86 THEORY AND PRACTICE 



cannot be over estimated — it's ability to abort disease. The 

 liniment must be prompt in its action. By next morning the 

 animal will be all right if you have aborted the case, which can 

 be done 99 times out of a hundred. 



If you get a case in the second or third stage, or if your 

 first case does not recover, apply a counter-irritant night and 

 morning. Keep up the fever mixture with aconite to the middle 

 of the third stage. Repeat the acetanilid every four hours in 

 moderate doses. Keep the temperature around 102 if possible, 

 but do not dose too much with acetanilid. Keep the animal 

 warm, feed light, and 90 per cent of the cases will yield to this 

 treatment, and recover by resolution in the first half of the third 

 stage. The other per cent will go on to hydrothorax. 



In case of generalized pleurisy ''sale stable fever," you may 

 get a horse with hydrothorax after a three days' sickness, while 

 it ordinarily takes 10-20 days for this condition to develop. 

 Pleurisy runs into the third stage very rapidly, but the chest does 

 not fill up with w^ater so quickly. Do not carry the stimulation 

 so far as to blemish the side of the horse, but if you do make 

 this blunder, you can tell the owner that it is better to have a scar 

 on the side than to have a dead horse. You can tell a blister 

 by pinching the skin. If it wrinkles, a blister is there. Open 

 it and liberate any pus that is present, for blemishing is always 

 brought about by leaving the pus and serum there. 



While the sides of the animal are soiled with liniment, put 

 a cloth over your face when you wish to auscultate. 



Suppose now that you have a case of hydrothorax. Discon- 

 tinue the counter irritant and the aconite. Give stimulants — 

 strychnine, alcohol, etc., alternating with tincture of iron. The 

 temperature in hydrothorax stays about 104. If the chest fills 

 more than one-third full of water you must tap it. This opera- 

 tion is called "paracentesis thoracis." 



With trocar and canula evacuate the serum. Some prefer to 

 aspirate the serum, some draw it off with a rubber tube, empty- 

 ing the fluid under water. Some think that it is not safe to 

 draw off the water rapidly but this is a fallacy. As a conse- 

 quence none of the trocars are big enough. This one that I use 

 is three-eighths of an inch in diameter and has a short point. 



