XXXVL— DIABETES MELLITUS IN THE DOG. 



Among dogs brought for advice or left in hospital during the past 

 few months you have seen several diabetic patients ; one affected with 

 diabetes mellitus, the others with simple polyuria or diabetes insipidus. 

 While the second form is usually benign, the other — diabetes mellitus — 

 is a grave affection, which almost always proves rapidly fatal. Up to 

 the present time it has been but little studied in animals. I have 

 chosen it as the subject of to-day's lecture. 



Mentioned by Leblanc in theCliniqite Vctcvinaire for iS6i, and seen 

 in most of the domestic animals, including both ruminants and carni- 

 vorae, diabetes mellitus is unquestionably a rare disease, though the 

 chief reason that veterinary publications contain so few recorded cases 

 is less connected with the rarity of the disease than with the fact that 

 examination of the urine is habitually neglected, and hence the 

 disease escapes observation. During the past few years the recorded 

 cases of diabetes mellitus in the dog have increased. Frohner at the 

 Veterinary School of Berlin, and Schindelka at that of Vienna, have 

 noticed several. Eber, who was specially entrusted with the clinique 

 for small animals at the Berlin School, has made researches on the fre- 

 quence of diabetes mellitus in the dog. Within two years about 

 20,000 patients were brought for examination or treated in the hospital, 

 among which Eber noted twelve grave cases marked by well-dehned clini- 

 cal symptoms, that is about one diabetic patient among 2000 animals. 

 The disease is, however, certainly more common than these statistics 

 would seem to indicate ; trifling and recent or obscure attacks of 

 diabetes, unaccompanied by very evident disturbance, either fail to 

 attract attention or remain unrecognised. 



I will shortly describe our last case of this kind. 

 During the first week of May a person living in the Avenue Kleber, 

 at Paris, brought a five-year-old bitch which had been ill for three 

 months. Although she regularly ate her food with good appetite this 

 bitch was distinctly thin. She drank often and copiously, sometimes 

 vomited after having lapped a large quantity of water ; and finally she 



