CHAPTER VI 
INDICATIONS OF DISEASE IN ANIMALS 
MODERN veterinary medicine follows human medi- 
cine very closely, both in theory and practice, and the 
same methods of treatment are used in disease, except 
when the structure of the animal or other circum- 
stances require a special modification. The days of 
bleeding, of violent purging, of large doses of vile 
drugs have passed, and with them have disappeared 
many mythical diseases, which were ouce a source of fear 
to stock-owners. Disease is no longer the mysterious 
visitation of Providence that it was then considered to be. 
Its causes are definite and in most cases well known. 
In those diseases whose cause is still unknown the 
fearful mystery of other days has disappeared under 
the serutiny of definite scientific research. 
The body of an animal is constructed upon the same 
general plan as the human body. It is well known 
that the differences between man and the animals is 
not so largely physical as mental. There is the same 
bony framework, with joints between the bones to give 
mobility, the bones heing held together by strong bands 
of white fibrous connective tissue, called ligaments. 
Covering the bones and forming a large part of the 
hody is the great mass of muscular tissue (lean meat), 
whose function is not only to move the various parts 
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