THE DISTEMPER, 599 



animal is worth the trouble, and forbid the use of potatoes, rice, flour, oatmeal, and most vegetables, 

 and feed mostly on flesh, and occasionally beef-tea and milk. We do not know, however, that we 

 are quite justified in giving milk. 



As to medicine, we must of course attend to the constipation, and occasional doses of Youatt's 

 castor-oil mixture will be less weakening to the system than any other aperient. Give from half 

 a grain up to three grains of opium (powdered), and the same quantity of quinine in a bit of 

 Castile soap, twice or thrice daily. The iodo-bromide bolus recommended for goitre may also be 

 found useful ; it will at least moderate the symptoms, if it does not cure the disease. Then we 

 have cod-liver oil and nux vomica to fall back upon, and also iron ; but after all said and done, a 

 diabetic dog is really of very little use. 



9. The Distemper. 



As the word Distemper simply means disease, it cannot be said that the name given to the 

 ailment now under consideration is a very happy or instructive one, when we wish to denote a 

 very serious form of ailment in the dog, resulting from the imbibition into the system, in some 

 way or other, of a specific blood poison. The name, however, is so well known that no practi- 

 tioner would care to alter it, at all events not in a treatise like the present. 



Distemper is termed by the French Le maladie des chiens, which is certainly no improve- 

 ment on our own name for the disorder. In Scotland it is designated by a much more 

 expressive word ; it is called the " snifters " in the South, and in some parts of the North the 

 " snoughers," the gh having the sound of the Greek letter %, or the ch in the Scotch " loch." 



This distressing disease, with its symptoms and treatment, have only lately come to be 

 thoroughly understood, or as thoroughly as any disease can be, by men who make it their 

 business to become acquainted with the disorders of the lower animals. But, although more 

 than a hundred years have elapsed since it was first imported into this country from France, 

 a great amount of misunderstanding still prevails among a large section of dog-fanciers regard- 

 ing its true nature and origin. 



The fact is, the disease came to us with a bad name, for the French themselves deemed it 

 incurable. In this country the old-fashioned plan of treatment was wont to be the usual rough 

 remedies emetics, purgatives, the seton, and the lancet. 



Failing in this, specifics of all sorts were eagerly sought for and tried, and are unfortunately 

 still believed in to a very great extent ; and we cannot take up a sporting paper, or indeed a 

 weekly journal of any sort, without coming across all manner of advertisements of so-called cures 

 for distemper, distemper balls, and specifics, and other useless if not dangerous drugs. And 

 the advertisers flourish. People believe in these nostrums, probably because it is their wish 

 so to believe. They will not take the trouble to have the disease treated in a rational manner, 

 because it is so handy just to give a dog a dose or two of medicine and have done with it. 



" But," it may be asked, " is it not the case that hundreds of cases of distemper have been 

 either cured or cut short by these specifics ? " We do not think so, for ninety-five per cent, of 

 all reputed cases are not distemper at all, but cases of simple catarrh or stomach-ache. 



Definition. Distemper is a specific catarrhal fever, the result of a peculiar poison circulating 

 in the blood, and of the efforts of Nature to eliminate that poison. It occurs most frequently 

 from infection or contagion, but may probably arise spontaneously. 



Like all fevers arising from a specific contagion, or infective poison, distemper has a certain 

 course to run, and in this disease Nature seems to attempt the elimination of the poison, through 

 the secretions thrown out by the naso-pharyngeal mucous membrane. 



