THE DANGER FROM DOGS 201 



it rapidly became acute and was fatal to the dogs in 

 three to five months. When older dogs were used, 

 the disease ran a chronic course, and the animals 

 lived up to seventeen or eighteen months. The 

 latter course was in marked contrast to the acute 

 form, as the animals appeared to be well, apart from 

 loss of weight, and behaved normally. The acute 

 cases were accompanied by an irregular fever, pro- 

 gressive wasting occurred, and diarrhoea was often 

 present. Disturbances of the nervous system often 

 caused a partial paralysis of the hind-quarters, coma 

 set in, and death followed. The parasites, as in the 

 Indian Kala-azar, were mainly in the internal organs 

 and were rare in the peripheral blood except at times 

 of fever. The offspring of infected bitches were 

 not infected; at least, hereditary infection was not 

 demonstrated. 



In Tunis, a few dogs 9 out of 519 animals were 

 found to be spontaneously infected, and in Algiers, 

 though the rate was 9 out of 125, it could not be 

 considered great. But in Europe, different observers 

 found an enormous increase in the numbers of 

 naturally infected dogs. For instance, Basile, work- 

 ing at Bordonaro, found that 27 dogs out of 33 

 examined contained the parasites, while at Rome 

 16 out of 60 were in the same condition. Other 

 observers have found similar results in Portugal, 

 Athens, and Malta. 



Basile then conducted a number of experiments 

 with dogs and fleas, whereby he considered that he 

 had shown that the dog flea, Ctenocephalus canis, was 

 the carrier of the disease from dog to dog, from dog 



