42 BOVINE PATHOLOGY. 



states, and the primary disease must in all cases determine 

 the course of our therapeutical efforts. 



All secondary diseases, symptoms of which show that 

 they are liable to destroy the patient, must also receive 

 attention ; thus, in a case of indigestion we often require to 

 prevent death from suffocation when distension of the 

 rumen with gas impedes movements of the diaphragm, 

 evacuation of the gas is then urgent and must be adopted 

 as a palliative measure, together with the curative means 

 directed to reduction of the indigestion. Curative means 

 may be either medicinal or surgical. Medicinal agents of 

 various kinds have been found to have different effects 

 upon the animal system since they increase, retard, or 

 prevent natural processes. A judicious selection of these 

 agents may be made to assist nature in her attempts to 

 restore healthy conditions ; in all cases the educated prac- 

 titioner must apply his knowledge of the action of special 

 medicaments and of the methods which nature adopts as 

 reparative. Thus, with a wound of a sluggish character, 

 he will endeavour to promote salutary inflammation by 

 means of digestives, and in a case of haemorrhage, he will 

 endeavour to coagulate the fibrine of the blood and so 

 plug up the orifice of escape. Treatment must be of no 

 definite and fixed character, nostrums and recipes occupy 

 too prominent a position in works on cattle diseases ; the 

 educated practitioner alone should treat the case, and he 

 will be able to vary the doses and agents administered 

 according to the many and ever variable phases of diseased 

 action. 



Human medicine has been facetiously termed ^^ the art 

 of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.^' 

 All medicinal treatment consists in a state of constant 

 vigilance and free supply of air whenever the vis medicatrix 

 natures requires us to restore health equilibrium. 



Surgical Treatment comprises all operations performed 

 upon the various parts of the body with a view to 

 restoring the natural condition of the constitution or a 

 satisfactory state of health. Many refinements which have 

 been adopted in human surgery and so materially allevi- 



