THE DISTEMPER. 143 



I could distinguish some difference between the morbid ap- 

 pearances that the thoracic and abdominal viscera have pre- 

 sented from those apparent when the subjects have died 

 from peripneumony, or hepatitis, unconnected with distem- 

 per. The parts subjected to the specific inflammation were 

 more than usually pale, flaccid, and relaxed, and exhibited 

 less vascularity than is usually apparent when the inflamma- 

 tion has been pure and unspecific. 



After the distempered attack has been made on the head 

 or bronchial passages, or both, it is not uncommon for the 

 further violence of the affection to appear directed to the 

 alimentary canal principally, in which cases a diarrhoea or 

 purging- commences, that often proves so obstinate as to 

 frustrate every attempt to stop it ; and it either proceeds to 

 destroy the animal by emaciation (without, perhaps, any 

 great apparent severity in the other symptoms), or, by its 

 debilitating nature, it paves the way for an attack of the 

 convulsions. Now and then, however, the diarrhoea pre- 

 cedes the other symptoms, but this is less common : it some- 

 times, also, precedes a declining appetite, but, in every 

 instance, a total disinclination to food ensues when the loose- 

 ness has extended beyond two or three days *. 



* It would not be uninteresting to inquire how far the diarrhoea, so 

 prevalent in distemper, may be considered as a primary morbid attack 

 on the bowels themselves ; or how far it is purely symptomatic, and de- 

 pendent on a diseased state of other parts. We know that a relaxation 

 of bowels is common in many human complaints, as phthisis pulmonalis, 

 &c. &c., and which is more the result of a sympathetic influence than of 

 a direct miasma applied to the organs themselves. We also know that 

 a secondary miasma may be generated by the altered secretions of mor- 

 bid parts. Are we to attribute the diarrhoea of distemper to these mias- 

 mata generated in the head, and then transmitted along the alimentary 

 canal, or othewise absorbed from the lungs, and carried by means of the 

 circulation into the same track, where they produce their irritating in- 

 fluence, as we witness in cynanche maligna, and other putrid diseases ? 

 The early appearance of diarrhoea, in some cases, would lead to a con- 

 clusion that the former mode may operate; while the increased fre-. 



