FOREWORD 15 
panies all diseases — dull, rough coat or feathers, refusal 
to eat, weakness in the hind quarters, and finally getting 
down. They rarely show symptoms of pain — or at least 
we cannot read the sjonptoms. The pain of acute pan- 
creatitis in man is violent, yet many animals die with it 
and we cannot tell that they suffer. Animals do not suffer 
as much as the human, and they stand the ravages of 
disease better than the human. At autopsy we often 
wonder how the animal could have lived with the condi- 
tions that are found. A monkey may be apparently well 
until a few days before his death, though his lungs and 
abdominal organs may be a mass of tubercle. A small 
red howler monkey (Alonata seniculus) was in apparent 
good health, playful and lively until twenty-four hours 
before his death from acute pancreatitis, though his 
stomach and intestines contained fifty-one nematode 
worms, some of which were eight inches in length. 
As diagnosis is unsatisfactory, so is treatment. 
Usually all we can do is to treat symptoms ; and by the 
time disease has advanced to the point of becoming exter- 
nally noticeable, it has usually gone beyond the reach of 
medical treatment. It must also be remembered that 
drugs vary very much in their action in different families 
of animals. Nux vomica will not kill the gallinaceous 
birds of North America, and Tenant says that in Ceylon 
the hornbill feeds on the fruit of strychnos nux vomica. 
The pigeon is immune to opium. The FelidcB are said to 
be unusually susceptible to carbolic acid ; veratrum viride 
is harmless to sheep and elk, but poisonous to the horse ; 
dogs can take with impunity large quantities of cyanide 
of potassium. These statements are true when the drugs 
are administered by mouth — the usual way of giving them 
to wild animals. The action may be different if the 
drugs are administered intravenously or subcutaneously. 
Variations in effect when they are administered by mouth 
are often due to chemical variations in the digestive secre- 
tions. It is probable that the action of cyanide of potash 
