658 GENERAL THERAPEUTIC MEASURES 



is SO severe as to endanger life, an abundance of pure or 

 boiled water should be allowed in order to compensate for 

 the loss of fluid from the blood. 



Theoretically, an albuminous diet is indicated in diar- 

 rhoea because of the loss from the blood and tissues, and 

 because intestinal digestion is disordered and starchy food 

 would be undigested and cause fermentation, etc. Practically, 

 a certain amount of starchy food seems to be serviceable in 

 the treatment of diarrhoea. Horses and cattle should be 

 given cooked flour or barley gruel and roasted oatmeal and 

 cracked oats. Coarse foods, as bran and straw and green 

 fodder, are not allowable. Swine should be supplied with 

 gruels of barley, flour or oatmeal (strained). 



Fowl with diarrhoea may be fed on boiled rice and given 

 a few drops of laudanum two or three times daily. Dogs and 

 cats should have boiled milk, strained rice gruel, cooked 

 lean meat and crackers. Broths and beef tea are not desir- 

 able, but beef juice and white of egg in water are of value. 

 These dietaries should be employed in conjunction with 

 other measures, as the preliminary use of a laxative, rest, 

 quiet, and external heat and drug treatment. Young suck- 

 ling animals, as foals and calves, may be fed on cooked and 

 strained oatmeal or barley gruel made with milk, if the 

 mother's milk does not agree. In severe attacks of gastro- 

 enteritis, or in gastric or intestinal ulceration with haemor- 

 rhage from the stomach or bowels, the food should be bland 

 and fluid, as soaked bread, oatmeal, barley or flour gruels, 

 linseed tea (made by boiling linseed in a muslin bag 

 immersed in water), and small quantities of green fodder for 

 the larger animals ; while milk and lime water, white of egg 

 and water, broths and beef juice are indicated for carnivora. 

 In the latter animals we may have to resort to predigested 

 food given by the mouth, or, if vomiting is persistent, by the 

 rectum. 



The diet in cases of catarrhal jaundice should be easily 

 digestible, bland, and such as will not require much bile for 

 its digestion. • The larger patients should be given gruels. 



