EMPIRICAL TREATMENT 157 
tarred string’ tied round the neck ; a ‘bent halfpenny’; 
a daub of tar on the nose; Christian scientific treatment, 
and such-like humbug.” ous 
Waste of Valuable Time. —It- is ; too. true ; ‘but ne, ead 
part is that after these, doubtless wellancearie! people 
have tried one remedy ie another in their feverish 
anxiety to find a “cure,” they eventually are forced to 
take their poor animal to a skilled canine practitioner 
for belated advice and assistance, by which time prob- 
ably it is nearly dead, or the disease is in such a very 
advanced stage that little can be done. It only too 
frequently happens that after all and sundry have tried 
their skill, and days or weeks have been wasted, the 
veterinary surgeon is expected to wield some mystic 
healing power in mitigation of the complaint. 
I cannot too strongly condemn the use of quack cure- 
all medicines, most particularly in cases of distemper, as 
when a practitioner is at last called in to prescribe he 
has no knowledge of what drug has already been 
administered, and is somewhat hampered in his choice of 
medicaments. The simplest prescriptions require some 
consideration of the animal’s temperament, its physical 
condition, and its breeding, for drugs usually act with a 
greater precision on well-bred animals than upon those 
more coarsely bred. Some drugs would be diminished 
in quantity where an animal is weak or the subject of 
acute pyrexia; others would be withheld altogether ; 
thus a quack nostrum administered to all and sundry 
without making a study of the patient is often calculated 
to do considerable harm. 
Mistaken Diagnosis.—Dog owners and others “in the 
know” frequently attempt to diagnose their dogs’ ail- 
ments, and as frequently make irreparable blunders, 
such as mistaking distemper for “ worms,” then adminis- 
tering vermifuges and purgatives, or other drugs calcu- 
