of pulmonary apoplexy are occasionally seen when fat dogs are raced without previous or sufficient preparation.

Dropsy is a term often applied to hydrothorax and other effusions of fluid into the chest or the limbs, but the form of dropsy commonly met with in dogs and cats is abdominal ascites, and due to an interruption of the portal system nearly always. Except when it occurs in pups as a sequel to distemper, treatment is not usually successful. It is more often met with in old dogs through degeneration of the liver.

Where it becomes chronic, and the accumulation of fluid slow, the life may be prolonged by diuretics, combined with preparations of iron. Pot. nit. two or three times a week in 2 to 10-grain doses; decoct, scoparii and at intervals ferri ammon. cit., grs. i. to v. Moderate exercise, nutritious, but not heavy meals, are recommended. Gradually, but surely, the belly gets more pendulous, and the muscles of the temples and loins first waste, and then those of the neck and rump, and lastly of the limbs; breathing becomes laboured, so that a life without comfort or prospect of amelioration is best mercifully ended with a little chloroform in a close box.

DISEASES OF BONES.

Chief among these are bones too soft or too brittle, and called respectively mollites ossium (rickets) and fragilitas ossium — brittle bones.

Rickets is more or less hereditary, especially in the large, heavy breeds of dogs. It is more often the result of bad feeding and management, and is found in anaemic pups confined to kennels, not sufficiently exercised or kept in an insanitary condition. Either the want of material to build bone, or an inability to select and appropriate it when supplied, leaves the bones soft and gelatinous, bending under the weight of the animal and remaining permanently deformed. We speak of it as affecting the limbs, because that is the commonest and most noticeable form. It is not confined to the long bones, but deformed heads and other parts may and do result from it.

Treatment should be directed to supply the deficient material and increase the capacity for deposition of it where wanted. The first can be done easily enough with such admirable preparations as syr. ferri. phos. co., with lime water, or any of the preparations of lime, iron, magnesia, etc., commonly prescribed for human patients. Cod liver oil, while not containing any special bone-forming elements, is particularly beneficial in rickets, possibly by enabling the system to appropriate the elements supplied in other ways. Mineral acids may act in the same way. That rickety pups treated with hydrochloric acid dil. and iron make recoveries is well established, whatever be the method by which nature does the work and builds up the materials where wanted. As necessary as the chemical constituents in assimilable form is out-of-door exercise and abundance of fresh air. Rickets among kittens was unknown until the last few years, when the breeding for points and coat among the prettiest, but least robust, has developed a variety of diseases unknown to our fathers as affecting cats. A good old English tabby is so hardy an animal as to have acquired for his tribe the reputation of having nine lives. Anyone who has visited a cat show with his eyes open must have seen how many weak and diseased animals are shown, only to go home and die in a few days.

Bones having a disproportionate amount of mineral matter, that matter being in excess, are rendered brittle and liable to break, with quite trivial injuries or none at all; muscular contraction itself being sufficient without any external violence. Some dogs, and particularly cats, have a knack of jumping out of windows and over walls and falling on their feet without apparently the least injury, while others break their legs jumping off a single doorstep or from a chair on to the drawing room carpet, and in one recent instance an old terrier broke the lower jaw through both sides while barking at the prospect of a walk. This condition is not so hopeful as the opposite one. Nature may correct the balance in a young dog sometimes, and use up the redundant material in other ways, but the brittle bone is too often accompanied by old age, while the soft one is an infantile disease.

Elixir vitas caninus has not yet been placed upon the market, but with a four years’ course of study at the Royal Veterinary College the future is pregnant with great possibilities — the possibility of over-crowding among horse doctors, for instance, may cause some men of talent to devote themselves to dogs and cats, with the result of systematic study and comparison of notes and cases. The best men “die and give no sign,” as they have been accounted quacks by reason of not having a diploma as horse and cattle doctors — this by the way.

SCROFULA.

Scrofula is another result of civilisation — not the survival of the fittest — but often the least fit is the result of selection among dogs, cats and birds. To develop coat, colour or other points, unsuitable animals are mated. To such an extent has this been carried with pigeons that scrofula is quite the rule among the aristocracy of the show bench.

It is generally developed in puppyhood or kittendom, and frequently traceable to cousin or even closer marriages. The customs of the Pharoahs* are not always repudiated among dog breeders. [*Marriage with sisters.]

The smaller breeds of dogs, as black and tan terriers, are the most subject. The breed was once represented by powerful plucky animals in size and proportion, like the so-called Manchester terrier of to-day, but for the sake of diminutiveness all the robust qualities have been sacrificed, and puny scrofulous little animals produced, with weak eyes, and dry skins, all but denuded of hair. In a clearly scrofulous subject the abdomen becomes pendulous as if dropsical, the eyes habitually injected with mucous deposits in the corners, enlarged glands, especially about the throat, bad teeth, and worse breath, fastidious appetite, and never thriving under any conditions, however favourable. Post-mortem examination shows tuberculous deposits in nearly all the organs. We have specified this breed for the reason that nature in time remedies the folly of man by rendering such creatures sterile, and the miniature black and tan terrier, that can be put into a quart pot, will now fetch as much money as a good carriage horse, Among the few remaining fanciers of unhealthy dwarfs, cod liver oil, iron, iodides, phosphates, and, the best of everything in the way of diet may be prescribed to keep alive, but never to make healthy or well, such animals.

Dogs are said to have had measles, glanders, tetanus, and other diseases so rarely to be met with that diagnosis is not likely to be correct until too late for treatment. We will let them pass.

RHEUMATISM.

Those animals which feed upon meat are much more liable than graminivorous animals. Horses suffering from obscure forms of lameness, and cattle with joint diseases, whose pathological condition is not understood, are said to be affected with rheumatism; it is convenient to say so, for the veterinary who practises in the country is not esteemed unless he is cocksure after a very superficial examination, or none at all. To pronounce instantly is the greatest mark of genius, but to say “I don’t know ” requires a moral courage not yet developed, but latent in the coming vet. Whatever happens after diagnosing rheumatism is confirmatory, because rapid recovery or chronic lameness are equally common results of rheumatism in the owners of animals. Therefore, it is convenient, but for ourselves we do not believe in it except as affecting dogs and cats most unmistakably. All breeds and conditions are liable without respect to age or sex.

The hound has it under the name of kennel lameness, because it does not attack him while hunting, but after rest and sleep, he gets up from a position of apparent repose with a yelp, and is “as lame as a dog” with rheumatism. The pectoral muscles, and those of the fore-arm and neck, are most often affected. The pet dog shrieks out on being lifted in the manner familiar to all pets, likewise the cat, which calls out and refuses the lap she has been accustomed to luxuriate upon. Muscular rheumatism may affect the loins and hind legs, or be general, but the muscles, which attach the fore extremities to the trunk, are often affected when others are not, and the pain is attributed to a strain or concussion in jumping up or down, whereas the movements have merely demonstrated the ailment, not caused it. There is seldom any difficulty in diagnosing rheumatism in dogs and cats; with acute pain there is usually no swelling or deformity, and it is intermittent. The movement which caused pain a moment ago may again be performed without any, and the next time the patient is seen, another limb or opposite part of the body be affected. There is very little functional derangement, and the animal may be cheerful and apparently quite well until he brings into play some affected muscle.

Treatment should commence with the provision of a good dry bed, free from damp and draught. Stimulating liniments to the affected parts, as lin. ammon., lin. tereb. acet., P.B.; lin. crotonis. A liniment much used under the name of lin. alb. is prepared by saponifying three parts of any seed oil with one of liq. ammon. fort., adding two parts of ol. tereb., with brisk agitation, and diluting for various uses as required. For a thin-skinned dog we should use equal parts of liniment and aqua dest., but it may be used much stronger for sporting dogs, if we except greyhounds, whose skins are thin, especially the clean-bred English variety.

For internal medicine, colchicum with potash and a milk diet, or if a pet dog that will eat nothing but meat, colchicum and lemon juice with glycerine, 2 to 10 minims of vin. colchici, 10 to 40 drops of lemon juice, and 10 to 60 of glycerine. If the alkaline treatment is adopted, doses of 2 to 10 grains of bicarbonate of potash are sufficient three times in the 24 hours. If recovery is not rapid — and it nearly always is —then soda or calcium salycilates should be substituted. In acute muscular rheumatism, potassae bicarb, and vin. colchici have so often acted like a charm that prescribers will do well to give them a fair trial before resorting to the newer remedies. There is apparently in dogs a goutiness associated with rheumatic pains, and this is probably the reason why colchicum hits it straight.

Rheumatic fever of a well-marked character is not so frequent, in fact, rare, but pitiable to see. The patient is unable to get up, a very high temperature rules, 107 Fahr. being no rare registration; constipation as frequently renewed as relieved, long retained, intensely coloured urine, which is passed with difficulty or voided while prone. It is one of the very few conditions of dog life in which a male will pass urine while lying on his side. Dogs in health never completely empty the bladder by one effort. Pet dogs, only let out night and morning, acquire a habit of passing a lot of urine, but not the whole contents of the bladder at one effort, but it is not natural, and these are the animals in which stricture is met with occasionally. Cases of rheumatic fever commonly last for weeks, and very few people have the necessary patience themselves to see one through.

