26th
That singular secretion of milk, to which the bitch is subject nine weeks after œstrum, is now appearing. Her mammæ are enlarged, and I can squeeze a considerable quantity of milk out of the teats. Give an aloetic pill, and continue the strychnia.
31st
. The secretion of milk continues. There is slight enlargement and some heat of the mammæ; but she feeds as well as ever. Increase the dose of strychnia to three-quarters of a grain.
On the following day she was found dead. In making the usual longitudinal incision through the integuments of the abdomen a considerable quantity of milky fluid, mingled with blood, followed the knife. There was very slight enlargement of the teats, but intense inflammation of the whole of the mammary substance. The
omentum
, and particularly the portion opposite to the external disease, was also inflamed. Besides this there was not a vestige of disease.
This is an interesting case and deserves record. I fear that justice was not done to the animal at the commencement of the paralytic affection. In nineteen cases out of twenty in the dog, the constant but mild stimulus of a charge over the lumbar and sacral regions removes the deeper-seated inflammation of the spinal cord or its membranes, when the palsy is confined to the hind extremities, and has not been sufficiently long established to produce serious change of structure. The charge should have been applied at first. The almost total disappearance of the palsy during the cutaneous disease, which was attended with more than usual inflammation of the integument, is an instructive illustration of the power of counter-irritation, and of what might possibly have been effected in the first case; for much time was lost before the application of the charge, and when at length it was applied, it and the strychnia were powerless.
I consider the following case as exceedingly valuable, at least with reference to the power of strychnia in removing palsy:
19th August, 1836