also
are beneficial; but depletion must be regulated by the ability of the
animal to sustain it. A long course of iodide of potassium in solution,
combined with the liquor potassae, will, however, constitute the principal
dependence.
Iodide of potassium Two drachms two scruples.
Liquor potassae One ounce and a half.
Simple syrup Six ounces.
Water Twelve ounces and a half.
Give from half a teaspoonful to a teaspoonful three times a day.
The above must be persevered in for a couple of months before any effect
can be anticipated. Mercury I have not found of any service, though Blaine
speaks highly of it, and Youatt quotes his opinion. Perhaps I have not
employed it rightly, or ventured to push it far enough.
Under the treatment recommended, the dog may be preserved from speedy
death; but the structures have been so much changed that medicine cannot
be expected to restore them. The pet may be saved to its indulgent
mistress, and again perhaps exhibit all the charms for which it was ever
prized; but the sporting-dog will never be made capable of doing work, and
certainly it is not to be selected to breed from after it has sustained an
attack of hepatitis.
Sometimes, during the existence of hepatitis, the animal will be seized
with fits of pain, which appear to render it frantic. These I always
attribute to the passage of gall stones, which I have taken in comparative
large quantities from the gall-bladders of dogs. The cries and struggles
create alarm, but the attack is seldom fatal. A brisk purgative, a warm
bath, and free use of laudanum and ether, afford relief; for when the
animal dies of chronic hepatitis, it perishes gradually from utter
exhaustion.
The post-mortem examination generally presents that which much surprises
the proprietor; one lobe of the gland is very greatly enlarged; it
evidently contains fluid. It has under disease become a vast cyst, from
which, in a setter, I have actually extracted more than two gallons of
serum: from a small spaniel I have taken this organ so increased in size
that it positively weighed one half the amount of the body from which it
was removed. The wonder is that the apparently weak covering to the liver
could bear so great a pressure without bursting.
INDIGESTION.
Things must seem to have come to a pretty pass when a book is gravely
written upon dyspepsia in dogs. Nevertheless, I am in earnest when I t
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