Treatment. A milk diet, regulation of the bowels by clysters and salines, and alternate the remedies chosen as anti-rheumatic. With each change there is perceptible improvement, but of no duration, till a final effort of nature becomes apparent.

Salicylates can be given for a longer time than other agents, and are preferable to colchicum and potash, except upon occasion. Some homoeopaths swear by ringing the changes on arnica and sulphur, and it is well worth while to give them a trial, since there will be usually plenty of time for experiment. The few cases of valvular inefficiency of the heart met with in dogs are due to rheumatism. In muscular rheumatism it is quite a rare thing for joints to swell and be tender, but in rheumatic fever it is a prominent symptom, and the inflamed joints should be rubbed with lin. iodi., and lin. belladonnae, P.B. Flannel clothing and bandaging is helpful to hairless dogs, like the blue variety and the high-bred toy.
A dog that has had rheumatic fever is never really fit again for sport, as he cannot avoid getting wet with rain and dew even if he never ventures out in snow.

PARASITES.

The study of parasitism has received an impetus during the past twenty years from such patient investigators as
Cobbold, Rudolphi, Dryarden and others, which has resulted in great benefit to man and animals. The important role played by parasites in man and animals is yet not fully appreciated. Cobbold did more to arouse intelligent interest in this country than any other man, but he died disappointed, though without a rival. During his professorship at the Royal Veterinary College, he inspired some of the best men to closer habits of study, though but few have made his subject their own. His enthusiasm knew no bounds, and no labour was too great. Anyone who sent him a parasite, new to them, but familiar enough to the great helminthologist, was sure of a courteous reply, and a description of the leading features of the specimen. Apathy was the usual condition of the medical and veterinary professions, and those among us with grey beards remember when the eviction of a tape worm was generally the work of itinerant herbalists, who went about treating everybody as parasitic hosts, and every now and again reaping honour and reward for the discovery of worms and cure of patients, whom medical men had not suspected of parasitism, because they had not made a systematic study of the subject.

In the preface to his greater work on Entozoa — a formidable volume, by the way — he says, in a tone of lamentation only understood thoroughly by those who knew him personally: “The medical man who only looks at the phenomena of parasitism as displayed within the human territory, must, of necessity, acquire a cramped, narrow, and distorted conception of the role played by parasites in the production of disease. Let it be freely granted that to the practising physician, as such, it matters little how many beasts, birds, reptiles, or fishes perish annually from parasitic affections; yet when it is demonstrable that a large proportion of the strictly human entozoa require a change of hosts, or, in other words, need to pass through the bodies of the lower animals, then it is evident that some acquaintance on his part with the entozoa infesting animals becomes a practical necessity. The study of the structure and economy of a humble parasite brings to the investigator no slight insight into the workings of nature. If these workings cannot at all times be pronounced to be good and beautiful, they must at least be characterised as true.”

With this eloquent testimony to the importance of the subject, we hope no apology is due to our readers for introducing them to the principal parasites affecting the dog and cat. The various flukes classed as Trematoda are only occasionally found in the liver of the dog or cat. The most often met with is a very small example of the family, and it infests all the canidae, being first discovered in a fox in the Zoological Gardens, and subsequently found to be comparatively common in the pariah dogs of India, and may sometimes account for the liver disturbances so common to Japanese pugs and Chinese chow-chows now so fashionable.

There is no reliable method of treatment, owing to the habitat of these creatures being the bile ducts of the liver. Here they block the passages, and by their excreta and thickening of the bile products in their interrupted passage lay the foundation of jaundice, dropsy, and other diseases. Since they cannot propagate without an intermediate bearer, the host may survive their presence unless in such large numbers as to produce the bad effects before mentioned. Since it was an American fox in which they were first found, it may be presumed that flukes of this family are not confined to Asia and the old world. Both turpentine and salt are prejudicial to flukes, and moderate doses emulsified may be given from time to time if post-mortem examination of one dog leads to the supposition that others, having the same environment, are affected; there is no direct method of diagnosis during life, as the same train of liver symptoms may arise from a variety of causes.

Dog flukes are of two or three species, another variety occupying the small intestines (Holostoma alatum). They are all in appearance like soles, though differing greatly in size. Round worms, of which Ascaris marginata in the dog, and Ascaris mystax in the cat, are the most common, chiefly infest puppies and kittens, though met with at all ages. The life history of the above varieties have not been ascertained. Pups are commonly believed to be born with them, so early are they found in the mature state. The late Professor Cobbold held the opinion that they must be derived from outside the dam. It has been noticed by many competent observers that round worms are most frequently found in pups fed on cow’s milk uncooked; it should, therefore, be always first boiled. A healthy young pup should be round and fat like a mole, and if his belly is pendulous, and the bones along the back and ribs can be too easily distinguished, he has, in all probability, to entertain some of these insidious guests.

Mature males measure from two to three inches in length, while females attain to four and even five inches. Of 144 dogs examined in Vienna no less than 104 were found to contain this species of lumbricoid, while like experiments in England make it probable that 50 per cent, of our canine friends are so affected. They generally find a home in the small intestines, but occasionally wander into the stomach and cause sickness and inflammation (gastritis). Their voluntary wanderings sometimes lead them into the rectum, where they get expelled by the expulsive efforts necessary in defecation, or they may have met with some food which is offensive to them; occasionally they get into the nostrils and throat, and must not be confused with those worms whose habitat is naturally in the sinuses of the face (pentastomes). Capricious appetite, colicky pains, unthrifty coat and irregular bowels are the usual accompaniments of lumbricoid worms when present in large numbers.

Treatment.— Fortunately for dogs and cats, the lumbricoid worms so common are the most easily got rid of. The patient should be fasted for 24 hours, and if sucking pups, shut off from their mother. Hunger appears to make worms, as well as their hosts, less discriminating in what they eat and drink, if we may so speak of things which only suck fluid food; certain it is that anthelmintic remedies act best when abstinence from fluids as well as solids has been insisted on; it may arise from the fact that empty bowels collapse more or less, and bring the remedies into contact with parasites in a smaller space. The space occupied by the intestines in a fowl well fasted is less than half that of a full fed bird; we mention this as an easy and inexpensive proof to those who think that the bowels are constantly, not inconstantly, distended by the ordinary gases eliminated in digestion. Hand-reared puppies are much more liable to suffer from worms than others, besides being rickety. If milk be first boiled, and a third part of lime-water added, the strongest pups may be reared without a mother.

Ascaris mystax of the cat has two hirsute appendages, with a fancied resemblance to a moustache; it, too, infests the intestines, and more often the stomach, than is the case with dogs. It would seem that the tickling it causes makes the cat sick, for they more frequently vomit worms than do dogs, and besides, their excreta is less often observed owing to their more advanced ideas of sanitation and greater modesty in complying with nature’s requirements.

A dose of castor oil as a preparation for santonine has been recommended, but it is possible to put the worms “off their feed” by giving it first, and we have seen better results from doses of a half grain for small kitten or pup, to 5 grains of santonin for a big dog and a dose of castor oil an hour afterwards. In this instance we prefer castor oil, because it is quick and safe, after an irritating substance such as santonine, powdered glass, dolichos, etc., but for a long-haired kitten, or white-coated woolly pup, it has the objection of getting oil the neck and chest, and exciting nausea, a thing to be carefully avoided with cats — they are so easily nauseated, and it is, moreover, persistent. To avoid spilling castor oil it should be warmed, and whipped with hot milk so as to make it thin.

Another worm which has been erroneously classed with the foregoing, is called a maw worm; it is from a quarter of an inch to an inch in length in dogs obtuse at one end and pointed at the other. In cats they are much smaller, and as they usually adhere to the parts immediately under the tail and get dry before being observed, they appear like grains of wheat or tiny grubs, and should be soaked in water to ascertain their real size and formation. They are, according to Dr. Cobbold, segments of tapeworms which have become detached, and set up an independent existence and are most difficult to dislodge. Small doses of aloes and injections per rectum of enema aloes, B.P., answer host with dogs, but may not be recommended for cats owing to persistent nausea which this drug causes, second only to tar and its preparations. Infus. cusso for cats, both as draughts- and enemata, or infus. quassiae administered in like manner.

The various filaria at special seasons make havoc among animals, and our friends the dog and cat are not exempt. A very small worm with a very big name, and mischievous in proportion to his name rather than his size, is the Spiroptera sanquinolenta; these form nests both in the stomach and large blood vessels, especially at their junctions — as also the Strongulus armatus, another round worm, which chooses the junctions or bifurcations of arteries, preferring, of all other animals, to locate himself in the ass [donkey], few old ones being entirely free from his presence.

