105 MR. youatt’s veterinary lectures. 
the sequelae of coryza or catarrh, or some worse affection of the 
chest. It may be merely a symptom of one of them. Does any 
febrile action accompany the discharge ? The pulse, the mouth, 
the loss of appetite, do they indicate the slightest degree of fever ? 
If so, attack it; give digitalis, emetic tartar, and nitre. If you 
remove the cause, the effect will cease. 
If there is no fever, but it is plainly a local disease, chronic 
inflammation of the membrane of the nose, you must treat it as 
such. Is there any medicine which seems to have its principal 
action on the Schneiderian membrane ? I imagine that there is. 
Sulphate of copper is a general tonic, but with its principal de¬ 
termination to this membrane in restoring the tone of its debili¬ 
tated excretoiy vessels, and enabling their orifices to contract. 
Its celebrity arises from this, and from many cases of nasal gleet 
being supposed to be cases of glanders. I w T ill not deny that it 
has cured glanders—so has every stimulant, and so has every 
sedative, and so has nature, unassisted by us. It should be 
given in doses of from ten grains to half a drachm. Here our 
veterinary practitioners are too apt to err. They are too fond of 
overwhelming doses of almost every medicine. They are not 
content with a mild but permanent effect from the medicine which 
they exhibit, but they must do every thing at once, and they 
thus totally change the character of the medicine, and, instead 
of renovating, exhaust and destroy. 
When I recommend so small a dose, I would urge you to look 
at the seats of the disease, and its connexion—the nature of the 
diseases of the mucous membrane—their insidious character—the 
danger of administering tonics too soon, and often of adminis¬ 
tering them at all. Our best veterinary writer, Mr. W. Percivall, 
had seen so much of this, that, in one of his lectures, he de¬ 
claims against the use of tonics altogether. This is wrong ; but 
experience proves the impropriety of administering tonics too soon 
in a great variety of diseases, and the folly of giving them in 
great doses in any. Therefore give small doses ; and except you 
are perfectly assured that all febrile action has ceased, and, even 
if you are, so liable is it in a mucous membrane to return, that 
-these little doses must be guarded by an admixture of sedative 
medicine. Do that which appears to be contradictory. Blow 
hot and cold at the same time. While you stimulate a part, 
guard the constitution; and while you rouse and support the 
constitution, guard against the dangerous effect of tonics on some 
unusually debilitated and irritable part. It is in this double 
accomplishment of objects, this regard to all connexions, and 
provision against all contingencies, that the perfection of practice 
consists. Then to my sulphate of copper I would add, in smaller 
