114 Diseases of the Dog, 



upwards, and the whole skin between the two points is 

 divided. Pressure is next applied by means of a pad of 

 soft tow, &c., saturated with some healing fluid, and re- 

 newed from time to time as cleaning is carried out. 



Prevention of Disease. — This is a department of 

 social economics which is regarded more frequently as 

 Utopian than real, or possible, from the circumstance 

 of its introduction within recent years. The usual plan 

 has been for every man to do that which seemeth right 

 in his own eyes, a legacy which we have come to regard 

 as sacred, and not to be interfered with by others. 

 This excessive liberty is the cause of our towns and 

 villages being infested by numbers of dogs, whose sole 

 use and purpose is to annoy the inhabitants by tlieir 

 furious barkings, and numerous attacks on the person, 

 especially of children, and on other dogs under enforced 

 control. Besides this, the animals breed indiscriminately, 

 and the progeny are a nondescript race, which "walk in 

 the ways of their forefathers," or when opportunity serves 

 they are ruthlessly drowned in some river or ditch^ where 

 the bodies lie rotting and polluting the water and atmo- 

 sphere to the great disgust of pedestrians seeking open 

 air exercise. Like produces like. Thus all the defects of 

 race are handed down by the careless mating of animals, 

 including the idiosyncrasies of their nature, which in 

 most cases determine the hereditary latency of disease. 

 If we desire strong and healthy animals, the parents 

 must be sound. Regularity of Feeding is also an im- 

 portant item. Without this, the process of digestion is 

 interfered with, and the assimilative powers weakened, 

 by which nutritive material is imperfectly transformed, 

 more frequently proving deleterious than nourishing or 

 sustaining. Fresh Air and Cleanliness have a large 

 share in the maintenance of health. The effect of the 

 former on the blood is to facilitate the process cf com- 

 bustion or formation of animal heat. Thus, not only the 

 rich principles of food, but the deleterious portions, with 

 the effete or waste products of the body are burned and 

 suitably transformed to ensure their expulsion by the 

 proper channels from the system. The effect of cleanli- 



