LEUKAEMIA 313 



Therapeutic Treatment. — The treatment must all tend to one 

 object — that is, the formation of more blood. This may be obtained 

 by proper hygienic measures, feeding with light, easily digested sub- 

 stances, especially meat (not milk, which does not agree with the animals 

 for any length of time), as well as medicinal substances — that is to say, 

 ferruginous preparations. Among the latter, carbonate of iron, saccha- 

 rated oxide of iron, and lactate of iron. These should be given in 0.4 

 to 0.5 gramme three times daily. Tincture chloride of iron, 10 to 20 

 drops daily. In many cases these iron preparations do not agree well 

 with the patients, as the drug irritates the stomach and their appetite 

 becomes impaired. These preparations should have some vegetable 

 tonic added to them, the bitter principle stimulating digestion and 

 counteracting the irritant effect of the iron. A very useful preparation 

 in this disease is citrate of quinine and iron. This preparation is valu- 

 able not only for the iron it contains, but the tonic properties of the 

 quinine, and also the very slight tendency it has to irritate the stomach. 

 Arsenic, either in the form of Fowler's solution or the red sulphide, is 

 useful as a general tonic. 



Leukaemia. 



This disease, which is generally chronic, is one that is characterized 

 by an altered condition of the blood, due to the presence of an increased 

 quantity of white blood corpuscles, which is the result of some path- 

 ological change in the blood-forming organs, viz.: the lymphatic glands, 

 spleen, and marrow of bones. Formerly the disease was classified in 

 three divisions: Lymphatic, lineal and myelogenic forms; according to 

 the origin of the disease, the lymphatic glands, the spleen or the marrow 

 of the bones. This, however, is now classified by Ehrlich into two 

 chief divisions, namely (1) lymphatic leukaemia, which is the result of 

 some pathological change in the lymphatic glands and causes the appear- 

 ance in the blood of numbers of lymphocytes, i.e., isolated cells the size 

 of a red l)lood corpuscle, and (2) myelogenic leukaemia in which thereis some 

 pathological activity of the marrow of the bones in which there is an 

 enormous increase of the ordinary polynuclear leukocytes and also 

 large mononuclear cells which are only found in the marrow of bones. 

 These distinctions are of no special value to the practitioner, and both 

 these forms, as a rule, are combined in the dog as in other domestic 

 animals. The myelogenic form has never been observed alone (Seidam- 

 grotsky and others). 



Etiology. — The cause of this disease is not definitely known at present. 

 In the human race we find that middle-aged men are mostly affected 

 with the disease; in the dog, while the middle or advanced period of age 



