124: THE DISEASES OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



Therapeutics. 



The chief aim is prevention of infection, much of which depends 

 iijDon the veterinarian instructing those exposed to the danger of 

 infection as to the care of their persons and of animals that may- 

 have the disease. The danger which may arise from the bites of flies, 

 and the necessity of keeping cadavers covered, and of care in han- 

 dling them, should ever be especially emphasized. 



The chief therapeutic interference consists in the thorough de- 

 struction of the local centers where infection has taken place with 

 concentrated carbolic acid, or nitric or sulphuric acid. If the car- 

 buncle is fully developed, it should be at once cut out and the 

 wound thoroughly cauterized. 



In inward infection by means of the digestive tract, appropriate 

 doses of carbolic acid and quinine should be resorted to in unison 

 with iron, wine, and other tonics. 



Anthkacoid Diseases. 



This name has been given to a group of diseases in which the 

 necroscopic phenomena are more or less allied to those of anthrax. 

 They are unquestionably germ or infectious diseases, but differ from 

 anthrax in wanting the specific bacteria of that disease in their 

 course, and the clinical or intra-vital phenomena. These facts 

 should ever be borne in mind in the nomenclature or classification 

 of diseases. 



In veterinary medicine we have never yet arrived at an indi- 

 vidual independence, and our pathological anatomy is far more 

 human than zootomic. But, what is still more absurd, clinicians, 

 and especially the authors of our books, both past and present, have 

 given names to diseases of our animals because of some fancied re- 

 lation in the clinical phenomena to human diseases. They have 

 forgotten that the caiise of a disease should ever have much to do 

 with its nomenclature or classification. 



What real relation have the diseases called measles or scarlatina 

 of our animals to the diseases of that name in man ? Not only are 

 they pathologically different, but their cause is different. 



The measles of the hog is the cystic form of an animal parasite. 

 It is an invasive not an infectious disease. 



To speak of scarlatina, or typhus, of the horse or any animal is 

 equally absurd. There are peculiar infectious diseases of man due 

 to specific causes which have never yet been known to exert any in- 

 fluence on animals. You might fill a stable with horses and with 



