DOGS t THEIR MANAGEMENT. 367 



The dogs I am called to are not of this kind. They 

 have been tenderly fostered, and generally their health 

 has been deteriorated by the excess of care bestowed 

 upon them. They are high-bred animals, and their 

 sensibility is equal to their caste. My object, also, is not 

 to play with life, but to save it ; and that at which the 

 medical man would laugh, I have reasons to regard with 

 a serious countenance. Therefore, the accident which 

 to me would be most important, might to others be so 

 trivial as to deserve no notice, and even to excite no 

 remark. However, supposing no accident to occur, the 

 vigorous and low-bred mongrel might well endure that 

 which a delicate and high-bred pet could not sustain. 

 The stomach of the one being strong, would retain that 

 which should induce violent spasm in the morbidly sen- 

 sitive organ of the other. Dogs, it is true, are but dogs ; 

 yet, as a group, they present such varieties that there 

 can be many things asserted of them which shall be true 

 or untrue as applied to individuals. 



Consequently, when I, writing of medicines as applied 

 to certain descriptions of dogs, assert a particular agent 

 is not in its action such as various writers have described, 

 it is just possible I may not contradict the declarations 

 previously made. 



We may probably be both speaking of our knowledge 

 only of really different things. Nominally the creatures 

 we each observed were dogs ; but though they were the 

 same in race, in capabilities and bulk, they were per- 

 fectly distinct. The dog of the pharmacologist is a kind 



