Vol. LVIL No. 2519. 
NEW YORK, MAY 7, 1898. 
*1 PER YEAR, 
THE VETERINARY COLLEGE AT CORNELL 
A CHAT WITH DR. LAW. 
What is being clone for anitnals ; Queer things in the mu¬ 
seum ; A resurrected ncblemcm ; Significance of color ; 
Effect of climate ; Chataine ; Nervous ailments ; Horse 
memory ; A morning in clinic ; What may be found in 
a cow’s stomach; Chloroform on animals ; “ Monday 
morning ‘■'■Moon eye”; Sunstroke; Hydrophobia; 
Heaves ; Glanders ; Cribbing ; Causes of calculus. 
Tt is an old saying - that the man who looks longest 
into a millstone sees into it the farthest. This being 
true, it follows that a man whose lifework has been, 
and is, among animals, alleviating their sufferings and 
observing their characteristics from a scientific stand¬ 
point, must know a great deal about them of very un¬ 
usual interest. With this bee buzzing in my bonnet, 
I went one day for a chat with the Director of the 
Veterinary College at Cornell University. Once inside 
the building, the features that strike one in every de¬ 
partment, are extreme neatness, hygienic construc¬ 
tion and admirable fitness for its purpose. Here are 
beautiful rooms so finished in hard woods, glazed 
bricks and tiles, that the hose can be turned on, and 
the whole place 
purified by ma¬ 
chinery. One 
might think 
that, with a 
large dissect¬ 
ing room, and 
adjacent build¬ 
ings for clinics 
and hospitals, 
the locality 
might be malo¬ 
dorous ; but it 
is not so in the 
least; proper 
sanitary condi¬ 
tions make ani- 
m a 1 life as 
cleanly as 
human life. 
As the College 
Museum is on 
the first floor, 
no one is very 
likely to pass 
through i t 
without yield¬ 
ing to the temp¬ 
tation to look 
at the astonish¬ 
ing objects with which, thus early in its history, it is 
already furnished. All sorts of harness and parts of 
harness, shoes for animals, surgical appliances, apothe¬ 
caries’ stores, cases of pathological bones, abnormally 
large heads, mounted skeletons, horns, blown-up blad¬ 
ders, from woodchucks up, huge specimens of intesti¬ 
nal calculus, brains, fetal life, sections of udders, and 
fowls in all stages of incubation. Things that animals 
swallow have some astonishing illustrations ; for in¬ 
stance, here is an open jack-knife, found open in a 
cow’s rumen. This came from Kings County, where 
somebody lost a knife that, curiously enough, had a 
Jonah experience, with the additional career of land¬ 
ing in a university. After the cow’s death, adhesions 
were found formed between the liver and diaphragm. 
I quite forgot to ask whether the jack-knife killed the 
cow. The preserved heart of another cow had been 
penetrated by a darning needle, and another by a wire, 
these metallic substances having worked their way 
from the stomach to the heart. Pieces of wire are 
often found in hay, so that it is not astonishing that 
cows should swallow them. 
In the dissecting room, where women as well as men 
dissect, is the skeleton of the first Short-horn bull im¬ 
ported by Ezra Cornell. The animal had been buried 
six years when its bones were resurrected and mounted. 
Dr. Law is a handsome man in the prime of life, with 
the musical voice and gentle manner of well-born and 
well-bred Englishmen. After I had expressed my wish 
for a talk about animals, he suggested that we begin 
by a visit to the clinic and hospital wards. Every day 
from two to four, any one can bring ailing animals 
for diagnosis and treatment, to the clinic, without 
charge ; often patients are brought in the morning 
hours. Owing to this liberal management, there is no 
lack of patients, so that students and their instructors 
have abundant and varied practice—horses, cattle, 
sheep, dogs and fowls. As this veterinary college is. 
by far, the finest equipped in the United States, it goes 
without saying that every department is furnished 
with the best approved appliances for the skillful and 
humane treatment of animal life. For painful surgical 
operations, chloroform is administered, and one char¬ 
acteristic of the way in which the animals are treated 
by the students and operators was exceedingly grati¬ 
fying—kindness. Dr. Law is not a man to allow 
cruelty in any shape to be practiced—if I may be 
allowed to except the guinea pigs. These pretty little 
creatures, reared in numerous colonies for the express 
purpose of being experimentally operated on for the 
benefit of their fellows, must appeal to every thought¬ 
ful person. Poor little victims, they are vaccinated 
with various sorts of virus, and in a way, bear the sins 
of the animal world, and this contribution to science 
deserves at least pitiful recognition. Happily they do 
not foreknow their doom, and seem bravely happy in 
their cozy and well-appointed quarters. 
