msTKMPEk. 1*27 



The following article on this disease was written by Wm. A. Bruette, D. V. S. 

 ("Dent."), tlip well-known veterinary surgeon of Chicago. It is a very complete 

 and comprehensive treatise on the subject by a man who has had experience with 

 dogs for years, and who, besides being a qualified veterinarian, is also a graduate 

 in human practice and is considered reliable authority by many dog fanciers: 



"DJ.STFMPER. (By Dent.) Of the various diseases that dogdom is heir to dis- 

 temper is the one particular black cloud to the breeder, as its ravages are greatest 

 among the finely bred dogs kept in large kennels, or as pets, whose systems are 

 weakened by in-and-in breeding, or the highly artificial life they are forced to lead. 

 Dogs ol low degree are susceptible to the malady, but rarely succumb. The com- 

 mon cur when attacked retires for a few days under the first available house or 

 porch, to reappear perhaps a little thinmer and more careworn, but with his usual 

 independence and aggressiveness. 



"The disease has been compared to typhoid fever in man, but I can see but 

 little analogy between them. Distemper is an infantile disorder; typhoid fever is 

 not. The diseases are communicated in an entirely different manner. The char- 

 acteristic lesion of typhoid fever is a congestion and tumefaction of Pyer's patches 

 (i. (.. small collections of intestinal glands). In distemper the mucous membrane 

 lining the bowels, when the alimentary tract is the seat of the action of the virus, 

 may be ulcerated along its entire course, but the patches of Pyer are not particu 

 larly affected and never display those lesions so characteristic of typhoid. 



"Of the various diseases man is subject to, measles most closely resembles dis- 

 temper in dogs. Both are infectious infantile disorders tranmitted through similar 

 channels, and one attack successfully overcome renders immunity from a second 

 through the course of the animal's life, with but a few exceptions. Catarrhal symp 

 toms, pulmonary complications and dysentery are common to both; convulsion. * 

 also appear in both measles and distemper; and finally the principal characteristic 

 of measles, viz.: the rash, which developes on the face coincident with the dis- 

 ease, spreading in twenty-four hours to all parts of the body, resembles the ra^h 

 and pinkish prickly condition of the skin noticeable in some cases of distemper in 

 the first stages, and the pimples that break out along the back and under the belly 

 and thighs, and the dandruff and desquamation of the cuticle in the latter stages of 

 distemper. , 



"The cause of distemper has been and is a subject that has been discussed and 

 disagreed upon by authorities and breeders of experience in a very interesting man- 

 ner. Some hold to the opinion that it may arise spontaneously, or as a result of 

 damp, 'cold, poorly ventilated kennels, defective drainage, exposure, general neglect, 

 improper putresceoit food and other anti-hygienic conditions. More modern writers 

 hold tenaciously to the germ theory discarding altogether and scoffing at the theory 

 oi' spontaneity as being based solely upon negative evidence and insist that the 

 disease arises and exists solely as a result of infection of the system by the specific 

 virus or contagion of distemper, and claim the earlier ideas of spontaneous origin 

 are based solely upon failure to account for the disease by infection, and to observe 

 and appreciate the remarkable vitality of the germ and the ease and innumerable 

 channels by which it can be transmitted from an infected animal to one that was to 

 all intents completely isolated. 



"In the face of recent scientific investigation and discoveries, and in a disease 

 so specifically contagious as distemper, is is impossible to discard the germ theory. 

 The distinctive microbe which causes the disease probably a bacillus has not 

 been isolated; but the virus has been cultivated, and in the seventh generation 



