Sanatogen is a most excellent, strengthening, and easily-digested food. Dogs will often retain this when they are unable to take any other food.
Benger’s food with milk is also an easily-digested food, as it is partially predigested. Cases often arise when a dog cannot possibly retain anything in the stomach, then it is necessary to give nourishment by the rectum, and it is astonishing what a long while a dog can be kept alive and fairly strong in this way.
The best kinds of food for giving by rectum are peptonised milk, or peptonised beef-tea, and peptonised beef suppositories. Burroughs Wellcome’s are good nutritive suppositories. As to the quantity of milk to be given per rectum, from one[1] to eight tablespoonfuls, just warmed, every three or four hours alternatively with one of Burroughs Wellcome’s meat suppositories.
In giving a nutritive enema, care must be taken to pass it very slowly into the bowel so as not to excite action, or the enema will be immediately rejected, and afterwards just raise the hind-quarters a little bit so that the fluid runs well into the body, and hold the tail down for a few minutes so that it cannot escape.
The milk can be peptonised with Fairchild’s peptonised powders, which can be bought at any chemist’s shop.
Brand’s meat essences are excellent foods in cases of stomach disorders. Benger’s peptonised beef jelly is a very easily digested preparation, and very useful in cases of severe vomiting.
Raw meat beef-tea, made by soaking for a couple of hours half a pound of scraped lean raw beef in half a pint of cold water, then stood in front of a fire to get warm, then straining and squeezing through a coarse tea-cloth. Or the juice may be pressed from raw meat with one of Dr. Klein’s meat-squeezing machines. This is very nourishing and easily digested, and dogs are fond of it, and often will take it voluntarily when refusing other foods.
An excellent combined food for dogs very ill, especially with distemper, when the patient is very weak, or during convalescence, is made as follows:—
To a breakfast cup of milk, thickened with Benger’s food, add the white of an egg, a full teaspoonful of invalid bovril, and a dessertspoonful of brandy; of this give from one[1] to six tablespoonfuls every two or three hours alternately, with some beef-tea or meat extract.
Messrs. Spratts’ Patent have recently introduced a new food for invalids. It is a granulated meal, and they call it Invalid Food. It is a most excellent preparation, and every dog I have offered it to has eaten it with avidity. I have found it a very useful diet for distemper patients mixed with milk; and I have given it to puppies just weaned, and they have thriven well on it. Though this new food is called Invalid Food, it is an excellent preparation either mixed with milk or soup for small dogs; if meat is required it can easily be added, as it contains none, but I am told that it contains a special meal, and that little or no meat is necessary.