A questionnaire addressed to dog-owners would probably show that the commonest of all canine ailments is "scratching"; which may include biting and licking, and often induces "bare patches" or sore and red skin.
Three-quarters of the veterinary inquiries include description of these symptoms.
The man who tells you of a positive specific for all such troubles displays more optimism than knowledge, and ignores the fact that they may arise from one of a dozen different causes, and so cannot all be cured by a single remedy.
But the comforting fact is that seven-tenths of this bothersome "scratching" is due to no disease at all, but simply to a little neglect on the two-legged side—our own want of thought, For this there really is a specific, worth at least a guinea a box, though it costs precisely nothing at all.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.