HOW THE NEW SURGERY IS SAVING HORSES.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume XII, Issue 45, 7 April 1910, Page 3

HOW THE NEW SURGERY IS SAVING HORSES.

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 ? It has come to this now. There are horses to-day 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. A veterinarian can diagnose a case of illness in a horse as well as a physician can with a human patient. In fact, there is little difference between treating a sick horse and a sick child. Neither can talk. Neither can tell anything to the physician. He must discover everything for himself.

The horse hospital just visited looks very business-like. There were attendants, clad in spotless white, and cases of shining instruments under glass. Things were 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 go.

In one stall was seen, for instance, a beautiful beast with a neatly stripped pack of cotton and iodoform on its breast. The horse had been suffering for many months from a tumor and had at last been brought to the hospital to have it removed. It bad just come from the operating room. There it stood, strapped at the middle, head and tail, to prevent it, as it recovered entirely from the anaesthetic that had been administered, from displacing the packing by scraping it with its under lip. Nearly every horse that comes from under an operation is put in the “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, 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 cases of this kind a month and all of them are performed successfully. Now coipe this way to the operating room ; we are just about to perform an operation on a large dray horse.”

He' led the way through an aißle bordered 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 gastritis just as human beings have them.

Giving a pill to a horse is not a simple performance. The surgeon stopped at one of the stalls on the way to the operating room, and, taking what looked like a baby projectile from his pocket, went into the stall. Grasping the under lip of the horse, he forced the mouth open and then inserted bis hand with the pill in it. He his arm almost shoulder deep down the horse’s throat and brought the hand back empty ; the pill had been swallowed by thq> horse. Down the aisle he went, and then into a room where a fyorse was standing sideways near a large upright board festooned with straps and canvas belts. This was the operating room and this was the table., It is an immense affair, big enough to hold 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 it. First the head was strapped high, secured by a canvas bag fitting under the throat. Then the straps were fastened to a large canvas belly band and the tail was made secure. Then a rope was pulled and over the table turned. What a kicking and scrambling of the four legs of the horse when he suddenly found himself being lifted from the floor. HAMMERING OUT TEETH WITH A PUNCH.

However,' as soon as the table became horizontal, save for a few occasional kicks,, the horse lay still on his side. Then the legs were secured. On a shelf above the operating table are several casks filled with antiseptics. These are brought down to the table by long hose, and when an operation is being performed, especially one on the foot, a spray of the antiseptic is constantly played on the injured part. This horse was about to undergo an operation for a very common trouble. A sensitive nerve was to be removed from the leg. This meant that the horse had a case of neuritis, >: and as long as this nerve remained untreated the horse would be lame. A few years ago this meant that a horse was lame nothing would cure it and.it went limping for alltime. e ‘ To-day the nerve is removed, and at the end of its stay at the hospital the horse goes home a better beast all round, better in stomach and legs, and good for many a long year’s work.

The doctors came In, tested the straps,• then washed their hands in; antiseptics, and one shaved'the .hair from:<the portion ;of the the> incision v was to, be made. • As •' soon ’as thte. was done cocaine :.was injected in three places, A cut was made, the lancets were plied with skill, and before fifteen minutes had expired the little white, worm-like mischief-maker* the nerve, wan lying. |

on the table. The wound was thoroughly washed, filled with iodoform gauze, and then fatened with fine wire. When chloroform is administered, anywhere from three to six ounces are necessary. To pull a young horse's tooth is no small piece of work. A veterinarian can do it easily in an old horse, but in a young animal the tooth breaks. To extract it the horse is placed on the table, chloroformed, then a place in the head just above the tooth that is to be pulled out, is opened, sometimes almost in the skull, and a punch is inserted. This means that the tooth is absolutely hammered out from behind. —“ Popular Science Siftings.”