Strongulus gigas, the giant strongle, a foot in length, coils himself up in the kidneys but is very rarely met with or recognised till after death of his host from kidney disease. He may die and wither, and his victim brokenly live on for a time, but death is generally the price paid for entertaining him. Two other well-known varieties infest the intestinal canal, namely, the three-corner headed strongle (Dochmius trigonocephalus), the whip worm (Tricocephalus depressiusculus), and the wrinkled thread worm (Trichosoma plica). Filaria hematica, as its name implies, finds a living in the blood, and Filaria trispinulosa in the eye, besides Filaria hepatica, occasionally met with in the liver. The infectious cough of dog infirmaries and homes is due to Filaria bronchialis, and is well called the infirmary cough; it is one of the penalties of bringing a large number of dogs or cats together.

Treatment of threadworms, whose habitat is the intestinal canal, is the same as for lumbricoids, but the position of others precludes the use of remedies with any fair prospect of success. All that can be done is to keep up the health, and endeavour by hygiene and tonics to enable a robust animal to outlive his guests.

Filaria immitis, the cruel threadworm, causes an agonising death, with symptoms resembling angina pectoris. Its habitat is the heart. It is seldom met with except in China and Japan.

TAPEWORMS

occupy a very important place in the parasite world, as they are to be found in man and almost every known animal, besides passing an intermediate life in either. Anatomical distinctions which we need not closely follow, divide them from the Bothriocephali, but for all practical purposes they are the same, and the remedies adopted are alike. Taenia serrata is oftenest met with in sporting dogs, as they are too frequently allowed to eat the viscera of hares and rabbits, whence they obtain the cysticercus pisiformis. It should be understood that all tapeworms have an intermediate life, and the cyst must be swallowed in order to develop into a tapeworm in the final host. The commonest example is to be found in the taenia cummerina, in which the host carries the intermediate bearer upon his own body. The mature tapeworm within the dog is a colony of all but complete individuals. Zooids, being bisexual, and one segment capable of impregnating another and producing an average of 20,000 to 80,000 eggs, some of which, escaping round the anus, are swallowed by the dog louse, and in it pass the stage of life as a cyst, developing only to a certain point until the lousy dog, in biting his irritable skin, swallows the louse having within it a cysticercus. The louse dissolved, the contents of the cysticercus are set free, and the heads of tapeworms, which while they remained in the louse would undergo no further development, now fasten themselves upon the mucus membrane of the intestines, and rapidly develop tapeworm, segments, until a long tapeworm or colony of zooids is again formed. Such is the round of reproduction, so that it comes about that a lousy dog is nearly always the victim of tapeworm, and must be treated for both external and internal parasites at the same time. This is a narrow variety, and probably more common than any, because so many dogs are not periodically freed from vermin.

Taenia caenurus is common too, more so in country than in town perhaps. The eggs from a dog infested being passed upon a pasture field, some of them are swallowed by the sheep; an embryo having six hooks is hatched out in the animal’s stomach, these hooks it employs to hold on to the membrane while it saws a hole in it and passes itself into the circulation of the blood. Arrived at the brain it makes a home, and by its presence causes a cyst to form, upon the inside of which the heads of future tapeworms are developed as in the cysticercus of taenia cummerina. The size of the cyst in so minute a creature as the dog louse (Trichoclectes latus) differs greatly from that formed in the brain of the sheep. It may attain to the size of a walnut, and many shepherds recognise it as the cause of sturdy or turnsick, a sort of fit in which rapid turning in one direction is a prominent symptom. They thrust a wire up the nostrils and in this rough method not infrequently succeed in rupturing the cyst and curing the disease.

A sheep’s brain with a bladder of this sort in it would not be a recommendation to the purchaser of a “jimmy,” consequently the butcher cuts it out and throws it away, perhaps on the floor of the slaughter-house, perhaps into the road, where the first dog on the lookout for the flotsam and jetsam of the street snaps up the unconsidered trifle with the result of getting taenia caenurus. Bothriocephali of the kind we meet with in cats and dogs, especially seaside cats, pass their intermediate cystic life in fish to be developed into tapeworm in the unfortunate cat so often seen making love to the fishmonger who throws away the offal from his barrow, while preparing fish for the customers. Hungry dogs, and indeed dogs who are not hungry, will pick up food in the street; it is a depraved appetite common to overfed and pampered dogs — refusing the best food at home the debauched stomach of my lady’s pet craves for things high; the plebeian stomach does not like things “gamey.”

Cysts are in this way swallowed and a worm developed as described above. Dogs and their masters have many things in common, and tapeworms may be included. The cyst may be in the man or the dog; the mature worm may find a home in either; and the fisherman’s dog suffers from fish tapeworms, the gamekeeper’s from cysts formed in hares and rabbits, and the cottager’s from the variety which passes its time in the louse. Norwegian and Swedish dogs, like their masters, are largely engaged in the fish trade, and the “fifth quarter” is their share of the harvest. Something like 70 per cent, of them have tapeworm, but many people may be surprised to learn that about 50 per cent, of dogs in this country are the hosts of one or other of the eleven varieties of known tapeworms which thrive in the canine species. Many dogs are made ill by these parasites, sickness, loss of appetite, or a voracity that nothing will appease, loss of flesh, loss of coat, loss of spirits, hide-bound, scurfiness, irritability, diarrhoea, fits, and, indeed, a multitude of illnesses may be traced to tapeworm, while, strangely enough, many a fat and thriving dog will carry a tapeworm for years without apparent inconvenience.

One of the commonest symptoms of worms is an unsightly trick on the part of dogs, which everyone must have witnessed, namely, that of sitting on the pavement and dragging the bottom along by walking with the front legs while the hind limbs are stuck out towards the elbows. This is done to relieve the intolerable itching caused by the presence of numerous eggs and debris. It must not be supposed that every dog seen at this operation is an unwilling host to tapeworms; some dogs do it for sanitary reasons, especially when passing undigested grass and pieces of string, which latter may have been greasy at the time they were eaten, whether for food or fun is not certain but dogs are often to be observed trying to get away from a stout piece of string they have swallowed, and only partially succeeded in voiding. A humane man should not object to give the necessary assistance to a dog in this unfortunate plight; it is not a dignified performance we admit, but better than letting the obstruction remain.

Treatment is not always so successful as the advertisers of worm balls and specifics would have us believe, and a little judgment and care exercised in the treatment will be generally repaid. Most books recommend ol. filicis maris; but there is not one dog in fifty whose stomach will retain it for ten minutes. It is book treatment by book men, who think it ought to be the right remedy if it is not.

There is no one remedy that can at all times be depended on, though the patient may have been fairly prepared; alternating them is best, and in persistence is the secret of success. Areca nut justly holds a high place in canine materia medica but as sold by the average druggist it is too often inert. Chemists who read this remark may spare their indignation; we do not suggest adulteration, or very old samples; but we say that the anthelmintic value of areca is just in proportion to the date on which it was ground. You do not know how far the affix “Recens” is applicable to the sample you pay the best price for of the best wholesale house. Whether an active principle of a volatile nature has ever been discovered is more than the writer can say, but what he does know is that a nut laboriously grated with a nutmeg-grater is rough on any kind of tapeworm, while the finely levigated powder of the shops has, in the majority of instances, no effect whatever. And, again, the dose laid down in veterinary pharmacopoeias is altogether inadequate. A terrier weighing five and twenty pounds can take two or three drachms with perfect safety to himself and with increased risk to his guests; a small amount of griping is the worst result to be got from a big dose, and this griping is usually the prelude to the expulsion of the enemy.

Kousso and buchu are unknown to the average vet. though he may have failed with areca, and frustrated his work with ol. filicis maris. The bitter infusions of the B.P. are nearly all vermicides - quassia, lupuli, matico, senegae, and uvae ursi. Iron given, persistently in the form of powder, whether ferri sulph., ox. redact., carb. sacch.,or otherwise, makes the canal untenable, and alum has the effect of converting taenias into white leather. Preparation is most important, and too often, forgotten or frustrated by the meddlesome interference of some person more kind than wise. At least 24 hours of absolute fasting from meat and drink is necessary, and the pill or powder should be given in the morning, while the patient is still tied up or in a place where it is impossible to get at food till the medicine has done its work. A powder is less likely to be lost than a bolus, as the latter can be brought back whole. An hour after giving anthelmentics, the patient should be exercised and the bowels watched. It should be remembered that vermifuges are not all vermicides, and that worms quit the intestines to get away from drugs they dislike, unconscious of course of the fact that they are jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. A bunch of tape worms will be partly voided, and may be seen to be alive hanging from the anus, causing in puppies and some nervous dogs the utmost alarm. It should be gently drawn out, avoiding a jerk, so as to get the head, which, by the way, is at the thin end and commonly supposed to be the tail. After a medicine has acted in this way, it is well to finish the work with an enena of one of the infusions recommended, especially kousso.

Whether treating cats and dogs for round worms or tapeworms, it is advisable to repeat the dose in a week or 10 days, because the former are viviparous, and may have produced a new crop in the interval, and the latter may be numerous, and some individuals not affected by the first dose. The want of a second or third dose in a short time has led to a general belief in the public mind that if a dog once gets tapeworm he will always have it; it is, however, quite a mistake, and anyone with care and judgment may get rid of them entirely.

