166 DISTEMPER 



an'mal became impoverished and weakened through foul air, impure food 

 or water, or defective elimination, the blood became impure or loaded 

 with decomposed matter; and an appropriate pabulum was created in 

 which the germs lived, multiplied and set up their specific morbid action 

 to the detr.ment and possible destruction of the economy. The natural 

 ccnclus en is that while the specific germ is necessary for the production 

 of a specific disease, it is equally essential that the system be in such a 

 condition as to afford a proper pabulum for the reproduction, which is 

 necessary for its specific action, otherwise it would be overcome by the 

 economy and eliminated from the system; just as grains of wheat reproduce 

 ihemseives and are potent under proper conditions of earth, air, water and 

 heat, or are inert and disintegrate when thier surroundings are unsuitable. 

 "Germs do not at all times attack the same organs and membranes. 

 But the discharge from the particular set affected contains the virus in its 

 most concentrated form. This accounts for the dread breeders have formed, 

 through experience, of the nasal discharges of an affected animal, and for 

 the v'gorous objection frequently raised at a dog show by some veteran 

 owner who has observed a careless attendant allowing the dogs to drink 

 from a bucket he is carrying from stall to stall instead of filling the dogs' 

 pans. * 



"Distemper is not transmissible to man, but is to cats, wolves, foxes, 

 jackals, hyenas and monkeys; and as is the case in many highly conta- 

 gious diseases, one attack successfully overcome with but few exceptions 

 renders immunity from a second attack of the malady. One of the theo- 

 ries advanced as an explanation of this fact is that in contagious diseases 

 the specific poison combines with some chemical constituent of the sys- 

 tem which is essent'al to the production of the disease, and that after 

 tlrs constituent has been destroyed — as it will be through combining with 

 the germ- — and the animal has recovered It is impossible for the germ to 

 produce system'c disturbances again because the constituent necessary for 

 its combination is absent from the system. 



"There are innumerable channels through which a dog may be infected 

 with distemper. The germ is of remarkable vitality, and is conveyed 

 through the air or on a person's clothes, or a dog which has already had 

 the disease can convey the germ in its coat from a sick dog to a well one. 

 The use of kennels, feeding dishes, or shipping crates that have been 

 previously used by an affected animal are common modes of inoculation. 

 Dog shows are a fertile source of the spread of the disease, and no matter 

 how carefully the portable benching has been cleaned and disinfected it is 

 always more or less a conveyance for the germs that produce the disease. 

 "The popular fallacy of a meat diet being productive of distemper 

 is entirely at variance with all scientific knowledge, as all carnivorous 

 animals are markedly free from specific germ diseases. 



"The morbid poison of distemper attacks dogs in different ways,' but 

 breeders and pract ; ticners as a rule recognize as typical only those cases 

 in wh'ch the virus affects the mucous membranes of the eyes and nasal 

 passage and produces a catarrhal discharge. In some cases the intestinal 

 tract is the particu'ar field upon which the virus exerts itself; or the 

 liver mav be affected, or the bronchial tubes." But the action of the virus 

 that i? least understood, and the symptoms most commonly ascribed to 

 some other cause, is when it is concentrated upon the brain and ner- 

 vous system, the animal dying from collapse without any premonitory 

 s mptoms or developing epileptic spasms and convulsions, and other 

 symptoms that the breeder ascribes to worms; and the puppy is dosed 

 accord ngly. I have lnd such cases in my own experience as a breeder, 

 a d mv attention has been frequently called to this condition of things 

 bv others whose puppies have died in from a few hours to a week with 

 all th? svmptoms of worm-fits, careful dissection, however, failing to reveal 

 th presence of th<*se pests or any other exciting cause; and distemper, 

 from an absence of all catarrhal and febril symptoms, would be the last 

 thing thought of. 



"An attack of distemper of the ordinary catarrhal form is usually pre- 



