It will often happen that the hydatid, from being in the interior of the brain, will not be brought into view by the removal of a portion of the skull. In this case the brain must be punctured in order to reach the sac and evacuate its contents.
When the skull above the eye is very thin, the disease may be at once ended by cautiously thrusting a short, stout, sharp-pointed piece of steel wire through the skin and bone down towards the centre of the brain, taking care to pull the skin a little to one side before making the puncture, so that on letting it loose the openings in the skull and integument will not be opposite to one another. This plan is much superior to that of thrusting a needle up the nostril, in the manner devised by Mr Hogg, as in his way we are always poking in the dark, in ignorance of the situation of the instrument, and are in all probability doing so much injury to the delicate parts within the nose as to preclude the possibility of recovery. Indeed, I some time ago examined a head on which Mr Hogg's operation had been twice unsuccessfully performed, and found traces of inflammation at the upper part of the nostril severe enough of itself to have occasioned death. The needle had not entered the brain, but the ethmoid was very much injured. I believe the instrument is very seldom pushed more than half way through the bone, at least it never reaches the hydatid, which would appear to be destroyed rather by the inflammatory process which follows the attempt, unfitting the brain for supplying it with the secretions on which it lives, than by any direct injury done to it by the needle.
CHAPTER VII.
DISEASES OF SHEEP.
(119.) There is no department in the management of sheep so little understood as the nature and treatment of their diseases. Every part of the sheep itself has been used, at one time or another, in this country, as medicine for man, a folly still prevailing among the boors of Southern Africa, who, according to Thunberg, employ the inner coat of the stomach, dried and powdered, as a safe emetic. Quackish absurdities of so glaring a nature have, however, long been scorned in civilized society. Not so, however, when the sheep is the object of treatment. Scientific innovations have been slow in reaching it, and specimens of barbarian usage are far from rare. We may feel for the benighted credulity which could place reliance, for a rescue from mortal ailment, on the secretions or excretions of a sheep; but we are compelled to laugh on reading, in the Family Dictionary, published in 1752, the following:—
"In general, 'tis affirmed that the belly of a sheep boiled in water and wine, and given the sheep to drink, cures several diseases incident to them."
Only fancy a farmer dosing a sheep with mutton broth, and adding, for its stomach's sake, a little wine! I suspect the prescriber was, in this instance, putting himself, in point of intellect, far below the level of his patient. Thanks to him, however, for the benefit he has thus unwittingly conferred, by holding ignorance up to the derision it so richly merits; no means being so powerful as broadly-drawn caricatures in exposing the extent of such delusions. Though faith has long since ceased to be reposed in the medicinal virtues of mutton broth, a variety of nostrums have from time to time appeared, the composition and application of which are invaluable for the amount of negative information they are calculated to convey. Further notice of these trashy recipes it is not my intention to take, as a list of them alone would make a volume;—they are in the hands of every one.
(120.) Cautions in prescribing. Great reliance is in general placed upon prescriptions, which profess to suit diseases in every stage and circumstance.—Than this, however, scarcely any thing can be more absurd. It is an opinion engendered not so much by ignorance as by laziness, a determination not to be put about by thinking of a remedy for the evils which surround us, but, while we contrive to soothe ourselves by doing something, to leave every thing to the hit-or-miss practice of charlatans.[ [24] There are many, who on being informed of the presence of disease in a neighbour's flock, confidently advise the employment of a favourite nostrum, on the empirical supposition that because it cured, or was thought to cure, one flock, it will cure another. Nothing is taken into account saving that, in both cases, the affected animals are sheep; and it is at once concluded, that what benefited one will benefit another. The many niceties in prescribing are never thought of: oh no, that would be of no use! of course it can be of no importance to give a moment's attention to age and sex, pasture and situation, or to leanness or fatness, or to the presence of pregnancy! These are of trifling moment, and only to be despised by a person armed with a recipe, which some one has shown to be capable of walking like a constable through the body, and bearing off the intruder! But enough of this; sufficient has, I think, been said to prove the utter folly of confiding in things of the above nature or intention, and to show that such confidence can lead to nothing but a waste of life and capital. Even though the remedy is a harmless one, it ought (unless calculated from known powers to arrest the disease) to be viewed with distrust, as incurring a loss of time, during which other and better measures might have been resorted to.
(121.) Classification of diseases.[ [25] As the acquirement of correct ideas regarding the treatment of diseases is much facilitated by a simple arrangement of the diseases themselves, numerous attempts have been made to accomplish it, and in a variety of ways. The best of these tabular views with which I am acquainted is the one laid before the Highland Society some years ago, by Mr Stevenson, who appears to have been the first to publish any thing like a satisfactory classification. His arrangement is, however, defective in several points, more especially as it necessitates the placing in the same division diseases of organs essentially different. Thus he is compelled to admit under "Diseases of the head" Scabs on the mouth side by side with Sturdy, and Louping ill: in this way mingling affections of the skin with diseases of totally different organs—the brain and spinal marrow—and causing much embarassment to the reader. To obviate this inconvenience, as well as to render the remembrance of the remedies an easy matter, I have adopted the above arrangement, in which each disease is placed opposite the textures it invades.