Pentastoma teniodes is a parasite of the Arachnidae, and has its importance from the danger of conveyance to human beings rather than the frequency of its occurrence in dogs. Occupying the nasal chambers, the eggs are blown out in the act of sneezing, and may be conveyed to children who fondle dogs in the approved manner to be seen in five out of six of the -coloured illustrations issued with Christmas periodicals.

The germs are more often conveyed into the human stomach n uncooked food, but pet dogs are a real danger, though our liking for them may cause us to accept it. Unless this parasite is dislodged by sneezing it undergoes calcareous degeneration, and except that its presence as a foreign body may cause irritation, it is of no further trouble. Dogs and cats are supposed to get the liberated larvae while eating the flesh of herbivorous animals so affected.

TRICHINOSIS.

Trichiasis or trichinosis is not often met with in this country, but has been artificially produced by feeding animals on infected pork. Fifty thousand trichina have been counted in one leg. This parasite, being swallowed, pierces through the stomach, intestines, etc., and finds its way into the muscle, where it remains unless the flesh of the animal affected be eaten by another. The intense pain and fever caused during the migration of a few hundred thousands of trichina has been mistaken for rheumatic fever in dogs. There is no treatment beyond mitigating acute symptoms with ordinary febrile remedies. If there is a moral to be learned from these outbreaks in Germany and elsewhere, it is not to eat schincken [ham] yourself or give your dog raw meat.

There are vast numbers of parasites affecting the dog and cat, and we have but briefly alluded to the principal classes and conspicuous members of them, feeling assured that our readers will have but a minimum of trouble with their pets if our recommendations are carried out.

DISTEMPER

is, without doubt, the most important disease, or generic term for a number of diseases, with which the dog is afflicted. Cats did not formerly suffer from distemper when wild in back gardens the noble tabby ran, but since the long-haired varieties have been largely bred, and the meanest looking cat may give birth to a long-haired kitten through some casual acquaintance, distemper has become quite common, and many lovely kittens succumb to it despite the most careful nursing and attention. After each cat show at the Crystal Palace or the Brighton Aquarium numbers of kittens go home to die, and until the October, 1892, show at the Crystal Palace, no veterinary surgeon had previously been appointed to inspect them. On this occasion Mr. Harold Leeney rejected some twenty exhibits suffering from well-defined infectious disease.

Unfortunately, too, it must be added, that as the breeds of dogs improve, or, perhaps we had better say, develop special points, so does, distemper claim more and more victims. They come into the world predisposed to it, and with less constitutional resistance than the mongrel whose life is not passed under such artificial conditions. It is not an exaggeration to say that half the puppies born die of distemper, yet there are amateurs in every town and village fully convinced that they are in possession of a specific which will quickly cure it. When investigated, these specifics generally turn out to be castor oil and syrup of buckthorn, turpeth’s mineral, calomel or jalap. It is not a fact that all puppies have distemper, there are families comparatively immune, and the lucky possessor of a bitch whose pups do not develop it will always lay the flattering unction to his soul that it is due to his good management, and that other people lose pups because they don’t know how to manage them, in fact, there is nothing in connection with animals about which there is greater misconception. Veterinary surgeons have been known to deny the infectivity of it, because a healthy pup may fail to take it when kennelled with infected animals, but it is now generally admitted to be both infectious and contagious.

That contagion is not necessary to its development seems tolerably well proved by the frequency with which it is met with in pups which have had no communication with others. Whatever claims advertisers may make to the possession of a specific, there is no drug, or combination of drugs, answering to that description, and known to those who have made a patient study of the disease, with opportunities of experiment and thousands of cases to treat. If ever the disease is to be grappled with and cut short, the remedy must b6 looked for in an attenuated virus, which will give the comparative immunity to the inoculated dog, with which vaccination is, or was, commonly credited. Dogs are often offered for sale as vaccinated and safe, but up to the present time, such vaccination is a vulgar fraud; when it has been attempted at all, the vaccine of variola has been used to protect a dog from a totally different disease. One might as well vaccinate to cure a broken leg, for there is no more relation between the one than the other. A virus has been more than once prepared by Pasteurian methods, but failed because more pups die when successfully inoculated than if left to take the ordinary risk; but in this direction lies our future hope. While, as we have said, some families go almost unscathed, there are others in which a special train of symptoms as fits are distinctly hereditary. In purchasing a puppy we should consider one decidedly more valuable if he has brothers and sisters living, and it is as well to inquire (but not take the seller’s word for it).

Distemper is an infantile disease, although dogs of all ages die of it. It may attack them while still sucking, but more than any other time it develops at four or five months, when the larger teeth (tusks) are coming through. While affecting every part of the body distemper may be divided into three principal forms — pulmonary, enteric, and nervous. The first symptoms common to all, and preliminary to the determination of these to any particular structure or set of organs, are loss of spirits and appetite, frequently sitting down in a listless manner and reluctant to follow where previously delighted to go out or to play; nose hot and dry, ears cold, legs varying in temperature, the little blood-vessels of the conjunctiva corded and red-looking, breathing accelerated.

The majority of cases go on from these preliminary symptoms to the pulmonary form which we will first consider. In a day or two the eyelids become gummy; a discharge, first of tears, rapidly becoming grumous and puslike; the nose discharges a similar matter, and, as it reaches the outside skin, it dries and stops up the nostrils, adding greatly to the already difficult breathing. The pup at first licks it off, but, as he becomes weak and the discharge more tenacious, he gives it up, sitting on his haunches in a dejected manner, while the soft fat of puppyhood is melting off his bones. In the majority of cases, and certainly in the early stage, this matter from the nostrils is secreted by the membrane lining the cavities of the head and covering the turbinated bones, but as time goes on its infective properties are conveyed to the lungs, and. a soft cough is established, so soft that it is only seen and not heard in many cases by the puffing out of the cheeks and movement of the flanks. The loud laryngeal cough is not so much to be feared. A low form of inflammation of the lungs, quite distinct from acute inflammation from cold, is established with the advent of the cough, which latter is but the expression of it. Suppurative pneumonia it has been called, the lung cells becoming gradually filled with pus, which cannot be coughed up and got rid of, but is secreted in increasing abundance. With lungs thus blocked, and bronchi affected in the same way, small wonder that proper oxidation of blood fails to go on in them, and that a species of septicemia sets in.

This may give rise to an eruption on the thin skin of the thighs, and under the arms large pustules form and break, and by this discharge the patient sometimes rallies; it is a hopeful sign, and not one of dissolution. The sores left are of the nature of large, ragged and indolent ulcers, and must not be mistaken for patches of eczema, which they most resemble. The eyes meantime have been getting worse, the eyelids being closed and pus retained within, the cornea ulcerates, the aqueous humour escapes, and the eye is completely disorganised, or bulging in the form of a grape {staphiloma) may be the alternative.

On first observing distemper coming on it is a good plan to give a dose of castor oil, or if you will, syrup of buckthorn with it. Acrid matters may be removed from the prima via in this way, whose subsequent effects may have more to do with the intestinal form than our present limited knowledge of the subject enables us to say. The eyes and nose should be frequently fomented with warm water containing a little glycerine, and after fomenting and using a very soft cloth, the lids should be gently smeared with cold cream or vaseline, as also the nostrils, to prevent the accumulation of pus in the manner already described. It used to be the custom to prescribe zinci sulph. for all conjunctival inflammations, but it is not indicated here; this condition of the eye is like the uterine ophthalmia of infants, and is most successfully treated with hyd. bichlor.; the B.P. solution is strong enough at first, but it can with advantage be increased to 1 in 200 in cases of some standing. The front of the kitten’s eye is of finer texture, and no solution stronger than the B.P. should be used; it will be found even more useful with them than with pups if possible; with both we have seen the most satisfactory results in the course of a single day — just a few drops from a pipette while the lids are forcibly held open.

The pulmonary symptoms must be treated with energy, mustard and vinegar applied over the ribs on both sides; a sharp blister coming up is the best augury of success, while indifference on the part of the patient is a bad omen. Chlorate of potash, in 1 to 10 grain doses, for two or three days, alternated with small doses of chlorodyne, minim half to 5, the chlorate in the morning and the sedative at night. Tinct. camph. co. and syr. scillae, vin. antim. tart., liquorice and expectorants generally are recommended, but it is very doubtful if they are of any benefit.

Homoeopaths claim to be more successful with bryonia, aconite and phosphorus.

