92 



Treatment of Sick Animals. 



V0L.V. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 In our previous remarks, respectin;T the 

 treatment of sick animals, our principal aim 

 has been the prevention of evil — by directing 

 attention to sound principles, a distrust of em- 

 pirical remedies, and an unwillingness to in- 

 terfere with the salutary operations of nature 

 — in the full confidence that if the owner of 

 an animal only prescribed as he could give a 

 sound reason for his course, the mild cases at 

 least would generally recover — but as some 

 of difficulty and greater severity will arise, 

 we propose, in this paper, to give some hints 



ON THE SELECTION OF A DOCTOR FOR SICK 



To prescribe properly for a sick or injured 

 animal, the doctor should be perfectly familiar 

 with the structure of every part of the body, 

 and this constitutes the anatomy — he should 

 also understand the uses of the different parts, 

 and the manner in which the various func- 

 tions are performed in health, or the physio- 

 logy — he should understand what changes in 

 a part produce certain symptoms, the causes 

 and effects of diseases, or the pathology, 

 and where the same symptoms may be pro- 

 duced by more than one cause — he should 

 have a discriminating mind, to be able to de- 

 cide upon which it may depend — he should 

 have a thorough knowledge of the means he 

 employs to remove disease, his remedies, and 

 should be familiar with their effects upon tho 

 healiliy and diseased body — he should be able 

 to avail himself of all the resources which 

 nature and science have placed at his dis- 

 posal, and not be guilty of the folly of trust- 

 ing to one article, or one set of articles, for 

 the relief of diseases of the most opposite 

 character, or for the same disease in its differ- 

 ent stages. 



To attain all this, we shall be told, will 

 require much time, labour, money and hard 

 study, and, to do it well, certain mental quali- 

 fications which all do not possess — granted — 

 and that only proves, that many undertake 

 to treat all the complaints of sick cattle, who 

 are totally unqualified, both by nature and 

 education, and with a confidence too, which 

 nothing but ignorance could impart. 



If our domestic animals are worth caring 

 for, it ought to be made an object for some to 

 prepare themselves thoroughly for all the 

 difficult cases, and to be ready to come to the 

 farmer's assistance, when his knowledge and 

 means fail. 



To take a proper view of the subject, we 

 should look upon every one of our animals as 

 a most complicated machine, which, when it 

 gets deranged, requires a skilful mechanic 

 to put it in order; and to make any man a 

 skilful mechanic, carpenter, millwright or 



machinist, every one knows, requires several 

 years o^ active apprenticeship — not to get 

 theoretical notions — hat practical knowledge 

 — tvorking himself, under the direction of 

 those who had gone through the same course 

 before him. 



Let us appeal to common sense a little fur- 

 ther in this matter. What farmer, whose 

 threshing-machine gets broken or fails to 

 work well, would send for his tailor to put it 

 in order, or would ask his hatter to superin- 

 tend its repair — both of whom knew nothing 

 of the different parts that composed the ma^ 

 chine or its anatomy — nor how it worked 

 when it was in order, or its physiology, nor 

 what means could be made use of to put all 

 right — the remedies'? — And what would he 

 think of the man who should take a saw or a 

 hatchet and declare that was the only tool he 

 employed in his " system" of mechanics, or 

 of another who persisted that planes or chisels 

 of ditlerent sizes or kinds were all the tools 

 that ought to be used to repair any machine 1 

 This would appear supremely ridiculous to 

 the most superficial observer, and yet it is not 

 one jot more so than the course of the igno- 

 rant doctor, or of him v/lio depends upon one 

 remedy, or one set of remedies ! 



We must re-collect, too, that an ox, or a 

 horse, or a. sheep is much more complicated 

 and delicate in its structure than any thresh- 

 ing-machine, and withal possesses life, which 

 adds vastly to the difficulty of repair and the 

 facility with which injury is done by an igno- 

 rant workman. There is also anotiicr mate- 

 rial difference — if the hatter, or tailor, or he 

 who works only with a hatchet, has, by some 

 accident, got the different parts put together 

 and the owner finds one-half of the threshing- 

 machine spoiled, and that it will not thresh 

 at all — he still has one resource; a skilful 

 mechanic may yet be called upon, who will 

 replace the bad timber with good — take out 

 the spoiled part of the work — the wheels, or 

 the frame, or the running gears, or whatever 

 it may be — and, by substituting new ones, all 

 goes on well again. Not so in the animal 

 machine — if the bad workman has ruined the 

 stomach, or the bowels, or the running gears^ 

 or any other part, the skillful man who comes 

 afterwards is not able, as in the threshing- 

 machine, to take out the spoiled work and 

 put in a good stomach, or a sound eye or leg, 

 in the place of those that have been de- 

 stroyed. Bad as the machine may work, its 

 defects cannot be remedied, and sometimes 

 the result is still more melancholy, it not only 

 does not work well, but it does not work at 

 all ; in losing its grand characteristic, life, 

 it loses all that makes it valuable to its 

 owner. T. 



Sept. 2], 1840. 



