Feb. i8, 1918 



Efficacy of Some Anthelmintics 



443 



Table V. — Percentage of efficacy of various anthelmintics for cats 



Drug tested. 



Oleoresin of aspidium and calomel. 

 PeUetierine tannate and castor oil < 



^0 



Page, 

 416 

 417 



66 



Dose.o 



0.8 mil 



64 mgm. per 

 kilo. 



Ascarids. 



S il 



Taenia. 



|& 



2: Ph° 



Hookworms. 



3 a 

 2: 





a The dose indicated is for the anthelmintic, not for the laxative with which it is combined. 

 b Two cats died shortly after treatment. The third cat vomited one Taenia. 

 c Treatment was entirely ineffective. No tapeworms or nematodes removed. 



CONCLUSIONS 



Making due allowance for the paucity of data in regard to certain 

 drugs, the writers consider that the following may be reasonably advanced 

 as the result of their investigations. 



Simple purgatives, calomel and castor oil, may have some slight value 

 as anthelmintics, but it is hardly sufficient to justify their use for this 

 purpose. Ascarids in dogs are sometimes removed by castor oil given as 

 a preliminary purge, and this fact may prove of benefit in veterinary 

 practice as a diagnostic measure when the more accurate method of 

 microscopic fecal examination can not be carried out. However, castor 

 oil failed to remove ascarids more frequently than it succeeded, and in no 

 case were all the ascarids removed from any one animal. As many of 

 the experiments on dogs were preceded by a dose of castor oil, the writers 

 have fairly extensive data on this subject. 



The most reliable vermifuge for ascarids, whether in dogs or swine, is 

 oil of chenopodium. This drug, which was tested out on 34 dogs in six 

 experiments, showed an efficacy for the entire series of 97 per cent. 

 It rarely fails to remove all the ascarids present in a dog if given at the 

 rate of 0.2 mil per kilo, preceded by a dose of castor oil and the animal 

 starved for 24 hours before treatment. 



The chenopodium treatment is also very efficacious for ascarids in 

 swine, and when properly administered may be expected to remove most, 

 if not all, of the worms present. It would seem, however, that neither 

 chenopodium nor any other drug tested will give satisfactory results if 

 mixed with the daily ration and the animals allowed to dose themselves; 

 it is best given to each pig individually in suitable dosage, preceded by 

 a fast. While this method necessarily involves considerable labor when 

 treating animals as unruly as swine, the labor can be reduced by sort- 

 ing the hogs roughly into classes according to size and confining them 

 in inclosures which will permit them to be caught with a minimum 

 amount of struggUng. The treatment has proved practical on a large 