There is with distemper a peculiar offensive smell, which is always greatest when sick puppies are kept warm and in close places. Disinfection should be thorough, and plenty of effectual and pungent disinfectants thrown around, and the patient taken outdoors for a little while each day in any but very bad weather; sunshine, when it is to be had, is an excellent medicine, and has, no doubt, much to do with the fact that spring-born puppies more often grow up into dogs than do those who have the misfortune to cut their teeth in the late autumn. If ulcers have already appeared before treatment is attempted a 5 grain to the ounce solution of nitrate of silver lotion should be used instead of hyd. bichlor. If the patient does not die from the pulmonary difficulty his eyes need hardly ever be despaired of. Large ulcers and a cornea, opaque in one part, blue and red in others, and without transparency at any part, will probably make a serviceable, if not a perfect, eye after all. It may become necessary to touch the indolent ulcer with stick nitrate, and that with the happiest result, the healing process being most interesting and satisfactory when once started, and an eye that looked to the tyro in dog doctoring as utterly hopeless may in time have no greater blemish than a small white speck or nebula. After an ulcerated cornea has united, a great deal may be done to excite absorption of the lymph cloud which remains between its layers. It should be touched two or three times a week with a camel’s hair pencil dipped in a 5 per cent, solution of argent, nit.

The practice of blowing powdered sugar through a quill into the eye, or in its stead powdered glass, is to be deprecated. It is true that it often assisted to remove an opacity by exciting the absorbents in the same way as nitrate of silver, but the latter can be applied to the cloud only, while the powders cause irritation to the whole conjunctival surface, more or less remaining in the eye, and in some instances producing so much inflammation as to cause further injury. Staphiloma is worse to deal with than ulceration, and more or less bulging remains whatever treatment is adopted. We have already referred to it under diseases of the eye.

The skin eruption, or pustules before-mentioned, should be bathed with warm water and encouraged to break, dressing the sores with acid carbolic, zinci. ox. and lanolin. Washing at intervals with neutral soap, and removal of dead tissue is essential, and if an area of inflammation or cracks form, a lotion of liq. plumbi. in olive or linseed oil. In the convalescent stage, when the lung symptoms begin to abate, tonics should be substituted for the remedies before recommended, and of these quinine and mineral acids, or pills of ext. gent., anthemidis and quinae are to be preferred. A milk diet up to the time of having distemper gives the patient a much better chance of recovery, and during the illness he should be spoon-fed with milk and sugar and eggs, blancmange, and thin farinaceous puddings, than with beef tea or meat extracts.

ENTERIC FORM OF DISTEMPER

is somewhat similar to typhoid, and is called “typhus fever or distemper” by Stonehenge, and its identity with that disease in the human subject he considered quite established. The preliminary symptoms of fever are much the same, though diarrhoeic disturbance may appear sooner; loss of appetite, purging and wasting, followed by bloody stools, and casts of mucus having a very offensive smell. The same condition of the eyes as in the pulmonary type and even greater prostration. Astringents and tonics are indicated, for it is only the abatement of symptoms that we can attempt, since we do not know the nature of the virus. Bismuth and iron often have a marked effect in mitigating the diarrhoea and arresting the bloody discharge, which, if it can be kept in check and the patient’s strength maintained with infus. gent., quinine, etc., enables him to hold out till the disease has spent itself. It will probably be found that the specific microbe of distemper undergoes some modification in time which renders it comparatively inert.

Experiments of an exhaustive kind ought long since to have been carried out by the veterinary colleges or the Brown Institute, but they are insufficiently endowed to give scientific workers an adequate salary while prosecuting original research, and the average practitioner has neither the time nor appliances. The writer of this article went to the expense of setting up a copper “stomach” and cultivating pork broths, etc. but a rush of work in different directions more than once upset his carefully arranged plans, and with the fear of the Anti-vivisection Act before his eyes it had to be abandoned for more profitable employment. The schools should undertake such work, and a Government grant for the purpose of scholarships would be better applied than — well, than in lots of ways in which the public funds are at present wasted.

The veterinary profession is young, and has none of the endowments and advantages of its elder sister, the medical, which counts among its members hundreds of wealthy men, content for fame to spend many years of painful research, to elucidate some little fact, or advance by one iota the knowledge of pathology. Whether the art of doctoring animals will ever give the social position which will draw into it men of wealth and leisure is doubtful. The curriculum has been lengthened, and the standard of attainment is as high, but the public will persist in treating the horse doctor and the dog doctor with just so much respect as the market value of the animal lends importance or otherwise to his services.

Worse, perhaps, than the pulmonary and the enteric forms is the

NERVOUS FORM OF DISTEMPER.

This may follow upon either, or commence with fits, paralysis, or chorea. It is important to examine the mouth, and extract temporary teeth that have served their purpose, but not vacated their places; the tushes being especially liable to retention (see Dentition). Aperients and a laxative diet are indicated, and from 5 to 20 grains of ammon. bromid. or half the dose of chloral.

Chorea comes on gradually, the pup bobbing his head at intervals, and being unable to keep still, through an intermittent current of nerve force supplied to the muscles of the neck and fore parts; the poison of distemper is then affecting the cerebellum, whose function it is to co-ordinate the muscles. Setons and counter-irritation at the back of the poll have appeared to answer in some cases, and nerve tonics, as nux vomica or its preparations; it does not appear to be so much an absence of nerve force as an interrupted supply, like the bobbing of electric lights, the cause of which, we believe, has not yet been diagnosed. Chorea, however treated, seldom gives satisfactory results; it either gets worse and worse, necessitating the death of the animal, or settles into a chronic form, and the owner wishes he had destroyed him rather than yield to the sentimental objections which induce him still to retain a comparatively useless dog. Chorea in cats is rare; the nervous disturbance with them more often takes the form of catalepsy, and they grow out of it.

When the hinder part of the spinal cord is affected, the hind parts have the same bobbing motion, and the dog falls over on his haunches when walking, or becomes paralysed. It is a curious fact that paralysis of the hind-quarters, complete in the sense of being unable to stand, is far more hopeful than the ordinary form of chorea. Post-mortem examination generally shows red softening of the cord. Severe exertion should be avoided, and water dogs not allowed to bathe while suffering from chorea, though they may appear to be well in other respects. A cold bath during convalescence has often been the cause of a fatal relapse. It must not be supposed that distemper always takes one or other of the forms we have described. What we wish to imply is, that as a general rule the disease determines either to the lungs, intestinal canal, or nervous system, while showing some symptoms common to all, and when a hope of recovery is entertained, too often chorea or gastric disease finishes off the animal upon whom so much care has been bestowed. Anyone who has followed these notes should be convinced that it is hopeless to look for a specific in pharmacy for a disease that is hydra-headed in its manifestations.

PARALYSIS

in the dog, we have already remarked, should be viewed hopefully. It often arises from comparatively trivial causes, such as impaction of the rectum and large bowels with hard faeces, the result more often of eating game and chicken bones than of any other cause. It is quite unsafe to prognosticate the future of a paralysed dog, however helpless he may be and remain. There are dogs running about and able to jump well that have had their hind legs bandaged to prevent them getting sores in dragging the hind parts about while retaining the use of the fore-limbs. There are occasionally cases in which degeneration of the spinal cord from old standing causes may preclude hope of recovery, but as a rule the causes are removable, though, perhaps, never correctly diagnosed.

Treatment should begin with copious enemata of soap, varied with glycerine, oil and solutions of salts of magnesia, not persisting too long with one agent. A brisk aperient in the form of jalap, either powder or tincture, followed up with very small but oft-repeated doses of mag. sulph. until the faeces become pultaceous, and so remain, but not carried to the extent of diarrhoea. If there is general incompetence, the spine should be clipped of hair and counter-irritants applied the whole length of it from the back of the poll to the top of the rump. It is not common to meet with dogs wholly paralysed, but to find a loss of control over the hind parts only, in which case the applications need cover only the loins.

One of the best applications, provided the hair is clipped close, or better still, shaved, is a blister-charge, such as are used for horses. About half a drachm of powdered cantharides to four ounces of the composition of wax, resin, pitch, etc., commonly used. It should be applied warm, and on chamois leather, and allowed to remain till the growth of new hair lifts it off. After a satisfactory state of the bowels has been induced by the remedies before suggested, nerve tonics are advisable; of these strychnia is the most valuable, producing the most astonishing results often in chronic cases. The dose should be small at first, one-sixtieth to one-fifteenth of a grain, increased till slight tetanic convulsions are observed; it should then be suddenly withdrawn, and other tonics given, but not iron in any form, as it is most astringent, and whenever advised in other diseases the action of the bowels should be the daily care of the person in charge of the animal.

It is no uncommon thing for a dog to be taken to the vet. with paralysis, and sent home again quite well in a few days after brisk purgation and laxative diet. These are the cases that trip up the inexperienced practitioner who condemns the old ladies’ dog, because a horse half as bad would be quite hopeless. Some of the long-haired dogs, as skye-terriers, appear to be paralysed behind, through passing soft ordure, which, on getting dry, makes the tail stick to the rump and a filthy mass accumulate, and even cause scalding and excoriation of the skin of the pubic region. A fashionable young practitioner was once so annoyed by making a mistake of this kind and condemning it as a hopeless case of paralysis, that he gave up dogs, entered the Army Veterinary Department, and distinguished himself as a horse doctor. The moral of this story then is, to examine carefully, not to have a nose too fastidious, or hands above the work we have to do. Nothing more than a bath is necessary to cure this form of paralysis, but there is a right and a wrong way of doing it. The dog should only sit in a bowl of warm water and soften the offending material, not diffuse the aroma all over his body by being immersed. It is not a pleasant task, but the result is miraculous if the old lady has been told by someone else that her fond darling is a hopeless paralytic. Where the owner will not consent to clipping the hair off, vigorous rubbing should be employed with lin. tereb., and lin. aconite, B.P. The daily use of a battery is of benefit in some cases, despite the fact that hair is a non-conductor; it need only be sufficiently wetted at the time of application.

