CHAPTER XXXIX 



A LIST OP VETERINARY DRUGS, WITH THEIR ACTIONS AND DOSES 



As A BROAD RULE, but admitting of many exceptions, the doses for animals 

 are calculated by their relative weight to man ; but veterinary therapeutics 

 are in a very backwai'd state, and many of the remedies which have a 

 perfectly well-understood action on the human subject appear to be inert 

 with most animals. Goats, for instance, will eat strong shag tobacco without 

 experiencing any of its narcotic effects, and ergot is equally inoperative upon 

 cattle in large doses, although there are still persons to be found who 

 attribute abortion in cows to the small quantity of ergotized grasses in a 

 pasture. The veterinary profession is not so blameworthy as might be at 

 first supposed for this state of things. It has not the inherited wealth of 

 the medical profession, whose best men have laboured for many centuries, 

 to hand on knowledge to unborn generations, and only in quite recent years 

 has it copied the faults of its richer sister by multiplying materia medica to 

 such an extent that no practitioner can acquire a fair acquaintance with a 

 tenth part of the Pharmacopoeia. Again, experiments in doses upon healthy 

 animals are not permitted by the Vivisection Act. The most barbarous 

 practices are yet permitted by law, if done with the object of curing disease ; 

 but a healthy mongrel may not be chosen to watch the effects of pharma- 

 ceutical agents for publication, and any information acquired in this way 

 has to slowly filter into the student's note-book viva voce. It is to be 

 regretted that none of the veterinary colleges have applied for licences and 

 carried out a series of therapeutic experiments, which might have for their 

 result far greater benefits than the bacteriological cultivations which have 

 for so long engrossed some of the best men to the exclusion of more practical 

 matter. 



Until such experiments have been carried out, Voltaire's description will 

 continue to hold good — i. e. 



" Pouring in agents of which we know little, into bodies of which we 

 know less." 



The dose for a horse means for one 15 hands 2 inches high, and not less 

 than five years old. 



Doses According to Age. 



For a yearling One-third that for an adult. 



For a two-year-old One-half that for an adult. 



For a three-j-eai'-old ... ... Two-thirds. 



For a four-year-old Three-fourths. 



For a five-year-old The full dose. 



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