General Principles of Animal Selection, Preoperative Care, Preanesthesia, Chemical Restraint and Analgesia

Abstract

It seems obvious that physiological results cannot be obtained from pathological specimens. Despite this universally accepted axiom, the number of so called physiological experiments conducted on animals incubating disease or obviously ill can be appalling. The importance of this point cannot be overemphasized. Animals used for physiological experiments must be held long enough in approved facilities to insure that they are not incubating infectious diseases. They should be vaccinated against the diseases likely to cause a problem in that species and they should be verified free of internal and external parasites prior to use. These precautions are expensive but miniscule compared to the overall cost of conducting experiments where the results are suspect because of the condition of the subject.