RABIES.

There is, probably, no disease known to mankind about which more misconception exists than rabies. To begin with, its name is habitually misapplied by the public, and the lay press, which, undertaking as it does at the present day to inform the world on all subjects in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, should exercise some degree of care in spreading statements which cannot be eradicated from the minds of readers except by laborious repetition on the part of those who have chosen to learn what little there is to be known of the subject. Whether Pasteur and his system is believed or contemned, there is one good thing to be placed to his credit, and that is the absorbing interest at first created on the subject of hydrophobia, and the dissemination of knowledge of the symptoms among both professional and lay readers.

Let it be distinctly known, and repeated ad nauseam, that rabies is a disease of the dog, and not hydrophobia. In the lay press the terms have been synonymous, despite the efforts of journals like the Field, and other high-class papers, which spare no expense or trouble in obtaining trustworthy information from the best authorities. Hydrophobia — meaning a fear of water — is a symptom never present in rabies, whether of the dog or cat. At no stage of the disease does a dog or cat fear the sight or sound of water, or suffer paroxysms such as are commonly believed to be the case; on the contrary, a parching, burping thirst is present throughout the disease. The animal affected with rabies may not be able to swallow water, but he will thrust his head into it repeatedly in the effort to cool his swollen tongue and burning fauces.

Rabies is not altogether descriptive as a name for the disease, but will have to stand by reason of long user; but as signifying madness, it is not invariably appropriate, because many dogs never develop mania, but remain constant in their affection for human friends.

That rabies is contagious and communicated by the bite of one dog to another we know; that it is dependent for its development in the victim on a certain virus we know; but what that virus is we do not know, nor why it does not remain long in the dead animal.

At a recent meeting of the Yorkshire Veterinary Medical Association (October 28th, 1892), when an outbreak of rabies was under discussion, it seemed to be the general opinion that the lapse of 24 hours was sufficient to render post-mortem examination of a rabid case safe to the operator. Mr. Cooke, M.B.C.V.S., had been inoculated while making a post-mortem examination of a case at Scarborough, and suffered from inflamed lymphatic vessels, but not hydrophobia, or he would not have been present to receive the congratulations of his veterinary friends, and contribute valuable information to our store on this particular subject. It was also mentioned at that meeting, and should be borne in mind by all who wish to know for a certainty if a dog died rabid or not, that people who have been bitten, come in haste to have the dog opened, in order that they may betake themselves to Pasteur in time; should the V.S. run the risk of a scratch — and it is easily enough done — or should he forget himself in his devotion to others!

The most eminent scientists say that rabies cannot arise de novo, or as a sequel to other diseases, but being due to a specific virus, must be communicated. They may be right or not. Many isolated cases of rabies occur in which the previous history of the dog makes it appear to be impossible for him to have been inoculated by the saliva of another animal. It has been suggested that drinking from the same water-trough as a rabid dog may have brought about rabies by virus being swallowed and brought in contact with some abrasion in the mouth or gullet. It may be so; but some of the men who have had most to do with dogs, in the way of canine practice, hold firmly to a belief in its spontaneity. The roaming habits of the cat and dog, even of hounds kennelled and always under strict surveillance, leaves open the possibility of inoculation when hunting; there are always laggards in a pack, with business of their own to attend to in passing through a village; and, of course, such hounds have abundant opportunity of being snapped, and afterwards introducing rabies into the kennels, with the disastrous results only too well known among masters of hounds.

The unhappy mongrel has often been charged by owners of the canine aristocracy with generating and spreading rabies, but there is no proof whatever; the facts are rather the other way, Breed, sex, age, or conditions have apparently nothing to do with it. It is found in all climates and seasons, but has not been known in New Zealand or Australasia, where rigid quarantine is insisted on. The period of quarantine is so long that when the Earl of Onslow was appointed Governor of New Zealand, he left his dogs in England, and one poodle belonging to the Countess was inconsolable until her ladyship’s muff was sent back to him. Over this he went into ecstasies of delight, but he did not live to see his kind mistress again, as he was run over in Piccadilly only a few months before the Governor’s return.

That rabies has never been known on the Australasian continent should be proof enough that even a tropical heat has nothing to do with its causation, nor is it any more prevalent in the “dog days,” so-called in England. Yet every year some ill-informed newspaper men invariably refer to it as an established fact. Rabies is oftener met with amid the snows of Siberia than the plains of India. The period of incubation is most uncertain. In the practice of Mr. Harold Leeney a dog developed rabies the third day after he was bitten, dying on the fifth, all doubts as to the disease, being disposed of by a post mortem examination made at the Royal Veterinary College, where probably the longest period of incubation was witnessed in a hound, which developed it 15 months after being confined in that institution.

It is most important to detect the symptoms early, but they are not uniform by any means, though the owner, if he be an observant person, has an advantage, since he knows the manners of his dog in health, the individuality that marks every dog. The first thing observed is a change of manner — “from grave to gay, or lively to severe.” The gay and “cheeky” terrier becomes dull and retiring, the spaniel, for whom a gun has a fascination, will for the first time be unheedful of the weapon being taken out. He may be called to attention like a sleepy soldier, and force of habit make him respond with a wag of the tail, but he almost immediately falls into a reverie, and goes back to his kennel in a state of depression his master cannot understand in a dog once so sportive. Thirst, as we have before said, is a prominent symptom. The house dog seeks dark corners, hides away under sofas and the like, yet comes to his mistress’s call and licks her hand, soon to slink back in a half-ashamed way to his hiding-place, as if he would be alone with his misery. As the inflamed throat and tongue become swollen, the dog keeps his mouth open a great deal, and it may become paralysed to a certain extent, so much so, indeed, that his symptom has been called dumb rabies, but erroneously.

We have seen many dogs dumb in our presence, but, when left alone, making a never-to-be-forgotten howl —a compound of whine and growl and howl. The sound most like it that a healthy dog ever emits is that which dogs make on moonlight nights, and has been called “baying the moon.”

“I’d rather be a dog and bay the moon than such a Roman.”

This partial paralysis of the jaw has been mistaken for a lodgment of something within the mouth, and persons familiar with the dog have put their hands into the mouth in search of the object. By doing so they run great risk of inoculation, if on the hand any abrasion exists, as was the case with one, James Smeed, who had been hedging, and got a number of scratches upon his hand. He went to Pasteur with the writer of this article, and was inoculated in company with those unfortunate Russians bitten by rabid wolves. It is within the memory of most of our readers that several of these poor people died. Mr. Smeed is alive and well.

In only two, out of 13, cases of rabies, which Mr. Leeney fully reported at the time, was mania present; one of these had bitten the walls and other inanimate objects about him, but when spoken to through a window, wagged his tail with apparent pleasure for a moment, then returned to his task of demolishing carpet and floor, in which he was biting holes. The other case was sent to the Royal Veterinary College, and developed such maniacal rage that he had to be destroyed almost immediately.

Some of the cases that are slow in developing are the most dangerous to human life as well as to other animals. The victim, if not chained up, goes for a long ramble every day and snaps at anything, alive or dead, which may stand in his way, returning home in a state of exhaustion. Such an animal may do incalculable mischief, and the pettifogging parochial measures, adopted from time to time, will never succeed in stamping out rabies when one side of a street is under a different authority from the opposite side, and the authorities in their wisdom put the act in force in one parish and not in the next. Numberless dog owners have been hailed before a magistrate, and fined for infringement of a law, so ridiculous, that they were acting legally when they started out with a dog, but illegally in going across the road.

There is no remedy, no treatment, and it would be highly dangerous to attempt it if there were. It is to be hoped that veterinary surgeons will be put under the same law as medical practitioners, and compulsory notification of all infectious diseases insisted on. The law has hitherto been administered in the most erratic manner. We have known the rabies order made because a constable has killed a puppy in a teething fit, and on the other hand, the certificate of a duly qualified practitioner has been pooh-poohed, or, at any rate, not acted on.*

[* Hydrophobia five years after the bite: The uncertainty of any so-called “cure,” or properly speaking, preventive treatment, has been painfully illustrated by a case brought into the Huddersfield Infirmary in September, 1892. Three men had been bitten by a rabid dog on August 1st, 1887. All of them underwent treatment at the Pasteur Institute from the 5th to the 19th August. One died in the month of October following. Another was admitted into the Huddersfield Infirmary on September 5th, 1892, a little more than five years after the bite, and died forty-eight hours after the symptoms had become pronounced. This we believe to be the longest authenticated case on record, though there are not wanting more or less probably stories of eight and nine years dormancy of the fatal malady.]

