Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 1 (of 5)Law, James
Science
Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 1 (of 5)
Law, James
Veterinary medicine
The hot air, steam bath, and hot compress have the advantage over the
mere irritant derivatives that their action is from first to last
soothing and free from all risk of inducing sympathetic irritation and
yet as derivatives they are eminently efficient. Next to them in safety
and efficacy comes dry cupping.
The irritant derivatives are often the most valuable, but must be used
with great judgment. They are always dangerous when the pleural
inflammation runs very high and when the local irritation and suffering
are specially acute. Under such circumstances it is usually desirable to
adopt other measures to moderate the severity of the inflammation, and
to fall back on baths, compresses and cups until the irritation is
alleviated before vegetable or animal vesicants are resorted to. In
acute and severe attacks these latter are especially applicable to the
early stages before the inflammation has been fully formed, or after the
stage of free effusion has set in.
With high fever and no benefit from hot local applications, cold
irrigation or refrigerant compresses to the walls of the chest, have
proved useful, but considering the rôle filled by cold in causation and
the suggested relation between pleurisy and rheumatism this is not to be
followed as a general practice.
If the patient has been a hearty feeder and if there is evident
costiveness a purgative (aloes or sulphate of soda) is often desirable
at the outset, but if the disease is of a low type this is always
dangerous, owing to susceptibility of the intestinal mucosa and it is
safer to correct constipation by injections or at most by a pint of
olive oil.
When the suffering is very acute and is aggravating the fever, a
hypodermic injection of morphine will often greatly relieve and even
favor a revulsion of blood toward the skin, but as it tends to suppress
the action of both bowels and kidneys it should be avoided unless it
seems absolutely necessary, and above all it should not be given by the
stomach. Cocaine hypodermically may be used to relieve pain.
Both fever and suffering can sometimes be greatly relieved by large
doses (2 drachms 3 or 4 times daily) of salicylate of soda, which again
suggests a close relation of the disease to rheumatism. Acetanilid or
phenacetin may be used to fill the same indication.
Next come the questions of alkaline and diuretic treatment. Some cases
do well if given nitrate of potash freely in the drinking water. Some
prefer the alkaline diuretics, such as acetate of potash or ammonia,
bicarbonate of potash or soda, biborate of soda, or the vegetable
diuretics such as colchicum, squills, etc. Fraënkel found that, while
comparatively ineffective alone, these proved most efficient (in man)
when combined with cinchona or other bitter. The hint should be useful
to the veterinarian. Diuretics in the stage of effusion should be pushed
as far as the strength of the patient will warrant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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