540 
CONSULTATIONS. 
I should thank you to give me the usual dietary of your mon- 
keys, and to say whether you vary it much. 
I am, & c. 
Reply. 
A letter from you, addressed to the Secretary of the Zoological 
Society of London, has been put into my hands, referring to a mor- 
tality which has lately prevailed among your monkeys. 
A disease of a somewhat similar character appeared among our 
quadrumana in the months of February and March, and we lost 
not fewer than nine monkeys and two lemurs. There was disease 
of the lungs in all of them, but not the usual post-mortem appear- 
ances of consumption. There was a certain degree of inflamma- 
tion, but few of the tubercles that used to be almost invariably 
found. 
On the other hand, there was a lesion that had been previously 
rare among us, but was absent in scarcely one of these cases — • 
dilatation and thinning of one or both of the ventricles of the heart. 
The symptoms, during life, were cuddling into the corner of the 
cage — loss of appetite — sick-monkey countenance, but far more 
deplorable than in most other diseases — the flanks quiet, and little 
or no cough. These circumstances told us that phthisis had little 
or nothing to do with the affair. 
As the disease proceeded, the animal shrunk himself up, and 
shivered and looked as though he were palsied. He rapidly wasted 
away, and died a perfect skeleton. 
Our most successful treatment was to move the patient into the 
warmest part of the room — to open his bowels with castor oil and 
syrup of buckthorn, to which a little syrup of white poppies was 
added, and to give him syrup of ginger, and some spirit of nitrous 
ether in his 'sop. Those that recovered had been thus treated. I 
believe, however, that the most efficacious things that were adopted 
were warmth and comfort. 
Our standard food consists of bread and milk, with a little sugar, 
in the morning; and we afterwards give, varying them occasion- 
ally, nuts, almonds, potatoes, onions, and carrots. The food had 
little or nothing to do with the disease, nor had the effluvia of the 
carnivora. 
I should be very happy to communicate at any time with you ; 
and, if any advice of mine is worth your having, it will be always 
at your service. 
W. Y. 
