122 DOGS: THEIR MANAGEMENT. 



have died from it if nature had been suffered to take her 

 course ; and yet there is no disease that more requires 

 help, or rewards the practitioner more largely for the 

 assistance he affords. 



The reader is entrc&tcd to dismiss from his mind all he 

 may have read, or heard, or thought of this affection. 

 Let the many tales about never-failing receipts, and the 

 only proper modes of treatment, be for a time at all 

 events forgotten, that the author, who undertakes to op- 

 pose prejudice and to contradict authority, may at least 

 have a patient hearing. There is no reason to doubt 

 that many cases which have been called distemper have, 

 to all appearance, been saved by each of the reputed 

 methods of cure. A pillet of tobacco, a tea-spoonful of 

 salt, a dose of castor oil, an emetic, rubbing the nose with 

 syrup of buckthorn, &c., &c., or anything that is famed 

 for the purpose, may have often seemed to check the dis- 

 ease ; but no one who has been accustomed to depend 

 on these charms can deny he has frequently witnessed 

 their failure. That they should sometimes have seemed 

 to do good is easily explained. In the first place, there 

 are very few persons who know how to recognise the 

 early symptoms of the malady ; but it is usual for every 

 young dog that is a little poorly to be pronounced sick 

 with the distemper. 



The unfounded belief that all of these animals must 

 have the disease makes every one anticipate its advent, 

 and tempts them to call every ailment by the name sug- 

 gested by their expectations. Two-thirds, at least, of 



