In case this shows that some searching can often answer any question,
here is something that a dear friend who wants to stay out of this
forwarded to me:

http://ferrethealth.org/archive/SG7897

"A word about the "ultimate sacrifice" - ten years ago, I had the
opportunity to work on ECE - before we know what it was - I had the
unwelcome opportunity to infect and euthanize a dozen aniimals as part
of the investigation. To this day, I keep the photo of one of these
animals on the wall of my office so that I never forget the sacrifice
that these dozen animals have made."

So, now all or Edward's questions should be answered, including the one
whether purposeful infection to be sure of cause has occurred. And,
gee, Edward didn't have to look up any of those even though he is
obviously pretty danged good at looking things up (and anyone can be
good at it with just practice and search tool experimentation online
because doing those things won't break anything and is a grand arm
chair adventure with interesting points as well as search techniques
learned over time), so Edward can look up all of his next ECE questions
because now he's got the full kit for further investigation.

Many, many thanks to my friend who forwarded that!

Folks, I've got extreme myopia, presbyopia, astigmatism, bilateral
glaucoma (meds and one round of surgery so far), a tiny macular hole
in one eye, and a lot of debris from 3 vitreous tears and one complete
vitreous separation. Luckily, I can use computer tricks to see things
better and to hear some things. The points of saying this are:
1. There are limits to how much time I can spend looking things up for
people these days because my eyes tire.
2. Despite that I still CAN look things up on-line because before a
person needs to go to the next level, the one where librarians can use
all sorts of special resources, there really is a LOT that people can
find for themselves. It is just a matter of using what is out there,
knowing a bit about the forms possible by trying each, and using words
that narrow searches.

Examples: if you search for
ferret +adrenal
or
ferret and adrenal
you are going to get a LOT of returns

but let's say that you want to know about using Propecia for that
Okay, just narrow the search with
ferret +adrenal +Propecia
or the form with "and" depending on the search engine and then even
just using Google will get you a lot of info

or if you don't know the med try
ferret +adrenal +prostate
and one of the really cool first things that comes up even just using
Google is
<http://www.cliniciansbrief.com/?p=supplements&cat=Articles&pnum=6&newsid=130>
as well as others.

Another trick you can use is to put a term into quote marks to get that
exact term.

For instance,
"ferret adrenal"
put into http://www.google.com
brings up a lot of great things including
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/adrenal.htm
among the early things

Sometimes using ' instead of " can be useful. Try that, too.

AND or + just means that what is found should contain both words
(though that doesn't always happen at the large search engines) OR just
means the results can have either word or term NOT or - just means that
the results should not contain the word after the minus sign or after
the word NOT.

Some search engines like the one used for the FML Archives let you
decide if you want to also narrow down by date range. A person can use
one box in such search engines, or use any combination.

If you have Mac and want to find things more easily (important for my
eyes) many places allow you to press the clover key (the one that looks
a bit like a four leaf clover with teensy leaves) at the same time that
you press the "f" key and then at the upper right of your screen you
will see a box were you can enter a word, find out how often that work
appears and highlight it. Easy. There is probably some similar function
in the Windows World but if there isn't then people should press for
having one.

See how easy it is? You can even narrow searches by going to places
that concentrate of specific needs. Here are some examples of three
that I have bookmarked in my bookmarks bar:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez

Oh, and at Google and some other search engines you can choose if you
want to search news, images, "scholar" (journal articles and texts),
and other specific categories!

Yes, there are tricks that a person with bad eyesight develops to use
in everyday life and in searches, but any of those tricks can also be
used by people with good eyes, and learning to search is to a very
large extent merely a willingness to practice and to surf the internet
a bit.

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html

[Posted in FML 6208]