134 THE DISTEMPER. 



Our continental neig-hbours appear to have transmitted it to 

 England, where also it seems first to have appeared in the 

 form of an epidemic, but now exists as a permanent disease, 

 to which every individual of the canine race has a strong 

 constitutional liability. That we imported it, is evident from 

 the circumstance that the earliest notices we have of it in 

 sporting" works* are subsequent to its announcement in the 



«'cette maladie, jereponds qu'apr^s en avoir fait cent pour un, je me 

 " suis convain9u qu'il n'y est aucun d'efficace, quand elle gagne un cer- 

 " tain degre."— P. 497, 500, 8vo, Rouen, 1760. 



In opposition to this late appearance of the distemper, it has been 

 conjectured that it was not unknown to the antients, and was by them 

 called the Angina, being one of three diseases to which dogs, according 

 to them, were liable ; Madness and Podagra forming the other two. 

 \ But an attentive examinati<m of the symptoms, as detailed by Aristotle, 



JElian, and such other antient authors as have left us their observations 

 on the canine race, will clearly show that the distemper, as it is known 

 among us, was unknown to them. Their angina appears to have been 

 an accidental epidemic, which confined its attacks almost wholly to the 

 throat, producing faucial imposthumes, like strangles in horses, or quinsy 

 in the human j but the grand characteristic, of primary and continued 

 discharge from the nasal mucous membranes, is wholly unnoticed. — 

 See jElian de Nat. Animal, lib. iv, c. 40 ; Aristotle Hist. Animal, lib. viii, 

 c. 22, &c. &c. 



* Of late years, the prevalence of this complaint has engaged the 

 attention of many distinguished characters. In every treatise of sport- 

 ing, in some agricultural works, and in one or two veterinary publica- 

 tions, it has been treated of. A few eminent medical men have also 

 noticed it; among whom Drs. Jenner and Darwin stand foremost. The 

 former ever to be revered character, whose philanthropy and general 

 worth have reared him an imperishable monument, has drawn a portrait 

 of the disease in the first volume of the Medical and Chirurgical Tracts, 

 which is sufficiently perspicuous and characteristic for the general pur- 

 poses of description, but infinitely too contracted to make it a practical 

 reference in this eternally varying malady. Dr. Jenner was induced 

 to turn his attention to the subject from an impression on his mind, that 

 vaccination would prove a preventive to distemper as well as to human 

 small-pox. Unfortunately both for the human and the brute, he was 

 partially mistaken in the one, and there is too much reason to fear 

 wholly so in the other. Vaccination, as far as my experience goes, 

 neither exempts the canine race from the attack of distemper, nor doe* 



