6oo THE BOOK OF THE DOG. 



Our chief difficulty in the treatment of distemper lies in the complications thereof. We may, 

 and often do, have the organs of respiration attacked ; we have sometimes congestion of the 

 liver, or mucous inflammation of the bile ducts, or some lesion of the brain or nervous 

 structures, combined with epilepsy, convulsions, or chorea. Distemper is also often complicated 

 with severe disease of the bowels, and at times with an affection of the eyes. 



Indeed, whatever important secreting organ happens to. be the weak point in the dog, that 

 organ will during distemper be sought out and determined to. 



The disease has been compared by some eminent veterinary surgeons to measles in the 

 human frame, and by others to typhoid fever. There is, however, in our opinion, a far greater 

 analogy between distemper and measles than between it and typhoid. In the latter disease 

 we have always diarrhoea, and sometimes haemorrhage, and so we have at times in distemper ; 

 but in distemper such symptoms are to be looked upon more as complications than diagnostic. 

 Again", in typhoid or enteric fever, we have always a change in the glands of Peyer ; they are 

 found swollen and ulcerated. Well, we have ulceration of the mucous membranes of the bowels 

 in the muco-enteritis of distemper, but we question very much if ever the solitary glands, or 

 glands of Peyer, have been found diseased. 



Says Williams : " I can compare distemper to no human disease except measles, and the 

 points of analogy are very great. In both diseases catarrhal symptoms are manifested ; they 

 are infectious diseases ; they generally occur but once in a lifetime ; they chiefly affect the young ; 

 in almost all cases of distemper there is some eruption or rash, and desquamation of the cuticle ; 

 catarrhal ophthalmia, bronchial and pulmonary inflammation, and dysentery, are complications of 

 both diseases ; and, finally, convulsions sometimes occur both at the commencement and during 

 the progress of measles and of distemper." 



" I am not aware, however," the author continues, " whether paralysis or chorea ever follows 

 measles." Yes ; paralysis is, although rarely, one of the sequelae of measles, but we are not 

 certain about chorea. We ourselves have never seen it succeed measles, but it is both possible 

 and likely, as any disease that weakens the nervous system, and places the health below par, 

 may induce chorea if there be a predisposition to it. 



We have heard it said (though we have no reason to believe it) that distemper in the 

 dog might sometimes arise from contact with the putrid emanations from typhoid patients. A 

 dog, however, to our own knowledge contracted distemper a few days after he had been positively 

 seen eating offal on a dunghill in the rear of a house afflicted with typhoid. But this proves 

 nothing. 



Instead of saying that distemper is contagious or infectious, it would be better, we think, to 

 call it communicable from one dog to another, either through the medium of positive contact, or 

 through the air itself. 



We all know that distemper is communicable, but the doubtful question is : Can distemper 

 arise spontaneously, as we have already hinted ? It might. By the word " spontaneously," we do 

 not mean " originating in the dog's blood or system ; " for so long as he is kept clean, properly fed 

 and attended to, he will not, cannot, have distemper, unless there has been actual contact in some 

 way with contagion. There must be a seed of the poison, a disease-germ, and that germ, we sub- 

 mit, may occasionally, even now-a-days, come into existence in filthy, badly-ventilated, and badly- 

 conditioned kennels. It is no explanation of the origin of a disease to tell us, as some authorities 

 do, that it came from France, was imported to that country from Spain, and probably to Spain 

 from Spanish America. That sends us across the Atlantic, but how much better are we ? How 

 did the disease originate in America? There are just the same chemical agencies at work now 



