378 THE VETERINARY DOCTOR. 
head should be kept in the position naturally maintained in drinking, 
the neck being outstretched and the beak pointed upward. 
In making the dose, the following tables will be serviceable: 
DRUGGISTS’ WEIGHTS. 
20 grains make one scruple. 
3 scruples “  drachm. 
8 drachms “ “ounce. 
12 ounces “pound. 
DRUGGISTS’ FLUID MEASURES, 
60 minims make one fluid drachm. 
§ fluid drachms make one fluid ounce. 
16 fluid ounces ee its 
These weights and measures are not in the possession of many people, 
and rougher methods may be used with safety for some of the less potent 
and less poisonous remedies. For example, a teaspoonful is considered equiv- 
alent to one fluid drachm; a tablespoonful, to a half fluid ounce; a wine- 
glassful, to two fluid ounces. So, also, sixty drops of water are accounted 
a teaspoonful, or fluid drachm; one hundred and twenty drops of alcohol 
and the tinctures also pass for the same bulk; while a lke number ot 
drops of oils and syrups make a much larger proportionate measurement. 
Such indefinite equivalents should obviously not be accepted when using 
strychnine, aconite, colchicum, arsenic, tartar emetic, laudanum and other 
poisons, while scarcely less caution is needed in measuring kerosene oil, sul- 
phur, mercurial ointment, carbolic acid and other dangerous drugs. It may 
not be out of place here to drop a special warning against leaving any 
poison, as rat’s-bane, arsenic, Paris green, and the like, within the reach of 
poultry. 
General Remarks.—lit is of the utmost moment in domestic practice, 
in every department, to use judgment and calm good sense. A disease 
may appear in any of a variety of degrees of severity, and no rule can be 
given about the dose that will precisely apply to all cases. The reader must, 
therefore, increase or diminish the size and frequency as the age of the. ani- 
mal ard the malignancy of the case in hand may dictate, restrained by the 
caution in the maxim that domestic treatment is generally over-treatment, 
medicines being usually given too freely. 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
