Some years ago in the UK, I observed a new notice installed on the door to the operating theatre which read ‘Dogs operate here’. I met the administrator who, though not a medical doctor or surgeon, called himself ‘director of operations', and expressed my surprise that dogs had apparently become surgeons to overcome the shortage of doctors in the NHS.
His comment was unrepeatable, but, nevertheless, this notice was partly true because one specialist used a dog in certain medical treatments. This specialist showed how his dog licked patients’ leg ulcers (hitherto unresponsive to conventional treatment), which healed completely in three months. This was due to the dog’s saliva containing antibiotics which eliminated the infection associated with the ulceration.
The history of dogs licking human sores started in ancient Greece, where this technique was successfully used at the shrine of Aesclepius, the god of medicine and healing, in 400BC. More recently this technique was used in the Scottish highlands in the 1800s, subsequently reported in the Lancet medical journal.
The specialist also trained his dog, a blood hound named Gilbert, to sniff an apparently normal-looking urine sample from a patient with suspected urinary tract cancer – where ‘dip stick’ testing of the urine was negative for blood. Several bowls of urine samples from other patients as controls were placed on the floor with the suspect bowl among them. Gilbert barked excitedly when he reached this bowl because his acute sense of smell detected a distinctive odour emanating from it. A subsequent special test revealed a very small cancer in a kidney.
Many of the geriatric ward patients sat in armchairs grouped around a blaring TV. Some were sleepy and others were bored. However, the atmosphere altered dramatically when Gilbert appeared. Everybody became wide awake and started to stroke Gilbert as he walked among them. One patient who, I thought, was incapable of walking, started leading him to the garden outside. The patients were much more interested in knowing the date of the next ward round by the dog rather than by the specialist.
The place of the well-trained dog in patient care should be considered
A recently published book, The Underdogs: Children, Dogs and the Power of Unconditional Love, by Melissa Fay Greene, describes certain children and adults who were affected by severe diseases that rendered them incapable of coping emotionally (such as autism, anxiety, depression or Alzheimer’s disease) or physically, (such as myasthenia gravis or stroke).
Ultimately, these diseases were cured by the acquisition of specially trained dogs that, for example, could open the refrigerator to obtain food, activate the washing machine and warn (by whining and barking) their diabetic ‘patient’ of a dangerously low blood sugar level. Recent research has revealed that a trained dog can smell a chemical called isoprene produced by the patient with low blood sugar.
Other dogs were able to warn the patient of an imminent epileptic fit. We now know that epilepsy produces a massive build-up of electrical charges in the brain which are suddenly released, like lightning, producing electrical currents to all the muscles of the body, causing spasms.
These currents produce an electromagnetic field which transfers itself into the dog's brain by induction like a radio wave into a radio receiver. More recently dogs have been trained to give limited supportive treatment to these patients.
Furthermore, these dogs’ unconditional love and caring permitted the above groups of patients, especially where verbal communication was limited, to use the alternative communication of touch by stroking the dog. This lifted the depression and anxiety due to release of the ‘happy’ hormones – serotonin and dopamine – which was often associated with beneficial normalisation of blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides which hitherto had been elevated. Also the dogs, by observing their patients’ facial expression and body language were able to empathise with them.
In this age of ever-increasing costs of healthcare, the place of the well-trained dog in patient care should be considered and expanded to match the well-established facility of dogs for the blind. Such a venture could reduce the need for expensive hospitalisation.
Charles Corney is a medical practitioner and researcher.