LEUKMMIA. 257 



Therapeutic Treatment. The treatment must all tend to 

 one object — that is, the formation of more blood. This may be 

 obtained by proper hygienic measures, feeding with light, easily 

 digested substances, especially meat (not milk, which does not agree 

 with the animals for any length of time), as well as medicinal 

 substances — ^that is to say, ferruginous preparations. Among the 

 latter, carbonate of iron, saccharated oxide of iron, and lactate of 

 iron. These should be given in 0.4 to 0.5 gramme three times 

 daily. Tincture chloride of iron, 10 to 20 drops daily. In many 

 cases these iron preparations do not agree well with the patients, 

 as the drug irritates the stomach and their appetite becomes im- 

 paired. These preparations should have some vegetable tonic 

 added to them, the bitter principle stimulating digestion and 

 counteracting the irritant effect of the iron. A very useful prepa- 

 ration in this disease is citrate of quinine and iron. This prepa- 

 ration is valuable not only for the iron it contains, but the tonic 

 properties of the quinine, and also the very slight tendency it has 

 to disorder the stomach. Frequently arsenic is useful as a general 

 tonic. 



Leuksemia. 



This disease is one that is characterized by an alteration of the 

 blood, due to the presence of an increased quantity of white blood- 

 corpuscles which must be due to some disorder of the lymphatic 

 organs. The pathological anatomist distinguishes two conditions 

 in the affected lymphatic — a lienal and myelogenic form — accord- 

 ing to the origin of the disease: the spleen or the marrow of the 

 bones. This, however, is of no special value to the practitioner, 

 as both of these forms, as a rule, are combined in the dog, as in 

 other domestic animals. The myelogenic form has never been 

 observed alone (Siedamgrotzky and others). 



Etiology. The causes of this disease are not definitely known 

 at present. In the human race we find that middle-aged men are 

 mostly affected with this disease; in the dog, the middle or ad- 

 vanced period of age seems to show the greatest tendency, but 

 young animals frequently show very acute cases. This disease 

 was observed in 1878 by Siedamgrotzky. From his own sta- 

 tistics with those of many physicians he was inclined to consider 

 leuksemia an infectious disease. Attempts to produce the disease 



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