A Treatise on Regional Iodine Therapy for the Veterinary Clinician

by Mart R. Steffen

In certain animals, whose skins are very tender, the local application of pure tincture of iodine, previous to surgical incision, is followed, in a few days, by slight peeling of the integument. This is so rare an occurrence, however, and of so little consequence, that it need not be considered, and can not be looked upon as a drawback to this otherwise salutary practice.

Aside from its use in the preparation of the surgical field, tincture of iodine is also used, in a prophylactic sense, to prepare the skin—in a similar manner—for the entrance of the hypodermic needle whenever a subcutaneous injection is to be made. It is not practical, nor necessary, in this instance, to shave away the hair; the site that has been selected for the needle puncture is merely painted liberally with the iodine. As in the case of a surgical incision area, so also here, the parts to which the application is made must be perfectly dry.

2. The Use of Iodine as an Adjunct to Internal Medication in the Correction of Acute Pathological Conditions.

Iodine preparations of various forms are very commonly used topically as an adjunctive treatment to internal medication in the treatment of a number of acute pathological conditions in veterinary patients. The object in adding local iodine applications to the handling of such conditions is varied. In some cases, the object of the practitioner is to hasten the correction of certain well-marked local manifestations of the disease with which the patient is afflicted. In other instances, the aim of the practitioner is toward the prevention of these local manifestations. Occasionally, in a certain type of pathological conditions, the practitioner intends, by the use of topical iodine applications, to enhance the internal treatment being aimed at symptoms whose entire nature is local in character and confined to a very limited portion of the anatomy.

In every case coming under this sub-classification, the effect that the iodine applications have—the only effect that they are able to accomplish—is one of amelioration; they can have no direct curative effect here. While the various conditions that are included under this head will be fully discussed in following chapters, I will point to the use of topical iodine medication in the handling of a case of parotitis as an illustration. While regional applications of iodine are the rule, in the handling of cases of this affection in veterinary patients, no one at all versed in the condition as it occurs in practice would give the credit of ultimate cure to the iodine applications. But all will admit readily that, while the internal treatment indicated by the pathology of the condition is correcting the lesion per se, the regional applications of iodine do contribute materially to a smooth termination of the case in that they do, without question, lessen the possibility of abscess formation, relieve the pain, and hasten resolution.

The conditions included under this heading form, in great part, that class of cases to which reference was made in the beginning of this treatise, namely, those in which iodine treatment is largely used under circumstances and in conditions that lack almost every scientific indication for its application. Yet, it is in these very conditions, and under these very circumstances, that topical applications of iodine are frequently most salutary in effect. And this effect is enhanced to the degree, as will be pointed out later, to which the practitioner becomes adept in the selection of the proper form or preparation of iodine for the particular case in hand.

3. Regional Iodine Applications for the Cure of Chronic Pathological Conditions.

It is in the correction of chronic pathological conditions, that iodine therapy finds its greatest field in the practice of veterinary medicine and surgery. It is in chronic pathological conditions, that iodine, in various forms, and with various modes of application, so forcibly demonstrates its therapeutic work, for it is here that iodine is often the only agent used in the handling of the case, thus constituting the entire treatment. Under these circumstances, it is never a difficult matter to decide as to the value of the treatment or the activity of the agent used.

Were there no other means of demonstrating the fact that iodine, in some of its forms, arouses the animal organism to the end, and in the direction, of marked efforts at regional cure of various pathological states, we would have evidence of ample weight to convince us of this in the results that we daily get with its application in a general practice.

There is hardly any therapeutic result from which the practising veterinarian derives more professional satisfaction than he does from the sure, gradual effect of properly selected and correctly applied iodine preparations in chronic pathological conditions of the articulations, from the speedy and specific effect of others in certain skin diseases, and from the almost miraculous cure of certain localized infections when the proper iodine medication is applied in these.