160 The Management and Diseases of the Dog. 
“Placing her under chloroform, on a table, I madea 
section in the left iliac region, through the abdominal 
muscles and peritoneum ; and then exposing the uterus, I 
incised it between four and five inches, and removed eight 
whelps—six alive and two dead.* I closed the uterine 
opening with continuous silk suture, the, peritoneum and 
abdominal muscles with continuous gut suture, and the skin 
with interrupted linen-thread suture. 
“The parts were then sponged with warm water ; a little 
brandy and milk, with ten drops of laudanum, administered, 
and the patient placed on a rug over a thick bed of straw: 
Strict quietude was ordered, and a little brandy and milk 
only to be given in two hours, 
.“ At six o’clock on the same evening I visited my patient, 
and, with much regret, learned she had just expired. I 
was informed she had not shown any symptoms of pain or 
uneasiness since the operation; that she had risen to her 
feet a few moments before she died, walked to her master 
and wagged her tail. 
“In this case death resulted from sheer exhaustion. No 
support ofany description had been given tothe poor creature 
but what she chose herself to take, until I first arrived. 
She had been in severe labour for many hours ; and only 
the following morning was any assistance rendered, and 
that, until my services were requested, had been rough, un- 
practical, and injurious. 
“T feel convinced that had the operation been performed 
seven or eight hours earlier, the mother’s life would have 
been saved ; or that, in the first instance, proper assistance 
would have procured a natural birth of the abnormally pre- 
sented one. The whelps that were alive are being reared 
by hand, and, so far, are doing well.” 
* 
The zéerus, internally, was intensely inflamed—the os being per- 
fectly black, and the whole membrane more or less livid. One por- 
tion of intestine, just observable,was also much inflamed. My prognosis 
from these appearances and other conditions of the bitch, was un- 
favourable 
