DISEASES OF CATS. 147 



DISEASES OF CATS. 



Cats, like many other animals, both wild and domestic, are 

 subject to diseases, several being fatal, others yielding to 

 known curatives ; many are of a very exhaustive character, 

 some are epidemic, others are undoubtedly contagious — 

 the two worst of these are what is known as the distemper 

 and the mange. Through the kindness of friends I am 

 enabled to give recipes for medicines considered as useful, 

 or, at any rate, tending to abate the severity of the attack 

 in the one, and utterly eradicate the other. Care should 

 always be taken on the first symptoms of illness to remove 

 the animal at once from contact with others. My kind 

 friend, Dr. George Fleming, C.B., principal veterinary sur- 

 geon of the army, has courteously sent me a copy of a 

 remedy for cat distemper from his very excellent work, 

 '' Animal Plagues : their History, Nature, and Prevention," 

 which I give in full. 



CATARRHAL FEVERS. 



" Cats are, like some other of the domesticated animals, 

 liable to be attacked by two kinds of Catarrhal Fever, one 

 of which is undoubtedly very infectious — like distemper in 

 dogs — and the other may be looked upon as the result of a 

 simple cold, and therefore not transmissible. The first 

 is, of course, the most severe and fatal, and often prevails 

 most extensively, afi'ecting cats generally over wide areas, 

 sometimes entire continents being invaded by it. From 

 A.D. 1414 up to 1832 no fewer than nineteen widespread out- 

 breaks of this kind have been recorded. The most notable 

 of these was in 1796, when the cats in England and 



L 2 



