We prescribed forty grains in a roll of butter for a worthless cur a short time since, which, as expected, produced great anxiety, difficulty of respiration, severe vomiting, tremors, spasmodic twitchings of the muscles, convulsions, and ultimate death in the course of half an hour. This powerful drug acts by causing a spasmodic stricture of the muscles engaged in respiration, as no signs of inflammation are observable in the stomach and other organs after death.
Spirits of turpentine
,
remedy both simple and innocent in its operations upon the human economy, and so frequently prescribed for the expulsion of worms from the bowels, is a dangerous medicine for a dog, and will often in very small quantities prove fatal.
Aloes
, a medicine more extensively used in canine pathology than any other in the
materia medica,
is also very peculiar in its operations upon these animals, they being able to bear immense doses of it, in fact quite sufficient to produce death if given to a hearty man.
Thus we might continue to enumerate other drugs which we have ascertained, from practical observation as well as the experiments of other, to exercise a peculiar action on the vital functions of the whole canine race, quite at variance with that common to both man and the other domestic animals.