This affection generally accompanies the same disease in other portions of the body, but may occasionally make its appearance independent of this cause. The edges of the flap become rough, thickened, and furrowed, the itching intolerable; and the dog perpetually shaking and scratching the head, occasions a constant oozing of blood from the wound. Smooth-haired dogs are most subject to this disease, such as pointers, hounds, and terriers.
Treatment — Slightly stimulating washes, such as castile soap, alum-water, or infusion of oak-bark, will, in the majority of cases, induce these sores to heal up. If these do not answer, it will be necessary to use the mange ointment, keeping the animal hobbled to prevent him from scratching. Old inveterate cases are best cured by trimming off the affected parts. — L.
[Contents]/[Detailed Contents, p. 5]/[Index]
[Chapter X — Anatomy and Diseases of the Facial Features]
The Ethmoid Bones
There is some difficulty in describing the ethmoid bones; but we shall not, however, deviate far from the truth if we give the following account:
A great number of small hollow pedicles proceed from and form around the cribriform plate; as they move downwards, they project into distinct vesicles or cavities, smaller and more numerous behind, fewer in number and larger in front; and each of them not a simple cavity, but more or less convoluted, while the long walls of those cells are of gossamer thinness, and as porous as gauze. They even communicate, and are lined, and externally wrapped together, by the same membrane; the whole assuming a pear-like form, attached by its base or greater extremity, and decreasing in size as it proceeds downwards; the cells becoming fewer, and terminating at length in a kind of apex, which passes under the superior turbinated bone, and forms a valve between the nasal cavity and the maxillary sinuses.
to this is added, that the olfactory or first pair of nerves abut on these cribriform plates, and pass through their minute openings, and spread themselves over every one of these cells, we have a tolerably correct picture of this portion of the ethmoid bones. This nerve has different degrees of development in different animals, in proportion to their acuteness of smell. There is comparatively but little necessity for acuteness in the horse. The ox has occasion for somewhat more, especially in the early part of the spring, when the plants are young, and have not acquired their peculiar scent. In the sheep it is larger, and fills the superior portion of the nasal cavity; but in the dog it seems to occupy that cavity almost to the exclusion of the turbinated bones. It is also much more fragile in the dog than in the ox, and the plates have a considerably thinner structure.