STRANGLES. 69 



employment to the same extent as in influenza. A few 

 doses of potassce nitras may be administered. In a few days 

 benefit accrues from the use of tonics, more especially if 

 anorexia, complete or partial, is present as a symptom ; but 

 during the early or acute stages of fevers the use of tonics is 

 a practice to be condemned. The patient may be given 

 gentle walking exercise in the sun, and if the abscess is 

 tard}^ in development, agents to encourage or assist the 

 process must be employed. Hence stimulate with heat and 

 moisture, as the ammoniacal, or camphorated liniments, and 

 a cataplasm afterwards. The latter should not be allowed to 

 become cold. Unless it be kept constantly warm, it will not 

 only do no good, but will do injury. It is not by any means an 

 easy application to make, and to do it properly requires the 

 employment of a many-tailed bandage, or a hood. In some 

 cases the ungt. hydrarg. biniodi. may be applied in the 

 usual manner, as a vesicant. Whenever fluctuation of the 

 abscess becomes perceptible, it should at once be evacuated, 

 the best instrument for the purpose being Symes' abscess 

 lancet. Care should be exercised not to wound a blood- 

 vessel. In other cases where the development of the abscess 

 is delayed, or its contents fail to eff'ect an outlet on account of 

 thickness of the walls, it is to be opened, using a knife and 

 probe, or director, for the purpose. The pus, in some cases, 

 may be situated five or six inches beneath the surface. A 

 probe-pointed seton needle is a good instrument to use, if the 

 abscess be situated in the brachial region. When symptoms 

 of suff'ocation are urgent, perform the operation of trache- 

 otomy ; and it is in this disease that we have the best 

 results from tracheotomy. In the convalescent stages 

 sod^e hyposulphite is useful as an antiseptic, when pyaemia is 

 feared. Constipation may be relieved by enemas, and 

 oleaginous draughts. Any attempt to cut the disease short 

 by the administration of purgatives, etc., is fraught with 



