fibre of her frame. The sounds may grate upon the ear, and
the spectacle may be terrible to look upon--for in dogs I have seen misery
so powerfully exemplified, that I do no wrong to any man, when I suppose
the picture would be piteous to his humanity--but it is not charity which
would put a termination to the pangs. Place the bitch, then, in a warm
bath, and the appearances almost instantaneously are changed. The animal
rejoices in the ease which a cessation of torture produces. No doubt she,
for the time, luxuriates, and her face expresses the sense of happiness
she then enjoys. But her fate is with the pleasure sealed; and she obtains
a momentary ease to meet with a lingering, or perhaps a frightful death,
for I have known inflammation of the womb to follow the use of the warm
bath. The use of the warm bath is, during labor, at best a mistake
generated by ignorance; and unfortunately it is one of those errors which
can rarely be afterwards redeemed; for the weakness it induces is so
great, that the tonicity required in parturition is destroyed; and this no
medicine can restore.

Another common failing in veterinary practitioners is, a belief that the
ergot of rye, or secale cornutum, acts upon the dog as a direct uterine
excitant, and thus promotes the parturitive function. In this belief,
however, they are not single. Many writers speak with confidence of its
operation upon the animal. The accounts are positive; and I would not
lightly place my unsupported testimony to the fact against a host of
authors who can be suspected of no motive to misstate. The gentlemen
alluded to are authorities of such weight that a strong conviction of the
truth is required to make me advance, against such and so many witnesses,
my single word. The reader must, however, take both for what they are
worth; and remember the truth is not the less true because there may be
but one humble individual ranged upon its side. It is not my intention to
say the authors who speak decidedly concerning the action of the ergot on
the bitch had no grounds for the statements they advance. I should not be
justified in making so gross an assertion; on the contrary, I believe
sincerely they saw all which they narrate; but, nevertheless, I am
prepared to maintain that secale cornutum is not an excitant to the uterus
of the dog in that sense which would warrant the veterinary practitioner
in regarding it as a lawful agent. To be so esteemed by such persons, it