A DOG TAPED OR MUZZLED FOR OPERATION.
After the enlargement is slit up, nothing more is required than to fill the sac for a day or two with lint soaked in the healing fluid; and when suppuration is established the lint may be withdrawn, and the wound, if kept clean, left to nature.
THE EYE.
Most writers describe a regular series of disorders associated with the eye of the dog. I must be permitted to recite only those which I have witnessed; and surely, if the diseases which the writers alluded to above have mentioned do exist, I must have encountered some solitary instance of each of them; instead of which, I have been honored by the confidence of all classes, and have after all to confess I have not witnessed a specimen of genuine ophthalmia in this animal.
Cataract.—This derangement of the visual organ is very common with the dog. Every old animal that has lost his eyesight is nearly certain to be blind from cataract. The optic nerve appears to have retained its health long after the crystalline lens has parted with its transparency. The latter becomes opaque, while circumstances allow us to infer the former is yet in vigor; for certainly dogs do see through lenses, the milky or chalky aspect of which would justify us in pronouncing the sight quite gone. There is no precise time when cataract makes its appearance. It may come on at any period or at any age. It may be rapid or slow in its formation; but from its generally known habit, we should be inclined to say it was rather slow than otherwise; though upon this point the author can speak with no certainty. No breed appears to be specially liable to it, but all seem to be exposed to it alike. The small-bred, house-kept, high-fed dogs, however, are those most subject to be attacked by it; for, in these kinds of animals, on account of the derangement of the digestive organs, the eyes seem to be disposed to show cataract earlier than in the more robust creatures of the same breed.
The cause of this affection is, in the horse, usually put down to blows; but, in the dog, we dare not say the disorder is thus produced. The dog is more exposed to the kicks and cuffs of domestics than is the horse; the violence done upon the first-named animal being less thought about, and therefore less likely to be observed. But that the disease takes its origin in any such inhumanity the author has no proof, and no intention of insinuating an accusation against a class, who being generally ignorant, have therefore the less chance of a reply.
The disease seems to be the natural termination of the animal's eyesight; and, though the author has seen the iris ragged-looking, as though acute ophthalmia had loosed its ravages upon the delicate structures of the eye, nevertheless he has in vain endeavored to detect the presence of that disease.
Were ophthalmia common enough to have produced one-half of the cataracts which are to be witnessed by him who administers to the affections of the canine species, surely I must have met with it; as not being a very brief disorder, but one which by its symptoms is sure to make itself known, I must have encountered it in one of its numerous stages. However, not having seen it, and still being anxious of tracing cataract to its source, the author has been induced to attribute it to the influences of old age, high breeding, or too stimulating a diet.
Medicine having appeared to do injury rather than to produce benefit, the author has generally abandoned it in these cases; whereas those measures which are within the reach of every proprietor, such as change of abode, attention to necessary cleanliness without caudling in the bed, wholesome food, and a total abstinence from flesh, added to the daily use of the cold bath with a long run, and constant employment of a penetrative hair-brush to the skin afterwards, have seemed to stay the ravages of the disorder; and on these, therefore, the author is inclined to place his entire dependence.