THE GENERATIVE APPARATUS. 171 



in France it is resorted to for keeping a bitch clean and 

 preventing rabies. It can, of course, have little, if any, 

 value for the latter purpose. Thus it was once a practice 

 to hunt with packs of " spayed " bitches. But it has 

 been found that animals thus operated on are liable to 

 disease, especially to the formation of fatty tumours ; they 

 become obese, listless, and' are said not to live long. Oc- 

 casionally in the present day ovariotomy has to be resorted 

 to, as when the ovary is considered the seat of malignant 

 disease, or when it is absolutely necessary to prevent the 

 bitch breeding on account of injury to the pelvis or some 

 disease of the genital passages rendering parturition im- 

 possible. The operation is performed in the way usual 

 for small animals : The patient is placed and retained on 

 the side ; an incision is then made antero-posteriorly in the 

 upper part of the flank, long enough to admit the forefinger 

 and to allow the extraction of the ovary. The finger is 

 inserted and used as an explorer and protractor. Soon 

 the upper ovary is felt and drawn out, a carbolised catgut 

 ligature is placed on its ligaments, and the organ ex- 

 cised. The other ovary is then felt and withdrawn 

 through the same opening, ligatured, removed, and the 

 remaining parts returned. Sometimes the ovary is cut off 

 without ligature, and rough operators remove the end of 

 the uterine cornu, which is quite an unnecessary complica- 

 tion. The belly is usually supported with a bandage after 

 the operation. Atrophy of the ovaries occurs in old 

 animals, both those which have borne young and barren 

 bitches. Hill relates an interesting case of this nature 

 in a Newfoundland bitch in which one ovary was merely 

 " a hard gritty substance the size of a horse-bean embedded 

 in a smooth round tumour of fat, the dimensions of a 

 large walnut, and containing in the centre a cyst. The 

 other resembled a granular fatty mass, with a full-developed 

 ovum {sic, query Graafian vesicle) ready to burst on the 

 outside" ('The Management and Diseases of the Dog'). 

 Malignant disease of the ovaries also occurs, the glands 

 are much enlarged thereby, it is diagnosable as abdominal 

 tumour, but in less marked cases is detectable only post 



