268 Veterinary Medicine. 



I,arge injections of warm water and the supply of warm gruels 

 are not to be neglected when they can be employed. Measures 

 such as these directed to check any chill and render the circula- 

 tion free and uniform in the skin and extremities, if adopted 

 during the cold stages of the fever, will sometimes succeed in 

 bringing about a resolution of the pulmonary congestion and 

 warding ofE a threatened attack of pneumonia. 



The diet should be of a non-stimulating and laxative kind. 

 Bran mashes, linseed, oatmeal, or other gruels, carrots, turnips, 

 scalded hay, or green food, if at the proper season, should be 

 given in small quantities so as not to satiate. 



Antiphlogistic Treatment. Half a century ago bloodletting was 

 considered the remedy par excellence for pneumonia and it seemed 

 justified by the marked relief to breathing and pulse, which 

 usually at once followed a free bleeding. In a short time, how- 

 ever, the fever would rise anew and the distressing symptoms re- 

 appear, which led the school of Broussais to repeat the bleeding, 

 coup sur coup, as often as the exacerbation appeared. There was 

 no respite for either age or condition, the debilitated city toiler, 

 the babe at the breast, and man of eighty tottering into the grave, 

 had alike to submit to the lancet, and when the oppressive symp- 

 toms returned, the blood had to flow anew. Broussais himself, 

 however, recognized his error in his later life, and remarkably 

 enough, his conversion was effected through veterinary practice. 

 His two carriage horses were successively attacked by pneumonia : 

 the first was treated by bleeding coup sur coup and recovered : the 

 second was put under a more conservative treatment and also got 

 well, but while the first remained soft, flabby, debilitated and sus- 

 ceptible for a length of time, the second was on convalescence, at 

 once able to go into active work. The enormous abuse of bleed- 

 ing, led to its more complete abandonment than would otherwise 

 have been probable, and the contrast between the high mortality 

 of cases treated by excessive bleeding, and the lower fatality in 

 pneumonias treated without phlebotomy on the expectant (let 

 alone) plan of Dietl, or the stimulating method of Todd, Bennett 

 and others served to hasten its abandonment. Yet in blood-letting 

 we have an instrument for good or evil, which is not to be judged 

 on slight evidence. The mere lessening of the blood pressure is 

 to be little considered, as it requires the abstraction of nearly one- 

 third of the entire mass of blood to visibly affect this. The vas- 



