114 Diseases of the Dog. 
upwards, and the whole skin between the two points is 
divided. Pressure is next applied by means of a pad of 
soft tow, &c., saturated with some healing fluid, and re- 
newed from time to time as cleaning is carried out. 
Prevention of Disease.—This is a department of 
social economics which is regarded more frequently as 
Utopian than real, or possible, from the circumstance 
of its introduction within recent years. The usual plan 
has been for every man to do that which seemeth right 
in his own eyes, a legacy which we have come to regard 
as sacred, and not to be interfered with by others. 
This excessive liberty is the cause of our towns and 
villages being infested by numbers of dogs, whose sole 
use and purpose is to annoy the inhabitants by their 
furious barkings, and numerous attacks on the person, 
especially of children, and on other dogs under enforced 
control. Besides this, the animals breed indiscriminately, 
and the progeny are a nondescript race, which ‘walk in 
the ways of their forefathers,” or when opportunity serves 
they are ruthlessly drowned in some river or ditch, where 
the bodies lie rotting and polluting the water and atmo- 
sphere to: the great disgust of pedestrians seeking open 
air exercise. Like produces ike. Thus all the defects of 
race are handed down by the careless mating of animals, 
including the idiosyncrasies of their nature, which in 
most cases determine the hereditary latency of disease. 
If we desire strong and healthy animals, the parents 
must be sound. egularity of Feeding is also an im- 
portant item. Without this, the process of digestion is 
interfered with, and the assimilative powers weakened, 
by which nutritive material is imperfectly transformed, 
more frequently proving deleterious than nourishing or 
sustaining. fresh Air and Cleanliness have a large 
share in the maintenance of health. The effect of the 
former on the blood is to facilitate the process cf com- 
bustion or formation of animal heat. Thus, not only.the 
rich principles of food, but the deleterious portions, with 
the effete or waste products of the body are burned and 
suitably transformed to ensure their expulsion by the 
proper channels from the system. The effect of cleanli- 
