DISTEMPER. 239 



but mild and wholesome food, and country or good air, will be the best 

 tonics. 



If the discharge from the nose become very offensive, the lips swelled 

 and ulcerated, and the breath fetid, half an ounce of yeast may be admi- 

 nistered every noon, and the tonics morning and night ; and the mouth 

 should be frequently washed with a solution of chloride of lime. 



At this period of the disease the sub-maxillary glands are sometimes 

 very much enlarged, and a tumour or abscess is formed, which, if not 

 timely opened, breaks, and a ragged ill-conditioned ulcer is formed, very 

 liable to spread, and very difficult to heal. It is prudent to puncture this 

 tumour as soon as it begins to point, for it will never disperse. After 

 the opening, a poultice should be applied to cleanse the ulcer ; after 

 which it should be daily washed with the compound tincture of benjamin, 

 and dressed with calamine ointment. Some balls should be given, and 

 the animal liberally fed. 



Should fits appear in an early stage, give a strong emetic ; then bleed, 

 and open the bowels with five or six grains of calomel, and a quarter of 

 a grain of opium : after this insert a seton, and then commence the tonic 

 balls. 



The progress of fits in the early stages of the disease may thus be 

 arrested. The occurrence of two or three should not make us despair ; 

 but, if they occur at a later period, and when the dog is much reduced, 

 there is little hope. This additional expenditure of animal power will pro- 

 bably soon carry him off. All that is to be done, is to administer a strong 

 emetic, obviate costiveness by castor oil, and give the tonic balls with 

 opium. 



Of the treatment of the yellow disease little can be said ; we shall not 

 succeed in one case in twenty. When good effect has been produced, it 

 has been by one large bleeding, opening the bowels well with Epsom 

 salts, and then giving grain doses of calomel twice a-day in a tonic 

 ball. 



While it is prudent to obviate costiveness, we should recollect that 

 there is nothing more to be dreaded, in every stage of distemper, than 

 diarrhoea. The purging of distemper will often bid defiance to the most 

 powerful astringents. This shows the folly of giving violent cathartics in 

 distemper ; and, when I have heard of the ten, and twenty, and thirty grains 

 of calomel that are sometimes given, I have thought it fortunate that the 

 stomach of the dog is so irritable. The greater part of these kill-or-cure 

 doses is ejected, otherwise the patient would soon be carried off by super- 

 purgation. There is an irritability about the whole of the mucous mem- 

 brane that may be easily excited, but cannot be so readily allayed ; and, 

 therefore, except in the earliest stage of distemper, or in fits, or limiting 

 ourselves to the small portion of calomel which enters into our emetic, I 

 would never give a stronger purgative than castor-oil or Epsom salts. It 

 is of the utmost consequence that the purging of distemper should be 

 checked as soon as possible. 



In some diseases a sudden purging, and even one of considerable 

 violence, constitutes what is called the crisis. It is hailed as a favourable 

 symptom ; and from that moment the animal begins to recover ; but 

 this is never the case in distemper : it is a morbid action which is then 

 going on, and which produces a dangerous degree of debility. 



The proper treatment of purging in cases of distemper is first to give a 



