322 DIABETES MELLITUS. 



Under its employment, the more urgent symptoms have not 

 only disappeared, but the appetite has improved, and the health 

 has been re-established. 



When the thirst is great, the animal will take this in the 

 form of the compound solution in the drinking-water ; the 

 better form, however, for its exhibition is that of the iodide of 

 potassium, which may be given from two to three drachms 

 twice daily. The beneficial action of the iodine m lessening 

 the thirst and diuresis will usually be exhibited in three or 

 fom- days, when the amount ought to be decreased, or some of 

 the doses replaced by half-ounce doses of- Fowler's solution of 

 arsenic, which is readily enough taken in food or the drinking- 

 water. Some animals are found to receive more benefit from 

 iron than arsenic. This may be given either as the sulphate 

 or the solution of the perchloride in moderate amount, in 

 food or bolus, twice daily. 



.»,. II. Diabetes Mellitus. 



Saccharine Diabetes. Nature and Causation. — This, which 

 probably of itself ought to bear the name of diabetes, is truly 

 a systemic disease, appearing to originate in disturbance of 

 function m one or more of the steps in the complex process of 

 food-assimilation. Whether it is entirely during primary, or 

 also partly during secondary, digestion that these changes 

 originate, it is extremely difficult to say. It is certain, how- 

 ever, that although the progress of these changes connected 

 with the derangement of the activities of different organs is 

 no less rapid than their products are dissimilar to those which 

 are met with in health, there is, nevertheless, on examination 

 of these same organs after death, extremely little obvious 

 change. 



Amongst our patients diabetes mellitus is a rare disease ; in 

 the horse, I am only aware of having once encountered con- 

 ditions in any way analogous to what are accepted as diag- 

 nostic of saccharine diabetes. 



The agencies and their exact pathological relations which 

 operate in the production of sugar throughout the system, and 

 its excretion with the urine, are as yet more probably matters 

 of hypothesis than capable of satisfactory demonstration. At 

 one time the presence of sugar in the urine was attributed to 



