Part 5

For injection into synovial bursae when the tincture of iodine is contra-indicated.

To anoint arms and hands in the handling of obstetrical cases.

For direct application to mucous membranes.

Ringworm.

As a moist dressing for wounds of long standing.

Garget.

Dry, scaly affections of hoofs and of the legs of poultry.

Open joint.

Injection for puncture wounds.

All chronic surface conditions in which the use of iodine ointments would not be practicable.

AQUEOUS PREPARATIONS OF IODINE.

Although, from a chemical standpoint, the mixture of tincture of iodine with water would be considered wrong, I have found that the addition of one dram of tincture of iodine to a quart of sterile water makes a most satisfactory combination for use in veterinary practice for a number of diseased conditions.

In mal-odorous catarrhal diseases, a mixture such as this makes a fine wash.

In the treatment of foul-smelling ulcers and fistulous tracts, it should be used with an irrigator after the parts have been cleaned up and just before the usual dressing is applied.

To stimulate the process of healing in wounds and lacerations such as barbed-wire cuts and tears.

As a moist dressing applied on gauze in old wounds.

As a soaking solution for foul-smelling hoof troubles.

As a wash for the veterinarian’s hands and arms, to prevent infection and remove odors, after the handling of after-births, dead fetuses, and other conditions of a similar nature.

When this preparation is used at all, it should be applied liberally; it is cheap and the cost need never be considered. It is additionally valuable, in a veterinary practice, because it can be made up extemporaneously anywhere that water can be obtained, as all veterinarians carry, in their medicine case, a supply of tincture of iodine.

The strength may be increased if desired; however, I have found the proportions, as given above, the most satisfactory.

In my experience, I have found that I can do everything that it is possible to do with iodine preparations by using the medicaments already indicated.

However, I would draw the practitioner’s attention to that preparation of iodine known as Lugol’s solution, because there is one condition that the veterinary practitioner comes into contact with quite frequently in which this iodine preparation has been found to give some very good results.

Lugol’s solution of iodine has been found to act, in a very favorable manner, in certain cases of periodic ophthalmia in horses. It is injected hypodermically in the region of the fatty pad just over the affected eye. While this is not truly a topical application, the effect that is exerted is the same as that resulting from repeated inunctions of other active iodine preparations. The use of Lugol’s solution, in this manner, is only to be preferred because it accomplishes the desired end more rapidly, and with less expense of time, than would be required by topical applications, frequently repeated. I do not doubt that just as good and lasting results could be obtained, in this condition, from daily inunction of the indicated area with an oily iodine preparation.

It remains to be said that, in this condition, internal medication is usually indicated and the iodine, in any form, applied regionally, merely acts adjunctively in any case. I have made mention of this use of iodine preparations because some practitioners treat periodic ophthalmia in this manner and have claimed good results repeatedly.

Before I proceed to the discussion of the special application of iodine, in a number of pathological conditions in animals, I would urge the veterinarian to give more thought to the forms and preparations of iodine of which he makes use. It is a rather common occurrence that a practitioner will allow agents of well-known therapeutic efficiency to be displaced, by others of doubtful activity, on account of a small difference in the cost of the same. This is especially true in the case of preparations in which the active ingredient, and, therefore, the ingredient to be depended upon for results, is iodine. Iodine, to begin with, as an elemental article, is costly. The veterinarian may, therefore, be sure that, whenever an iodine preparation, of a certain stated strength, is offered for sale at a price considerably lower than that of recognized preparations of a similar character, the lower price is possible only because of the fact that the iodine content is not as represented.

In choosing preparations of iodine, for use in his practice, the veterinarian can easily deprive himself of much of the success that goes with correct iodine therapy, if he allows his choice of preparations to be influenced, to any great extent, by the cost of the article.

This is the chief reason, and there is probably no other, why some veterinarians fail to get satisfactory results from topical iodine applications. They permit their better judgment, in the selection of the preparations, to be influenced too markedly by price; the preparation that they select fails to give the expected results because it is an inferior preparation, either in the strength or the quality of the iodine it is said to carry. Commonly, both strength and quality are inferior.

Well made and honestly prepared iodine preparations are cheaper than almost anything that the veterinarian uses, in a pharmaceutical way; a little of a good iodine preparation “goes a long way”; and it accomplishes what it does solely through the exertion of its own energy. Almost never, it might be said, are other agents expected to assist it in its action. For this reason, it is very essential that the preparation be of correct and ample strength, that it contain the iodine in a form readily available by the tissues, and that the vehicle carrying the iodine have no detrimental action of its own.