The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-12-14
Latest Wrinkles
in Veterinary Use

What would our forbears have said
/ if it had been suggested to them that a
! day would come when there would be
anaesthetics, antiseptics, operating
tables, special instruments for horses as
| well as man. 1t has come to this now.
! There are horses today that get better
| and more scientific treatment than some
| human beings. The horse hospital has
| arrived. and man S best friend and ally
now gets the same relief and comfort
! from the workings of science that his
master gets, says thesNew York World
A veterinarian can diagnose a case of
illness in horse as well as physician
can with a human patient. In fact,
there is little difference between treat
| ing a sick horse and a sick child. Meth
er can talk. Neither can tell anything
to the physician. He must discover
everything for himself
The horse hospital looks very bust
nesslike. There are attendants, clad in
! spotless white and eases of shining in
struments under glass. Things are as
spick and span as they would be in a
hospital for men and women There is
an operating room quite as scientifically
arranged as one in a private hospital
where only the well-to-do might 90.
There is a horse hospital in Brooklyn
not far from the bridge where four
veterinarians have all they can do to
care for their equine patients. They per-
form from 60 to 100 operations every
month to say nothing of treating scores
of horse ailments which do not need the
knife. There a writer for the Sunday
World saw what wonders science has
done in these latter days for the dumb
friends of man. The surgeon-in-chief
was leading the way through maze of
private box stalls in which valuable
animals were recuperating, ready to go
forth to do their work in the world
again.
"LoOk at this horse,'' said he, point
ing to beautiful beast still in the
"stoeks," an apparatus designed to-
keep horse from rubbing off the
bandages.
On its breast was a neatly stripped
pack of cotton and iodoform. The horse
had been suffering for many months
from a tumor and had at last been
brought to the hospital to have it re-
moved. 1t had just come from the
operating room. There it stood, strap
ped at the middle, head and tail, to pre-
vent it, as it recovered entirely from
the anaesthetic that had been admin
istered, from displacing the packing by
scraping it with its under lip.
Nearly every horse that comes from
under an operation is put in the
50 stOcks' for this reason. They try to
press against something, not knowing
how to relieve themselves of the pain of
the cut. These ''stocks' hold them in
one place, quite free from contact with
anything else, until the pain has so far
diminished that they can be released
without fear of injury.
That horse" remarked the surgeon,
twill now be perfectly well, while had
the tumor been permitted to grow, the
animal would have died long before this
one will. That is a piece of modern
surgery. We have as many as twenty
five eases of this kind a month, and all
of them are performed successfully.
Now, come this way to the operating
room; we are just about to perform an
operation on a large draft horse''
He led the way through an aisle Dor
dered with stalls. In each of the twenty
stalls there were horses in various
stages of recovery from illnesses. Some
were recovering from an over amount of
dissipation and too high living, for
horses are often fed too much or too
richly and have Indigestion and gas
tritis just as human beings have it,
Giving pill TO a horse is not sim +!
pie performance. The surgeon stopped |
at one of the stalls on the way to the |
operating room, and, taking what looked |
like baby prOjectile from his pocket,
said: ''Well, Jim, / guess it s about
time for your pill. -
He opened the gate and went into the |
stall. Grasping the under lip of the
horse, he forced the mouth open and |
then inserted his hand with the pill in
it. He thrust his arm almost shoulder
deep down the horses throat and |
brought the hand back empty; the pill /
had been swallowed by the horse.
'How'd you like to have to take a
pill like that?" he laughed, and re-
marked that this three-ineh affair was
but a baby one and that there were
other pills much larger,
''The horse would chew the pill and
eject it if it were fed to him. But this
way, once it is started down the throat
it has to CO."
Down the aisle he went, and then INTO
a room where horse was standing side
ways near large upright board fes-
TONED with straps and canvas be'ss
This was the operating room and this
was the table. 1t is an immense affair,
big enough to bold the largest of horses,
and is so fitted with straps that once a
horse is secured to it, it is impossible for
him to move.
Two men were at work strapping the
horse to the board as he stood beside il.
First the head was strapped high, So