DOGS *. THEIR MANAGEMENT. 243 



The wood must be covered with a quantity of straw; which 

 sort of bedding is convenient, not only because it allows 

 the water to speedily percolate through it, but because 

 it is warm, and being cheap, permits of repeated change. 

 Physic is not of much avail in this disorder; kind 

 nursing and mild food will do more towards recovery. 

 Still, medicine, as an accessory, may be of considerable 

 service, and in a secondary view deserves honorable 

 mention. Alkalies, sedatives, and vegetable bitters, may 

 be combined in various forms. The author's favorite 

 sedative in stomach diseases is hyoscyamus, and alkali 

 potash. For a bitter, quassia is a very good one ; 

 better than gentian, a small amount of the extract of 

 which, however, may be used to make up the pill. When 

 speaking of the pill, the most important ingredient must 

 not be forgotten I mean mix vonica. Some people 

 employ strychnia, but such persons more often kill than 

 cure their patients. Strychnia in any doses, however 

 minute, is a violent poison to the dog. While at college 

 I beheld animals killed with it ; and there does not live 

 the person who knows how to render this agent safe to 

 the dog. Nux vomica, even, must be used in very minute 

 doses, to be entirely safe from a quarter of a grain to a 

 small pup, to two grains to the largest animal. That 

 quantity must be continued for a week, four pills being 

 given daily ; then add a quarter of a grain daily to 

 the four larger pills, and a quarter of a grain every four 

 days to all the smaller ones ; keep on increasing the 

 amount, till the physiological effects of the drug, as they 



