98 SPECIFIC CATARRHAL DISEASE, OR DISTEMPER, 



by that name, and in some respects not unlike it, might readily 

 occasion it to be so called. This scourge to the canine race, now 

 so general, does not appear to have been known a century ago^^; 

 and throughout the European continent it was, until lately, described 

 rather as an occasional epidemic which visits the different countries 

 every three or four years, than as a settled constitutional guest 

 among dogs, like the glanders of horses, or the measles or hooping 

 cough in the human^^. Our continental neighbours appear to have 

 transmitted it to England : and here also it seems first to have 

 appeared rather under the type of an accidental epidemic, but is 

 now become, by some morbid combinations, a permanent disease, 

 to which every individual of the canine race has a strong inherent 



'* In opposition to this late appearance of the distemper, it has been con- 

 jectured that it was not unknown to the ancients, and was 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 examination 

 of the symptoms, as detailed by Aristotle, ISAmn, and such other ancient authors 

 as have left us their observations on the canine race, will clearly shew 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 imposthumes, like those of quinsy in the 

 human ; 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. 



'^ In the Grand Encyclopidie MSthodique the disease is thus described : 

 " II c'est jette, il y a quelque annees, une maladie epid6mique sur les chiens 

 dans toute I'Europe; il en est mort une grand partie sans que Ton put 

 trouver de remade au mal." — Livraison LIX Chasses. In the Diet. Vet. 

 of H. D'Arboval we also read, *' Selon quelques personnes, il n'y a pas long- 

 temps que Ton connatt cette maladie en Europe, et ce serait seulement vers 

 le milieu du sifecle dormir qu'elle s'y serait manifest^e ; quelque auteurs pre- 

 tendent meme qu'elle a 6te importee d'Angleterre en France en 1769 ; ce- 

 pendant on se rappelle qu'au mois de Mars iTl-i, on I'a vue regner comme 

 epizootiquement dans nos provinces m6ridionales, avec complication d'angine 

 gangr<5neuse. Peut-etre a-t-on confondu, et est-ce en Angleterre qu'elle s'est 

 introduite vers le milieu du sidcle dernier, aprfes y avoir 6t6 apport6e du con- 

 tinent, oii elle aurait pu exister depuis bien plus long-temps ? C'est du moins 

 ce qu' Edouard Jenner semble laisser entrevoir." 