There is one thing in connection with rabies that everyone ought to bear in mind, and that is NOT to destroy a dog as soon as possible after it has bitten a person. Is it necessary in this day to say that there is no connection between a dog that may afterwards go mad and a person bitten by him when he was well? Now, is it possible? If a dog is killed after biting a human being, how can that person ever allay his fears? He is ever after wondering whether the dog was rabid, and whether, as a result of the bite, he may suffer hydrophobia in one, two, three, or more years. Had the dog been kept alive in a place of security his condition could have been ascertained beyond all doubt, and the unfortunate person saved all the torment of doubt which his precipitate action has caused.

We have advised killing promptly a dog suffering from rabies when no doubt exists as to the disease being present, and there are different methods. Just as “there are more ways of killing a cat besides choking her with butter,” so are there safe and speedy means of destroying rabid dogs without risk to the doctor. In the case referred to, as seen through a window, the sash was raised a couple of inches, and the animal’s attention called, while a syringe full of hydrocyanic acid was emptied in his face. Quite sufficient can in this way be conveyed to the dog to ensure his speedy demise, and we can recommend the plan where a gun cannot be used or the patient approached with safety.

ACCIDENTS AND OPERATIONS.

The first are innumerable, the latter few. We have already alluded to a few of the accidents which arise from swallowing foreign bodies when treating of the digestive tract generally, but of cuts and wounds there are no end. It may be taken as a broad rule that no wound is too serious for treatment in healthy dogs and cats; their latent reparative power can only be fully believed by those who have had much to do in doctoring them. Their chances of recovery are much better today than formerly. If our domestic pets have lost something in stamina by selection, they have gained in value; have better doctors and more humane treatment. For some reason, difficult to understand, it used to be thought ridiculous to doctor a cat, whether sick or wounded, and the death penalty was exacted, where one would suppose the common dictates of humanity would enjoin kindness to an animal esteemed when in health, either for its utility or beauty.

Dogs meet with more accidents than cats, as their mode of life is attended with greater risks, especially sporting dogs, in which we include the ratting and fighting terriers.

Among the commonest injuries from fights are lamenesses, which pass off without treatment, through bites in the muscles of the forearm. When the injury can be seen, owing to swelling or a visible tooth mark, fomentation and a laxative are generally all that is necessary. There is not the same tendency to suppuration in dogs or cats as in other animals, though cats are rather more liable than dogs.

SEROUS ABSCESS.

When bitten about the neck dogs are specially liable to the formation of serous abscess, which manifests itself in the first place by stiffness of the neck and head, in the course of a day or two producing enormous swelling, which may include one or both ears. In speaking of the ear we described serous abscess of its inner surface, and would direct attention to the measures there advocated. A dependent orifice should be made in the skin at the lowest part of the swelling, and after evacuating the fluid by all-round pressure, a bandage should be put on moderately tight. In some cases it will succeed, but in a majority it will be necessary to pass a seton through it from a high to a low part. A piece of tape soaked in turpentine and knotted at each end (not tied, or the dog may catch his hind foot in it while scratching) should be kept in for a day or two, and moved to and fro, night and morning. When pus begins to show at the orifices the time has arrived to remove the setons without risk of refilling. These are very formidable looking cases, but treatment of the above kind is invariably successful.

WOUNDS

of the simple incised variety, as from glass bottles, need only to be cleansed and dressed with carbolised oil (1 in 20), unless gaping and in need of a few sutures, when bayonet-shaped surgical needles should be used, as the skin, even of a young cat, is too tough for the darning needle, which amateurs sometimes attempt to use when unable to employ a veterinary surgeon. The mistake is usually made of leaving stitches in too long; they should not produce suppuration, but be removed in from 20 to 30 hours, even if fresh ones have to be put in to keep the parts in apposition. It should be borne in mind by anyone treating a wound in dog or cat, that new skin is never produced, and as there was not too much skin before the animal was wounded, he cannot afford to lose any, though it may hang down, and for the time appear to be superfluous.

Torn and lacerated wounds are too often the kind met with in our patients from getting hung up, staked, torn, etc., when dogs are at work or play. Some of the worst wounds met with in cats are self-inflicted in their nervous efforts to get under a gate when pursued; in this way the skin of the back has been torn away for inches. After cleaning wounds of this kind with an aqueous solution of carbolic acid (acid carbolic, 1 part; glycerine, 1 part; water, 30 to 40 parts) or with liq. hyd. bichlor., B.P., the torn edges of the wound should be persuaded to come together and secured by sutures.

Many kinds of material are recommended for sutures, but no one is suitable for all wounds. White thread, silk, expressly made, malleable wire, etc., are all suited to different cases. Cats seldom interfere with a wound, and the lightest of sutures may be used, as bleached thread, which, if it cannot afterwards be seen and removed, will soon decay in the pus its presence excites, and be licked or rubbed out at a more advanced period of healing. Sutures of the plaited silk kind are usually best for dogs, not so likely to be broken or torn out, yet offering more resistance than thread, and not so likely to cut its way out with a restless and intemperate animal.

Clean incised wounds frequently heal by adhesion, or first intention, as it was formerly called, but contused, torn, lacerated injuries necessitate other processes of nature. It is important to clearly understand what is a healthy wound, and to remember that where adhesion cannot be performed (a process we cannot see, only noting its results), new material has to be carried to the parts injured in order to build up lost structure with either the kind of substance lost, or an efficient substitute as in the case of skin. The immediate effect of an injury is inflammation, which process was formerly regarded as a disease, but in the light of today we know it as increased nutrition. It is as necessary to have inflammation so called to heal up a gaping wound as to cart materials as a preliminary to building a house. From the blood sent to the surrounding structure, lymph is selected, and pus which overflows is but an excessive production of cells which cannot be utilised. The formation of pus, thick and yellowish, in a wound with red prominences, is a natural method and is a healthy wound. If a brick reddish, sanious fluid of ill odour is formed, and a dead-meat look pervades the exposed surface, there is much to be remedied before a cure can be effected where a dark, dirty discharge is the characteristic instead of laudable pus, means should be used to excite healthy granulation. The wound should be irrigated with hot water, and if any dead tissue remains in it, this must be removed, as a preliminary to new growth. An irritant, as equal parts of turpentine and oil, should be applied either on a pledget of lint or tow, or injected, or the old-fashioned digestive ointment — ung. Resinae — which, prepared B.P., is much too stiff, and better rubbed down with equal parts of ung. simplex.

If the wound is of such nature, so situated that a bandage cannot be kept on, a powder of like materials may be dusted over it with good effect — powdered resin for instance. The formation of yellow matter, and the appearance of red granulations, is to be looked for as the desired result, and encouraged up to a point where its increase would mean a profusion of granulations above the level of the wound; this is called proud flesh, and has to be suppressed by caustic or astringent agents when its growth has been too rapid and luxuriant, but it is a common error to suppose that proud flesh as seen within and below the level of the skin is an objectionable condition. Some wounds can with difficulty be got to produce these granulations, while others develop them with such rapidity that daily cauterisations of nitrate of silver are necessary. For small surfaces, nitrate of silver answers admirably, forming a dry hard pellicle, which by its pressure tends to prevent further prolific granulations. It is not so efficient, and a great deal more expensive than chloride of zinc, which, in inexperienced hands, does too much work, not only repressing granulation, but hindering the reparative process by days. If it is desired to make the least possible blemish, as it generally is, a great deal of contraction of the skin may be effected by judicious cauterisation, allowing a scab to form as the result of either nitrate of silver or an astringent powder applied, then picking it off rather roughly and again applying the astringent to any bright spots that show, and repeating this process every two or three days, when it will be found that each new scab approximates the edges of the skin more closely. Skin being very elastic, can be stretched over a broken knee or other prominent place, but the eschar which unites the once divided edges is not new skin, and has not its elasticity.

BROKEN BONES,

though generally to be traced to violence, are sometimes caused by the most trifling accidents, or break of their own inherent brittleness by contraction of the muscles attached to them.

Fractures are scientifically divided into many classes, but as affecting our patients, the dog and cat, they are nearly always of the long round bones, and one of two or three kinds. The green stick fracture, whose name describes it better than anything that can be said; the simple fracture, and the compound, in which latter, for convenience and brevity, we include the comminuted and the fracture with wound. The first is almost confined to very young animals, requires but little treatment, and seldom results in anything worse than a slight curve. Pain and lameness at the time of the accident attract attention, and gentle support in the way of a roll of diachylon plaster or starch bandage is sufficient. Fracture in which a bone is broken through, a complete solution of continuity in a bone, needs skilful treatment, though we have seen many successful bone settings done by amateurs.

