Before I proceed to the discussion of the special application of iodine, in a number of pathological conditions in animals, I would urge the veterinarian to give more thought to the forms and preparations of iodine of which he makes use. It is a rather common occurrence that a practitioner will allow agents of well-known therapeutic efficiency to be displaced, by others of doubtful activity, on account of a small difference in the cost of the same. This is especially true in the case of preparations in which the active ingredient, and, therefore, the ingredient to be depended upon for results, is iodine. Iodine, to begin with, as an elemental article, is costly. The veterinarian may, therefore, be sure that, whenever an iodine preparation, of a certain stated strength, is offered for sale at a price considerably lower than that of recognized preparations of a similar character, the lower price is possible only because of the fact that the iodine content is not as represented.
In choosing preparations of iodine, for use in his practice, the veterinarian can easily deprive himself of much of the success that goes with correct iodine therapy, if he allows his choice of preparations to be influenced, to any great extent, by the cost of the article.
This is the chief reason, and there is probably no other, why some veterinarians fail to get satisfactory results from topical iodine applications. They permit their better judgment, in the selection of the preparations, to be influenced too markedly by price; the preparation that they select fails to give the expected results because it is an inferior preparation, either in the strength or the quality of the iodine it is said to carry. Commonly, both strength and quality are inferior.
Well made and honestly prepared iodine preparations are cheaper than almost anything that the veterinarian uses, in a pharmaceutical way; a little of a good iodine preparation “goes a long way”; and it accomplishes what it does solely through the exertion of its own energy. Almost never, it might be said, are other agents expected to assist it in its action. For this reason, it is very essential that the preparation be of correct and ample strength, that it contain the iodine in a form readily available by the tissues, and that the vehicle carrying the iodine have no detrimental action of its own.
There is still another point that I wish to bring out, and that is in regard to the fee that the practitioner charges for the handling of a case with more or less costly iodine preparations. Usually, his fee is too low. The practitioner should consider the fact that, in not a few of the cases in which he uses topical iodine treatment, he is actually depriving himself of a surgical fee, and the charge that he makes for the treatment, in place of the operation that would otherwise be required, should, in some degree at least, offset the loss thus apparent. In some cases, it is even possible to get a larger fee under these conditions, for, frequently, the owner of an animal would much prefer that a given condition be cured without a surgical operation, and would offer no serious objection to a higher fee for the correction of the condition by a prolonged course of topical iodine medication. In the case of a valuable animal, where scar formation might depreciate the value, the smooth results, that are not uncommonly attained with iodine preparations, actually deserve to be rated as much more agreeable, and, therefore, worth a larger fee, than a surgical operation.
Whenever resort is had, by the veterinarian, to applications of iodine, in considerable amounts, he should not hesitate to inform the client that the agent used is costly, and that a special charge will be made therefor.
Many veterinary practitioners have come into the habit of writing prescriptions for all iodine preparations that they find it necessary to use, while all other medicines they dispense out of their own pharmacy. I do not consider this good practice, for several reasons. The main fault that I find in this is the one making it possible for the client to have the prescription refilled without consulting the veterinarian. It is nothing unusual for a prescription to be given to neighbors or relatives, thus depriving the veterinarian of his fee. Another reason that I have for finding fault with this practice, is that many druggists will not fill a veterinary prescription honestly; seeing that it is “only for a horse” or a cow, they do not hesitate to use drugs, in compounding the prescription, that they would not think of putting into a prescription for a human being—old drugs, drugs of inferior quality, and the like. For these, as well as other equally important reasons, the veterinarian should dispense all iodine preparations, just as he does all others. He should not be deterred, from using these preparations, on account of the slightly higher price which he must pay for them, if he makes it a point to impress the worth of the article on his client, and charges the fee that he should.
V.
Method of Using Regional Iodine Therapy in the Correction of Various Pathological Conditions.
If the reader has made an effort to follow me in what I have said in the foregoing chapters of this treatise, he will have no difficulty in applying, to cases occurring in his practice, many of the suggestions offered.
In this, the closing chapter of the treatise on regional iodine therapy, I intend to refer to a small number of conditions, in the handling of which I have found great satisfaction in the use of the preparations heretofore mentioned, and, at the same time, I shall endeavor to explain my own particular methods of using the preparations.