This is one of the great drawbacks of trying to doctor wild animals. A great many creatures cuddle their illnesses to themselves, as it were, and show no signs of anything being wrong until it is too late—or almost too late—to do anything effective. I have seen a small bird eat heavily just after dawn, sing lustily throughout the morning, and at three o’clock in the afternoon be dead, without having given the slightest sign that anything was amiss. Some animals, even when suffering from the most frightful internal complaints, look perfectly healthy, eat well, and display high spirits that delude you into believing they are flourishing. Then, one morning, one of them looks off colour for the first time, and before you can do anything sensible, it is dead. And, of course even when a creature is showing obvious symptoms of illness, you have to make up your mind as to the cause. A glance at any veterinary dictionary will show a choice of several hundred diseases, each of which has to be treated in a different manner. It is all extremely frustrating.
Generally, you have to experiment to find a cure. Sometimes these experiments pay off in a spectacular way. Take the case of the creeping paralysis, a terrible complaint that attacks principally the New World monkeys. At one time there was no remedy for this, and the disease was a scourge that could wipe out an entire monkey collection. The first symptoms are very slight: the animal appears to have a certain stiffness in its hips. Within a few days, however, the creature shows a marked disinclination to climb about, and sits in one spot. At this stage both hind limbs have become paralysed, but still retain a certain feeling. Gradually the paralysis spreads until the whole of the body is affected. At one time, when the disease reached this stage, the only thing to do was to destroy the animal.
We have had several cases of this paralysis, and lost some beautiful and valuable monkeys as a result. I had tried everything I could think of to effect a cure. We massaged them, we changed their diet, we gave them vitamin injections, but all to no purpose. It worried me that I could not find a cure for this unpleasant disease, since watching a monkey slowly becoming more paralysed each day is not a pretty sight. I happened to mention this to a veterinary surgeon friend, and said that I was convinced the cause of the disease was dietary, but that I had tried everything I could think of without result. After giving the matter some thought, my friend suggested that the monkeys might be suffering from a phosphorus deficiency in their diet, or rather that, although, the phosphorus was present, their bodies were unable, for some reason, to assimilate it. Injections of D3 were the answer to this, if it was the trouble. So the next monkey that displayed the first signs of the paralysis was hauled unceremoniously out of its cage (protesting loudly at the indignity) and given an injection of D3 .
I watched the monkey carefully for a week, and, to my delight, it showed distinct evidence of improvement. At the end of the week it was given another injection, and within a fortnight it was completely cured. I then turned my attention to a beautiful red West African patas monkey, who had had the paralysis for some considerable time. This poor creature had become completely immobile, so that we had to lift up her head when she fed. I decided that if D3 worked with her it would prove beyond all doubt that this was the cure. I doubled the normal dose and injected the patas; three days later I gave her another massive dose. Within a week she could lift her head to eat, and within a month was completely cured. This was a really spectacular cure, and convinced me that D3 was the answer to the paralysis. When a monkey now starts to shuffle, we no longer have that sinking feeling, knowing that it is the first step towards death; we simply inject them, and within a short time they are fit and well again.
Another injection that we use a lot with conspicuous success is vitamin B12 . This acts as a general pick-me-up and, more valuable still, as a stimulant to the appetite. If any animal looks a bit off colour, or starts to lack interest in its food, a shot of B12 soon pulls it round. I had used this product only on mammals and birds, never on reptiles. Reptiles are so differently constructed from birds and mammals that one has to be a bit circumspect in the remedies one employs for them, as what may suit a squirrel or a monkey might well kill a snake or a tortoise. However, there was in the reptile house a young boa constrictor which we had obtained from a dealer some six months previously. From the day it arrived it had shown remarkable tameness, but what worried me was that it steadfastly declined to eat. So, once a week, we had to haul the boa out of its cage, force open its mouth, and push dead rats or mice down its throat, a process which he did not care for but which he accepted with his usual meekness.
Force-feeding a snake like this is always a risky business, for, however carefully you do it, there is always the chance that you might damage the delicate membranes in the mouth, and thus set up an infection which would quickly turn to mouth canker, a disease to which snakes are very prone, and which is difficult to cure. So, with a certain amount of trepidation, I decided to give the boa a shot of B12 and see what happened. I injected halfway down his body, in the thick, muscular layer that covers the backbone. He did not appear even to notice it, lying quietly coiled round my hand. I put him back into his cage and left him. Later on that day he did not seem to be any the worse for his experience, and I suggested to Shep that he put some food in the cage that night. Shep placed two rats inside, and in the morning reported to me delightedly that the boa not only had eaten the rats but had actually struck at his hand when he had opened the cage. From that moment on, the boa never looked back. As it had obviously done only good to the snake, I experimented with B12 on other reptiles. Lizards and tortoises I found benefited greatly from periodic shots, especially in the colder weather, and on several occasions the reptiles concerned would certainly have died but for the injections.
Wild animals, of course, make the worst possible patients in the world. Any nurse who thinks her lot is a hard one, handling human beings, should try her hand at a bit of wild-animal nursing. They are rarely grateful for your ministrations, but you do not expect that. What you do hope for (and never, or hardly ever, receive) is a little cooperation in the matter of taking medicines, keeping on bandages, and so forth. After the first few hundred bitter experiences you reconcile yourself to the fact that every administration of a medicine is a sort of all-in wrestling match, in which you are likely to apply more of the healing balm to your own external anatomy than to the interior of your patient. You soon give up all hope of keeping a wound covered, for nothing short of encasing your patient entirely in plaster of Paris is going to prevent it from removing the dressings within thirty seconds of their application. Monkeys are, of course, some of the worst patients. To begin with, they have, as it were, four hands with which to fight you off, or remove bandages. They are very intelligent and high-strung, on the whole, and look upon any medical treatment as a form of refined torture, even when you know it is completely painless. Being high-strung means that they are apt to behave rather like hypochondriacs, and quite simple and curable disease may kill them because they just work themselves into a state of acute melancholy and fade away. You have to develop a gay, hearty bedside manner when dealing with a mournful monkey which thinks he is no longer for this world.