With some brown paper, strips of calico and a glue pot one may do some brilliant surgery, though one would prefer the run of an establishment like Arnold’s, or Krohne and Seseman’s. As accidents are accidents and not usually foreseen, we think it advisable to be able to make use of such everyday appliances as glue and paper and rags, as they are always obtainable. If, then, the fracture is of a kind suitable it is well to begin by crushing up brown paper and pouring boiling water over it, allowing it to soak while strips of calico, canvas, or any other material free from dye are being prepared and the glue getting thin. All being ready, the patient is to be firmly held, while the operator takes up such a position that he can compare the injured limb with its fellow, and not begin to mould on his appliances till he has satisfied himself not only that the broken ends of the bone are in apposition, but that when the corresponding limb is held in a similar position they both look alike. If they do not he must endeavour to ascertain the cause, even at the expense of inflicting more pain, or the result will be deformity.

When the limb is ready for the splint, the paper is to be squeezed nearly dry, and gently, but firmly, moulded on to the parts, covering plenty of space (as is the custom of novices in applying a liniment for a lameness without knowing its seat). Next, follow strips of calico on which has been spread thin glue with a brush. These are to be put on in such a manner as to secure the paper from shifting. What so often follows and puzzles the novice is the great swelling below the splint; this is partly caused by arrested circulation from pressure and partly by gravitation and exudation of serous or dropsical fluid, and should be prevented, rather than cured, by bandaging moderately tight, from the foot upwards, immediately after the fracture has been put up, and before it has time to swell. In the case of cats or of dogs which absolutely refuse to be held still, it may be necessary to give chloroform or aether, not only to make the patient quiet, but to relax the muscles, whose violent contraction sometimes make it difficult to set a broken bone at all.

Shepherds may almost be called experts in bone-setting and parturition, for every season calls for their offices in these branches of the veterinary art. When a fracture has taken place in a long bone, the ends have passed one another by reason of the muscular contraction, or at least been removed from their place, and it is to get them back with the least amount of delay, pain and unnecessary force that we have to direct our attention. These symptoms are nearly always apparent; there is acute pain, deformity, lameness, or incompetence that anyone can see if a leg or arm- bone be broken, while the diagnosis of fracture of some bones is obscure and experts often at fault. A fracture having been satisfactorily diagnosed, we have to consider how and with what agents we will attempt to give support, and prepare them before attempting to do anything or handle the patient unnecessarily.

Provided the ends of a bone have been brought together, the bone is only snapped, and not crushed or splintered, the probability is that a complete cure will result. The haemorrhage within soon forms a clot around the fractured ends, which becomes organised, at first gelatinous, afterwards partaking of the nature of cartilage; later on bony deposits take place in it, and finally it is all converted into ossific material, of which for some time there is too much. The superfluous matter is eventually absorbed, while the greater density of the union is increasing, and no one can detect that a fracture ever took place.

There are ghastly fractures in the streets of large towns where dogs cannot look half a dozen ways at once, and it must be admitted that they are as guilty as elderly people with dim sight and indifferent hearing of choosing a busy crossing to discuss questions of social or other interest. For fractures that are hopeless from the- first, crushed limbs impossible of repair, a merciful death is the greatest service that one can render to such victims of absent-mindedness. It is the custom to abuse the butcher’s boy, and the van demon of furious driving, but the observer of dogs must own that they sprawl about in a busy thoroughfare with the most perfect abandon, and meet in the market place oblivious of the traffic, while they make those close personal inspections, which it is presumed are dictated only by solicitude for one another’s health. Whether this be so or not, you must have often observed a fight brought on by no other cause than a breach of etiquette, in which one dog rushes by another at a street corner without the customary salute — this by the way. We could, but we mustn't, tell some funny stories about dogs. Our editor reminds us that we must not wander into “by-path- meadows,” however attractive the flowers.

The advantage of a splint of the kind we have described is that it can be cut in V’s to relieve pressure, when swelling indicates it, or can be softened with warm water and partially removed with safety, which is not the case with metal or strips of wood.

The soft union is very rapid, and the casing may be removed in a week to avoid sores, replacing it with something, lighter, as strips of plaster or cotton wool, with glue or starch bandages again; much care should be taken to prevent sore places, as by “nagging” at them the patient will tear off the whole concern and do irreparable mischief It is better in any case to use the contrivance we have named an Elizabethan frill.

There are some fractures which, coming under the head of simple, yet are so situated, that joints and ligaments are involved, causing permanent lameness, or deformity, or both; of such, fracture of the elbow in dogs is one of the commonest, the new material embracing parts whose gliding motion is thus interrupted; this happens to cats when jumping from a wall in a hurry. They are good patients in the matter of fractures, sulking in a corner rather than trying to get off any appliances that may be used. Among the things used for putting up fractures may be named paper, cardboard, tin, plaster, starch, glue, wooden and other splints. The size of the patient and situation of the bone must decide which of these agents is to be selected.

OPERATIONS,

as usually practised, are, we have said, few — too few when lives might be saved by them.

Everyone has heard of castrating cats, and most people believe that a Wellington boot is the chief accessory, but no-one will use such an awkward instrument twice. If chloroform is not used (which it ought to be), a better plan is to roll the cat up in a blanket or other soft and bulky material, too thick to be bitten through, and soft enough for the nails to get fixed in; then placing the bundle between the knees, with the animal’s back to the operator, an assistant extricates and firmly holds the hind legs while the surgeon makes the scrotum tense with his left hand, boldly cutting through the skin and investing membranes by one incision, seizing the testicle between his finger and thumb, and pulling it out until the cord breaks away, repeating the operation on the other testicle. It should not be cut but pulled out, as no haemorrhage follows this method, and the subject of it, if young, may be found at play a few minutes afterwards, alike unconscious of his loss and ungrateful for the trouble he has been saved in the future. Many people’s houses are made offensive by the smell of a tom cat, because they will not pay a veterinary surgeon’s fee for this simple operation.

Dogs are very seldom castrated, except when disease compels it. Emasculation is said to deprive dogs of their spirit, but we have known such dogs, and been glad they were chained up.

Operation on females is much more successful, though it is said by those who cannot perform it that they grow fat and useless. Cats are especially benefited by removal of the ovaries; they no longer call their lovers; and it is the she cats who are chiefly responsible for the “caterwauling;” neither are they always in kitten or suckling.

A gentleman, who had one done at five years old, says, “She was the mother of dozens of kittens, was a continual nuisance, either roaming or calling her lovers, or in a condition of pregnancy, or nursing. She has, ever since the operation, been a perfect pet, without a thought of lovers or families; her roaming propensities are gone and she plays like a kitten.” The Rev. J. G. Gardner, author of a book on cats, makes a similar statement; as also Mr. A. A. Clark, the treasurer of the National Cat Club.

This operation, performed under chloroform, or some other anaesthetic, is accomplished by making an incision in the flank, whether in bitches or cats, introducing a finger, and bringing out the horns of the uterus with the ovaria attached; the ovaries are separated with knife or scissors, the uterus returned and a couple of stitches keep the skin together. A clean surgical wound such as this unites by adhesion, and the animal is well the next day, except it be for a drowsiness resulting from chloroform. Considering the magnitude of the operation it is remarkable how little constitutional disturbances results, and how rarely the wound fails to unite in a single day. The sutures must be removed in 20 to 30 hours or suppuration begins. In long-haired cats and bitches the mark is not visible without parting the hair, and in a very short time the operator himself cannot find a scar. Cats that have been so operated upon do not shed their coats as do others.

In a few instances, bitches, but not cats, have been known to show signs of oestrum after wards, even when both horns of the uterus have been removed. Physiologists have not given us satisfactory reasons for this, though human practitioners corroborate the statement as applied to women in those hospitals where ovariotomy is comparatively common. If oestrum, or the “period,” in any animal is due to the liberation of ova from the ovarium, why does oestrum take place when the ovaria are removed? That it may do so, and that the sexual desire accompanies it, we have had unpleasant evidence in a bitch that was thought safe. Of course, no impregnation results, and, speaking for bitches, we may say that the function ceases with one or two exhibitions.

Operations for the removal of tumours in the mammary glands have already been referred to; the same principles of surgery apply to any other part.

Happily for animals, many of the barbarous fashions of our fathers are gone or going out of date, and among them cropping dogs’ ears. Only a few breeds are now mutilated in this way, and, while avoiding any instructions as to the method, we would enlist the sympathy of our readers on behalf of animals, and remind them that cropping dogs’ ears, worming the tongue, docking the tail, etc., are offences against the law, and it is only necessary to give information to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to ensure prosecution of such cruel persons.

The wretched quacks who have practised too long among dogs, even enjoying Royal patronage, used to make people believe that dogs had a worm in the tongue — indeed, they believed it themselves, so destitute were they of any anatomical knowledge. It was a part of the fraenum of tongue that they mercilessly dragged out and thought it was a worm! The idea was that dogs relieved of this ligament lost their taste for mischief and enjoyed immunity from rabies. To dissipate prejudice and ignorance, relieve pain and save the lives of animals, either valuable or valued, has its reward, and compensates to a great extent for the slights often put upon veterinary surgeons by reason of the charlatans who until recently masqueraded as doctors of animals. It is the damnosa heriditas which a profession, but recently ennobled, must expect, but we hope rise superior to in time.