ZOO DOCTOR’S PROBLEMS

Evening Star, Issue 22913, 22 March 1938, Page 1

ZOO DOCTOR’S PROBLEMS

ANIMAL MEDICAL PRACTICE TIGERS SURPRISINGLY AMENABLE The zoo patient of the month recently was Mok, the gorilla, writes a doctor in the ‘ Daily Mail.’ He had bulletins issued twice daily; the comings and goings of his attendants were main page news. Now he is dead. And at the post-mortem which I attended wo found nothing which gave us any clue that would,have assisted in treating him. Mok, in fact, provides the perfect example to illustrate how difficult is the job of a zoo doctor. Medical men can deal with a sick human on easy terms. But when your patient is a grumpy gorilla with .arms sft long the task of approaching him with a view to putting a stethoscope on his chest, let alone getting blood for a test, would he perilous. The ape-doctor has to make up his mind quite definitely on his line of treatment. He can’t shilly-shally with a patient who may beat him up at any moment. He says; “We will give him two drachms of laudanum.” And the keeper says: “ Well, he might take it out of the teapot, if we pretend to fill it with water.” And that’s how it was done.

Animal medical practice falls into two classes, minor and major. Minor might he described as that which can be done without the patient noticing much; for example, giving a pill concealed in a truss of hay to a hippopotamus or binding up a penguin’s foot. This is often necessary, for these birds are prone to that fashionable human ailment, athlete’s foot.

But to tell exactly why a lion is limping on his forepaw might require an Stray. That enters the realm of major practice. A lion does not understand the apparatus; the strange folk about; the queer noises; and has to have an anaesthetic. So usually does a. small monkey, because he won’t keep still. If dentists have difficulty in dragging their human patients to the chair, what do you suppose it’s like when your practice consists of crocodiles and tigers? When a monkey needs a tooth extracted he must be held down, and, if necessary, anaesthetised. Crocodiles can be strapped to posts, and then have a gag thrust far into their mouths and be roped in position. The tiger is surprisingly amenable to similar treatment.

Snakes are difficult to handle. If you want to give a dose of medicine when feeding time is still a fortnight off, you have to employ some more direct method than mere coaxing. You have to know how to catch your snake in a loop just behind the head, and, in fangproof gloves, force his jaws open so as to get the physio down. Fish present another problem. How would you care to operate on an electric eel? Or supposing you were doing a skingraft on a fish that was the_ worse for battle, how would you keep it properly dressed in the water ? Fish are anaesthetised usually by putting a “ dope ” in their tank, but in general the fish doctor has to confine himself to preventive medicine. Humming-birds are apt to receive minute injuries to the beak which prevent them from picking up food. Intervention with plastic surgery saves their dying from hunger. It is easy to err with animals. Two grains of calomel can kill a dog; on tno other hand, a half-grain morphia injection that would put most of us out for half a, day would be a mere freshening cocktail to a cat.

To doctor animals successfully on© needs five qualities. First, I put “psychological sympathy,” that is the power to convince an animal that you mean well, but that what you say “ goes ’’; second, knowledge of general medicine; third, common sense; fourth, faith in Nature rather than the latest discoveries of science; and fifth, decision.

If you have all those perhaps you will one day find yourself preparing to doctor a big baboon fighting-mad with toothache. I wish you luck.