TREATMENT. 77 



is not corroborated by all, indeed by many able veterinarians, 

 who, advocating the use of a vesicant, in these cases prefer 

 mustard applied as directed for the throat ; while not a few 

 are opposed to the use of these agents in any form. By such 

 their use is ojaposed on various grounds. They cannot and do 

 not remove or mitigate the inflammatory action, either in these 

 cases of pulmonic inflammation or any other similar action, 

 we are told ; and post-mortem examinations, it is said, con- 

 firm this. Certainly, it is allowed that such treatment has not 

 had this desirable result in fatal cases — those only in which 

 the evidence of structural change has been obtained ; but we 

 ought to remember that a certain amount of caution is re- 

 quired in drawing conclusions from cases examined after 

 death, as contrasted with such as have recovered. For aught 

 we know, it may be that structural conditions might be very 

 different if viewed where improvement was evident after the 

 application of a blister. 



Again, it is asserted that they ought not to be applied, as 

 their application increases the pain and fever. Such may be 

 the case in certain instances — probably those which terminate 

 fatally ; that they do so in every case, or even in the majority, 

 I cannot from experience allow. 



The general or frequent result of the application of a can- 

 tharides liniment to the sides in very many instances where 

 inflammatory action has been progressing in the lung-tissue is 

 that in six or twelve hours the general febrile symptoms are 

 subdued. I have observed in that time that the temperature 

 has fallen 2° or 3° F., the pulse become less frequent by ten 

 beats per minute, and the respirations lessened nearly one- 

 third in number, and changed from the catching abdominal 

 character to a regularity certainly not normal, but much im- 

 proved from the condition existing previous to the application 

 of the vesicant. 



Indiscriminate blistering of the chest in pleuro-pulmonic 

 inflammation is at all times to be condemned ; but when 

 judiciously and moderately employed in the pulmonic inflam- 

 mation attendant on certain forms of influenza fe^er in the 

 horse, does not deserve to be stigmatized in every case as worse 

 than useless. In actual j^ractice, I am satisfied that much 

 good has resulted from its employment. 



