A singular and not uninstructive case came before me. A lady in the country wrote to me to say, that her terrier was thin, dull, husking, and perpetually trying to get something from the throat; that her coat stared, and she frequently panted, I replied, that I apprehended she had caught cold; and recommended bleeding to the extent of four ounces, a grain each of calomel and emetic tartar to be given every fourth morning, and a fever-ball, composed of digitalis, nitre, and tartrate of antimony, on each intermediate day. A few days after this I received another letter from her, saying, that the dog was bled as ordered, and died on the following Thursday. That another veterinary surgeon had been called in, who said that the first one had punctured the 'vena cava' in the operation, and that the dog had bled to death internally; and she wished to know my opinion. I replied, that the charge proceeded from ignorance or malice, or both. That in one sense he was right--the jugular, which the other had probably opened, runs into the vena cava, and may, with some latitude, be considered a superior branch of it; therefore, thus far the first man had punctured the vena cava, which I had done many hundred times; but that the point of union of the four principal veins that form the vena cava was too securely seated in the upper part of the thorax for any lancet to reach it. That the rupture of some small arterial vessel might have caused this lingering death, but that the puncture of a vein would either have been speedily fatal, or of no consequence; and that, probably, the animal died of the disease which she had described. SPASMODIC COUGH is a troublesome disease to manage. Dogs, and especially those considerably petted, are subject to frequent cough, requiring a material difference in the treatment. Sometimes there is a husky cough, not to so great a degree as in distemper, but followed by the same apparent effort to get something from the throat, the same attempt to vomit, and the ejection of mucus, frothy or adhesive, and occasionally discoloured with bile. It proceeds from irritability or obstruction in some of the air-passages, and oftenest of the superior ones. An emetic will clear the fauces, or at least force out a portion of the adhesive matter which is clogging the bronchial tubes. A cough of this kind, and attended in its early stages by little fever, seldom requires anything more for its cure than the exhibition of a few gentle emetics, consisting of equal portions of calomel and emetic tartar, given in doses varying from half a grain to one grain and a half of each.