One of the notable surgical and pathological opera¬ 
tions that have latterly been performed at Cornell is 
that of cutting a muscle each side of the tail, which 
prevents horses from gripping the reins. This opera¬ 
tion leaves the good use and appearance of the tail 
unimpaired, and does away with the cruel and unfair 
practice of cutting off the tail or “ nicking”, which is 
sometimes made an excuse for the gripping habit. 
The tail is, in one sense, the good right hand of the 
horse, and to rob him of it is outrageous. Another is 
in cutting certain nerves at each side of the head, six 
or eight inches above the nostrils, to cure horses of 
the habit of shaking the head which, in some cases, 
completely unfits them for use. Dr. Williams, one of 
the professors, who had given this ailment considera¬ 
ble attention, thought that it might be neurosis con¬ 
nected with the teeth—a form of neuralgia, or a nerv¬ 
ous habit, and that to sever the connection with the 
nerves of the teeth might stop the shaking. But this 
operation failed of its purpose. He then made the ex¬ 
periment of cutting the fifth sensory nerve—the 
seventh is the motor or power nerve—on each side of 
the face, and this has been found to be a permanent 
cure. Still another, and this possibly, the foremost 
operation of all, is washing out the bronchial tubes 
and the lungs of animals which, from any cause, have 
become irritated or inflamed, with peroxide of hydro¬ 
gen ; it is usually used in water, and is non-irritative. 
There is no reason to doubt the possibility of making 
use of this method on men. The water going into the 
lungs produces a sensation similar to that in drown¬ 
ing. I saw a horse so treated at the clinic, and as he 
vigorously snorted the fluid out again, seemed to mind 
the treatment very little indeed. Another operation 
is performed for the ailment in horses known as roar¬ 
ing. For this, a certain cartilage in the neck is cut 
out, and when this is done, the operation of tracheot¬ 
omy is also per¬ 
formed, and a 
tube inserted 
lower down in 
the windpipe 
through which 
the horse 
breathes until 
the cartilage 
wound heals. 
One sometimes 
sees a horse 
with a breath¬ 
ing tube in his 
neck content¬ 
edly grazing in 
a university 
farm field, lie 
comes out of 
t li e operation 
cured, and is as 
good as new. 
To kill para¬ 
sites on cows, 
tincture of cam¬ 
phor or turpen¬ 
tine is injected 
hypodermi¬ 
cally into the 
windpipe and is 
gradually absorbed. A good many animals are brought 
to be cured of grievous sores, and they are treated 
with clean antiseptic and absorbent cottons and snowy 
bandages, as though they were, indeed, people. The 
hospital has stores of such things, its own towels and 
fabrics for the use of students, while the latter wear 
white overclothes in the wards, and cleanliness is 
everywhere strictly observed. In one of the rooms, 1 
noticed a handsome horse that did not appear to be 
ailing, but it had what is known as the “Monday 
morning disease”—of which there are two kinds, one, 
at the beginning of a journey, the other at its close. 
It is produced by the coloring matter of the blood 
passing into the urine, from habitual heavy feeding, 
followed by a rest of two or three days. Sometimes 
inflammation of the lymphatics in the hind legs ensues. 
To avoid the “ Monday morning”, horses should be 
fed more lightly previous to an irregular period of 
rest, or turned out in a field where they can get 
abundant exercise. 
“In the administration of chloroform, Doctor,” I 
asked, “ do you find that all animals can be rendered 
unconscious during operations, with equal safety ? 
A BUNCH OF OKLAHOMA STEERS; FED ON KAFFIR-CORN. Fig. 143. See Page 335. 
