TREATMENT OF HERNIÆ.
Numerous attempts have been made to treat abdominal hernia in bovine animals.
Irritant and vesicant applications to the skin have been recommended, with the object of producing a large swelling, and thus thrusting back the herniated mass into its proper position.
One of the most popular of these applications is nitric acid of a strength of 36° Baumé, applied to the skin twice at an interval of ten days. Skilfully used, it gives good results in umbilical herniæ, but its effects in ventral herniæ are less certain. It causes slow mortification of the skin, abundant subcutaneous swelling, and produces an eschar, which separates in about a fortnight.
An ointment of yellow chromate of potash (1 to 8) has been recommended, and can be applied two or three times at intervals of eight or ten days.
Bandaging and various forms of local dressing have also been employed from time to time. Serres employed simple bandages similar to those used in cases of inguinal or crural hernia in human beings. These bandages have a pad, which is applied over the hernial opening, but their action is strictly palliative. They simply allow of the animal being kept a certain length of time for fattening.
When the hernia has been reduced recourse may be had to bandages saturated in melted pitch, care being taken to extend the dressing a considerable distance beyond the limits of the hernial opening. Successive layers of bandage are superposed across and across, and, to make the dressing more solid, the pads may be reinforced with a sheet of solid cardboard. This method only succeeds when the swelling is slight and is situated elsewhere than in the lowest portions of the abdomen.
Some practitioners prefer a cloth bandage after reduction. The bandage is ten to fifteen yards in length, and should be considerably wider than the greatest measurement of the hernial opening. Such bandages can easily be applied to calves, whose bodies are of regular shape, but in adults, in which the body is of ovoid formation, they prove faulty, and tend to slide backwards or forwards.
All these measures are merely more or less palliative and of temporary effect.
The only rational and radical treatment is surgical. This is clearly indicated when the hernia is recent and of small size. At a later stage, when fibrous adhesions have formed between the various organs, and reduction has become difficult, caution must be observed. Surgical treatment is always a serious matter, and should only be attempted in the case of valuable breeding animals, or those which cannot be sold for slaughter.