To these hospitals hundreds of valuable sick dogs are annually sent, where they receive every attention, and are often snatched from the very jaws of death, or prevented, when attacked by rabies or other frightful affections, from doing mischief or propagating infection. Medicines the most potent are administered to these interesting patients with the utmost care, either as assuagers of temporary pain, or as remedial agents in the cure of disease. Operations the most complex are performed with the greatest skill, and every attention is bestowed upon these invalids in their different wards, and no trouble is considered too great to save the life and secure the services of a valuable and faithful dog.
As
have no such establishments in this country, and but a few persons upon whom we can rely for assistance in case of need, it behooves every lover of the dog to make himself familiar with, and the mode of treating the most prominent affections of these companions of our sports, and at the same time acquire a knowledge of the operations of certain medicines upon the system in a state of health or disease, so that our trusty followers may not be left to the tender mercies and physicking propensities of ignorant stablemen, or the officious intermeddling of the "
pill-directing horse doctor
."
The necessity of resorting to the assistance of either one or the other of these worthies is equally unfortunate, as the former will most generally kill the patient by slow degrees in forcibly and largely administering the two modern specifics for all canine affections, viz.: "soap pills and flowers of sulphur." While the latter, more bold but not less ignorant than the former, and his practice is perhaps the preferable of the two evils, will murder the dog out-right by the free exhibition of calomel, nux vomica and other deleterious substances, of the operation of which he has but little knowledge or conception. This latter system, as before said, is the most preferable, as its adoption secures for our favourite a speedy termination of his sufferings, and also relieves our own minds from a state of suspense that illustrates too forcibly the remark, "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick."
[Contents]/[Detailed Contents, p. 4]/[Index]