38     THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF VETERINARY SCIENCE AND ANIMAL HUSBANDRY [ I, I

      II. The Patient as a Factor. The important thing in connection with the
patient is the matter of contraindications (1) for anthelmintic treatment, (2) for
certain drugs, or (3) for full doses. These may be briefly stated as follows :—

      (1) Contraindications for treatment of any sort, as a rule, include extreme
weakness, emaciation, and starvation, or febrile conditions, or marked toxic condi-
tions, or extreme youth or age, or pregnancy. Whether these general contraindica-
tions hold in a given case is a matter for the practitioner to decide in
accordance with his knowledge and judgment. Weak, emaciated, and starved
patients will usually benefit by a sound feeding régime to put them in better
condition to tolerate treatment, but in cases where weakness and emaciation
obviously follow from an insupportable worm burden, good judgment may indicate
the administration of diminished doses of an anthelmintic suited to the weakened
condition of the patient, with the idea of gradually diminishing the worm
burden and enabling the patient to tolerate in time a full therapeutic dose of an
anthelmintic.

      Febrile conditions, usually associated with bacterial infections, should be
treated first and the worms removed after the patient has recovered from the febrile
conditions, as a rule ; but the practitioner will have reason to believe, in some
cases, that relief from the febrile condition can be more certainly secured by the
preliminary removal of part or all of the worm burden. It is impossible to formulate
precise rules on this subject, as every case will be an individual case to be decided
by the practitioner.

      Marked toxic conditions constitute a contraindication for the additional insult
of the more or less poisonous drugs constituting our anthelmintics, as the com-
bined burden may be insupportable. However, there will be times when the
practitioner who is well informed as to drug action will elect to use. a drug which
will impose an injury on an organ not especially affected by the toxic conditions
already present, and thus take the worm burden out of the general picture and give
the patient this advantage in throwing off the existing toxic condition.

      In general, very young or very old animals do not tolerate antheimintics very
well. Very young animals should be surrounded with conditions tending to prevent
further infestation and allowed to attain more age resistance before treatment, and
very old animals should be regarded as bad risks and allowed to live out their lives
with their worms, or be humanely destroyed.

      Pregnancy is a general contraindication for anthelmintic treatment, although
certain drugs appear to be safe for use in this condition. However, one should try
to clear out worm infestations from females before they are bred, not only to avoid
any necessity for treatment during pregnancy, but to put the animals in better