510 
DANGER OF GIVING DRENCHES. 
By W. Cox, M.R.V.S . , Ashbourn . 
The danger arising from giving draughts to animals has been 
noticed by veterinary surgeons, and papers upon the subject have 
from time to time appeared in the pages of The VETERINARIAN. 
Mr. Stewart, of Glasgow, I believe, was the first who wrote upon 
the subject, and to him the profession are much indebted. 
In your last No. but one there was a paper upon this subject from 
Mr. Arkcoll, my successor at Leek, giving you some good advice 
about lowering animals’ heads while administering drenches, &c. 
In my opinion, the danger cannot be altogether avoided, unless 
the stomach-pump were used, and that is found too cumbersome 
and expensive for general use. Therefore, the horn and the bottle 
are the instruments used ; consequently it is necessary to know 
which is the safest instrument of the two. 
All the accidents that have come under my notice have arisen 
from giving draughts out of bottles. 
When the horn is used, and its contents poured into the fauces, 
the animal’s head should be lowered a little between each hornfull, 
so as to enable the animal to deglutate with ease, as, if any symp- 
tom of coughing presents itself, it must be lowered altogether. 
This cannot be so well attended to, or seldom is, when the bottle 
is used. It may perchance hold a pint or a quart, and the head is 
held up until the last drop is poured out : hence arises the acci- 
dent when the bottle is used. 
During the month of March last, at my residence, at midnight a 
cry was made for the horse-doctor to attend a horse that had 
been drenched with a gallon of buttermilk (churned milk), and was 
become very ill. But I was out, attending a horse at a short dis- 
tance labouring under enteritis. 
I will here digress, and say how highly favoured the country 
veterinary surgeons are. By day, as he rides along he may study 
Nature in all her works. Beginning with the grasshopper, he may 
go up to the sturdy ox, and. down from the tall cedar to the hyssop 
which springeth out of the wall. Yea, he witnesseth the rising 
and the setting sun. The stars in their courses are his lights, 
and shineth upon his path, and the moon likewise. 
But to return : I was obliged to leave my enteritic patient to visit 
the buttermilk one ; when I was told by the owner that he had 
been informed that a gallon of buttermilk given through his 
horse’s nose would destroy all the worms he had in his inside : — so 
it did ; but it killed the horse, too ! 
