TREATMENT. 71 



diseased animal a means potent for good or evil, and ought 

 not to be resorted to indiscriminately. Depletion in many 

 cases of catarrhal influenza, Avhere constitutional disturbance 

 is not productive of even diminished appetite, may be borne 

 with impunity ; but in the severer and more malignant forms, 

 as surely as we bleed, so surely will we have a protracted re- 

 covery, or, it may be, death. 



Cathartics are nearly equally dangerous. Here the mucous 

 membrane is extremely susceptible to be acted upon in- 

 juriously by any irritant, and in the existing state of the 

 animal might acquire an activity not easy of arrestment, 

 while anything that nauseates is to be carefully avoided as 

 tending still further to weaken an already depressed system. 

 As well give opiates to a man in a state of coma as active 

 purgatives to a horse suffering from the adynamic fever of 

 influenza. Should the bowels require aught to facilitate their 

 action, let it be of the simplest nature or mildest form, parti- 

 cularly while the fever lasts. 



Along with these two leading systems of treatment, and 

 one which has gone hand in hand with them and been nearly 

 as blindly employed, is ' counter-irritation.' 



Blister, bleed, and physic was certainly doing something, 

 although that something was subduing the animal instead of 

 the disease. 



The application to external surfaces of agents calculated to 

 produce an amount of irritation or vesication has more steadily 

 preserved its position in theory, and many are disposed to 

 think practically has been productive of more beneficial results 

 than either of the akeady mentioned curative agents. 



By whatever mode, or through whatever channels, they may 

 produce their action, whether by producing a severe action in 

 external textures, thereby lessening the dangers attendant on 

 the internal disease, diverting the morbid action from the 

 dangerous and uncontrollable to that which is less so and 

 more immediately under our direction ; or whether they pro- 

 duce their beneficial and therapeutic results by reflex action, 

 removing pain, nerve irritation, and general or local vascular 

 tension and disordered nutrition, that is by operating on the 

 peripheral nerve-fibres which convey the impression received 

 to the nerve-centres, which impression is then modified, trans- 



