Pneumonia
or inflammation of the substance of the lungs, is a complaint of frequent occurrence in the dog, and is singularly marked. The extended head, the protruded tongue, the anxious, bloodshot eye, the painful heaving of the hot breath, the obstinacy with which the animal sits up hour after hour until his feet slip from under him, and the eye closes, and the head droops, through extreme fatigue, yet in a moment being roused again by the feeling of instant suffocation, are symptoms that cannot be mistaken.
Here, from the comparative thinness of the integument and the parietes, we have the progress of the disease brought completely under our view. The exploration of the chest of the dog by
is a beautiful as well as wonderful thing. It at least exhibits to us the actual state of the lungs, if it does not always enable us to arrest the impending evil.
Mr. Blaine and myself used cordially to agree with regard to the treatment of pneumonia, materially different from the opinions of the majority of sportsmen. Epidemic pneumonia was generally fatal, if it was not speedily arrested in its course. The cure was commenced by bleeding, and that to a considerable extent, when not more than four-and-twenty or six-and thirty hours had passed; for, after that, the progress of the disease could seldom be arrested. Blistering the chest was sometimes resorted to with advantage; and the cantharides ointment and the oil of turpentine formed one of the most convenient as well as one of the most efficacious blisters. A purgative was administered, composed of mutton broth with Epsom salts or castor oil; to which followed the administration of the best sedatives that we have in those cases, namely, nitre, powdered foxglove, and antimonial powder, in the proportion of a scruple of the first, four grains of the second, and two grains of the third.
of the lungs is a frequent termination of pneumonia; and in that congestion the air-cells are easily ruptured and filled with blood. That blood assumes a black pulpy appearance, commonly indicated by the term of
rottenness
, an indication or consequence of the violence of the disease, and the hopelessness of the case. A different consequence of inflammation of the lungs is the formation of tubercles, and, after that, of suppuration and abscess, when, generally speaking, the case is hopeless. A full account of this is given in the work on the Horse.
Two cases of pneumonia will be useful:
Oct. 22d, 1820
. A black pointer bitch that had been used lo a warm kennel, was made to sleep on flat stones without straw. A violent cough followed, under which she had been getting worse and worse for a fortnight. Yesterday I saw her. The breathing was laborious. The bitch was constantly shifting her position, and, whether she lay down or sat up, was endeavouring to elevate her head. Her usual posture was sitting, and she only lay down for a minute. The eyes were surrounded, and the nose nearly stopped with mucus.
V. S. ounce viij. Emet
. Fever-ball twice in the day.
23d.
Breathing not quite so laborious. Will not eat. Medicine as before. Apply a blister on the chest.
24th.
Nearly the same.
V. S. ounce vj. Bol. utheri.
26th.
Decided amendment. She breathes with much less difficulty. Less discharge both from eyes and nose.
Bol. utheri.
Nov. 7th.
Sent home well.
A singular and not uninstructive case came before me. A lady in the country wrote to me to say, that her terrier was thin, dull, husking, and perpetually trying to get something from the throat; that her coat stared, and she frequently panted, I replied, that I apprehended she had caught cold; and recommended bleeding to the extent of four ounces, a grain each of calomel and emetic tartar to be given every fourth morning, and a fever-ball, composed of digitalis, nitre, and tartrate of antimony, on each intermediate day.
A few days after this I received another letter from her, saying, that the dog was bled as ordered, and died on the following Thursday. That another veterinary surgeon had been called in, who said that the first one had punctured the
vena cava
in the operation, and that the dog had bled to death internally; and she wished to know my opinion. I replied, that the charge proceeded from ignorance or malice, or both. That in one sense he was right — the jugular, which the other had probably opened, runs into the vena cava, and may, with some latitude, be considered a superior branch of it; therefore, thus far the first man had punctured the
vena cava
, which I had done many hundred times; but that the point of union of the four principal veins that form the
vena cava
was too securely seated in the upper part of the thorax for any lancet to reach it. That the rupture of some small arterial vessel might have caused this lingering death, but that the puncture of a vein would either have been speedily fatal, or of no consequence; and that, probably, the animal died of the disease which she had described.
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