642 
ADMINISTRATION OF MEDICINES. 
practice of seizing hold of the tongue at the moment of giving 
drinks to ruminants. 
The administration of medicine in the liquid form to 
animals constitutes a practice attended with danger; never- 
theless, under a variety of circumstances we must put up 
with it. 
There are horses quiet enough in other respects, to whom 
we cannot succeed in giving drinks but with great difficulty : 
on such occasions we ordinarily spill a great deal. The 
employment of the funnel bridle does not obviate this incon- 
venience. Often, indeed, when we suppose that the animal 
has swallowed all, from seeing nothing in his mouth, in 
letting the head down we become astonished at perceiving 
flowing from his mouth a great part of his potion. It is 
probably owing to these latter inconveniences that the method 
of giving drinks by the nostrils has become general in my 
neighbourhood. 
However vicious it may be I have borrowed a hint from 
this practice. When I administer a drink to a horse who 
holds it in his mouth instead of swallowing it, I have pro- 
voked the act of deglutition by pouring a small quantity of 
warm water into one of his nostrils, when the drink returns. 
I am constantly in the practice of this. 
In human medicine it has been recommended to throw 
cold water on the face to provoke deglutition. In man this 
plan cannot prove necessary, but in cases of syncope, 
asphyxia, and convulsions. An English surgeon, Mr. Simp- 
son, has remarked that this proceeding invariably succeeds 
with women seized with epileptic convulsions. He says, 
that whatever may be the mode of action of this excitation of 
the skin of the face, whether it act in directly provoking 
deglutition, or merely in determining an inspiration in which 
the liquids are sucked into the pharynx, it always happens 
that the result is beneficial and may be made useful in 
medical practice.* Recently I have twice tried in' the horse 
to produce deglutition, by dashing cold water on the head, at 
a time that a part of the drink remained in the mouth, but it 
has not succeeded. 
Cattle — in which we must take care not to elevate the head 
more than is required for the drink to run down the throat ; 
and that without closing the nostrils — swallow w T ith more 
facility liquids administered to them, than horses. If in 
the case of bulls that are buckled, we master them without 
danger. 
* Medical and Chirurgical Journal, vol. xxiii, part ii, Art. 4133. 
