Perth Amboy evening news., 1923-07-27
THE DOCTOR AT THE ZOO
TOLD OF BY HASKIN
Daily Letter by Frederic j. Haskin

NEW YORK CITY, July 81
What would you do for a ~rhinoceros
with a toothache, or for a python
that had lost its appetite? The
veterinary surgeon of the New York
Geological Park, DR.. w. r. Blair,
has had both of these patients. They
represent fair samples of the work
that falls to an animal doctor in
the largest zoo in the world.
A ~rhinoceros is never a docile
character, and an abscess in his
jaw is not likely TO make him any
pleasanter to get along with. Add
to his temperament the difficulty of
his unwieldiness, and you begin to
ses that operating on a ~rhinoceros
requires both tact and careful
strategy. The method used is to
put hobbies on all four of the
animals legs and pull the legs to-
gether. Then the keepers push him
ove on bags of hay for an operat-
ing table. One nostril is stopped
up, and an anesthetic is dripped
into the other through cheese-cloth.
Less than an ounce of chloroform
would put a human being to sleep.
The rhinoceros mentioned took a
pound and a half of ether and half
a pound of chloroform before the
surgeon could operate.
The python that would not eat
seemed to want the food of its native
land. The zoo commissaries provide
each animal with the most nourish-
ing and suitable food available, but
wild life of the jungle was not
available for TINS finicky boarder.
To keep the python from dying
of malnutrition the veterinary had
to order forcible feeding. Pythons
prefer to eat only at long intervals,
but when they do eat they make
up for any lost time. Eighteen to
twenty-four pounds of food is about
what one of these great snakes con-
siders a filling meal. Accordingly,
every three weeks ten keepers with
a bamboo pole pushed enough food
into the hunger-striking snake to
last until the next feeding date.
This method of feeding was con-
tinued for five or six years. Then
a peccary, which is a kind of wild
pig, was imported. Because of an
embargo on foot and mouth disease
this peccary would have been ex-
cluded from the animal collection.
and it represented exactly the kind
of food the python was longing for
No live food is given in the New
York Zoo, but the forty-lve pound
pig was killed and fed to the snake
This may have proved to the I'M
happy python that the wild food
it had been longing for was not sc
desirable after all. At any rate
from then on it ate voluntarily the
food supplied by the Zoo kitchens
The collection of wild animals
here is known not only as the largesi
in the world but also as the
healthiest. No animal is put on ex'
hibition until it has been detained II
an isolation cage and found to bt
free from disease.
Disease Prevention Sought
Prevention of disease is the con
slant aim of the medical department
Every morning at ten o'clock th'
keepers inspect every cage in thu
gardens and report cases of apparen
illness to DIR. Blair. The doctor
says that the keepers know theil
charges so well that they quickl!
note an animal that is l~istless, o.
takes no interest in its food, or i
not so responsive as usual.
II a contagious disease develops
the patient is removed at once to tn,
contagion ward. White cages taxi
the place of beds in the zoo hospital
but aside from ma difference tn
institution is very much like othe
hospitals. There is an operating
room, completely equipped TO.
surgical work. Besides the con
tagion ward there are general ward
and a surgical ward, and porche
are provided so that on pleasant day
the white cages Of c~onvalescents cal
be rolled out of doors.
A post mortem examination /
made of every animal that dies
go that the cause a be bette.
understood. and possible effects OIL
other animals considered.
With all these precautions o
lsolating newcomers, watching 70
earliest signs of i'll health, and pos
norton studies, there is one sourc
of disease over which the medica
department has very little control
Visitors are responsible for a goo
many of the diseases that tn
animals contract, although there !
little chance of a visitor to the 20
catching a disease from the animals
the park in a year. On busy day
More than $500 900 people Wis
$4,000 people often pass throug
the gates. OF these probably so pc