Animal Surgery

ANIMAL SURGERY.

Wild Beasts Are Wise in Medicine and Easily Heal Themselves.

Most people have seen a sick cat eat grass or an uneasy dog seek out some weed and devour it greedily to make his complaining stomach feel better. Some few may have read John Wesley's directions on the art of keeping well--which have not, however, found their way into his book of discipline for the soul--and have noticed with surprised interest his claim that many medicines in use among the common people and the physicians of his time were discovered by watching the animals that sought out these things to heal their diseases. "If they heal animals, they will also heal men," is his invincible argument. Others may have dipped deep into Indian history and folklore and learned that many of the herbs used by the American tribes, and especially the cures for rheumatism, dysentery, fever and snake bites, were learned direct from the animals by noting the rheumatic old bear grub for fern roots or bathe in the hot mud of a sulphur spring and by watching with eager eyes what plants the wild creatures at when bitten by rattlers or wasted by the fever.

The most elemental kind of surgery is that which amputates a leg when it is broken--not always or often, but only when the wound festers from decay or fly bite and so endangers the whole body. Probably the best illustration of this is found in the coon, who has a score of traits that place him very high among intelligent animals. When a coon's foot is shattered by a bullet he will cut it off promptly and wash the stump in running water, partly to reduce the inflammation and partly, no doubt, to make it perfectly clean. As it heals he uses his tongue on the wound freely, as a dog does, to cleanse it perhaps and by the soft massage of his tongue to reduce the swelling and allay the pain.--Outlook.