174 



out, by any sudden surprise, a little cold water being 

 thrown in the face, or by being coaxed : but these at- 

 tacks gradually strengthen, and, becoming more ob- 

 stinate, they wear down the animal on the second or 

 third day from their appearance. 



As the commencement of this disease is so various, 

 so is its progress. In some cases it seems to spend all 

 its fury on the head ; in others, the bowels are princi- 

 pally afrected ; while others waste from consumption. 

 Some again become wholly putrid, and exhibit all the 

 marks of putrid fever. Others appear to have the 

 afFection moderately ; but on a sudden the disease 

 appears to be translated to the head, and they are pre- 

 ser.tlv taken oflbv fits. 



According to the mode in which the disease at- 

 tacks a dog, so must the treatment be conducted. It 

 is to this immense variety in the disease, and to the 

 very varied appearance it puts on, that so many re- 

 medies are prescribed for the complaint, and which 

 all of them, from being occasionally beneficial, become 

 in the minds of those using them infallible. Distem 

 per is therefore seldom spoken of among a number of 

 sportsmen, but every one of them kjiows a certain 

 cure, one that has never failed with him. The fact is, 

 that something has been tried by each, which per- 

 Iraps did good in two or three instances ; or nature 

 very probably has effected a cure : what was given is 

 therefore extolled into a sovereign remedy, till the 

 next cases that happen are found to resist its effect, or, 

 the person meeting with no more cases, continues to 

 think this remedy certain, and in all companies where 

 the svibject is spoken of he extols it as infallible. 



There is, perhaps, iiardly any one thing that is ever 



