1'28 EVERYTHING ABOUT DOGS. 



will produce the disease when inoculated in dogs, and still further attenuations of 

 the virus will produce the disease in a mild form which affords the animal pro- 

 tection from future attacks. These experiments, while not successful in all ways, 

 point conclusively to the fact that it is only a question of time when this disease 

 will be as successfully inoculated against as smallpox is in the human family. 



"Most dog breeders are firm in the conviction that they have had cases arise 

 spontaneously, and the rapid dissemination the disease works under anti-hygenic 

 surroundings will, as a more intimate knowledge of the life and manner in which 

 specific disease producing micro-organisms operate, entitle hygienic surroundings, 

 such as food, light and air, to an equal footing with the morbid poison so far as the 

 severity or mortality of the disease is concerned. 



"Germs and microbes of various kinds, capable of producing specific diseases, 

 are found everywh' in earth, air and water. All animals swallow them in their 

 food, breathe them no their lungs in countless numbers, and the body is at all 

 times in contact with them, nevertheless they produce no disturbance of the system. 

 In experiments microbes introduced into the blood of healthy animals were in- 

 active, whereas if the same animal became impoverished and weakyned through 

 foul air, impure food or water, or defective elimination, the blood became impure 

 or loaded with decomposed matter; and an appropriate pabulum was created in 

 which the germs lived, multiplied and set up their specific morbid action to the 

 detriment and possible destruction of the economy. The natural conclusion is that 

 while the specific germ is necessary for the production of a specific disease, it is 

 equally essential that the system be in such a condition as to afford a proper 

 pabulum for the reproduction, which is necessary for its specific action, otherwise 

 it would be overcome by the economy and eliminated from the system; just as 

 grains of wheat reproduce themselves and are potent under proper conditions of 

 earth, air, water and heat, or are inert and disintegrate when their surroundings 

 are unsuitable. 



"Germs do not at all times attack the same organs and membranes. But the 

 discharge from the particular set affected contains the virus in its most concen- 

 trated form. This accounts for the dread breeders have formed, through experi- 

 ence, of the nasal discharges of an affected animal, and for the vigorous objection 

 frequently raised at a dog show by some veteran owner who has observed a care- 

 less attendant allowing the dogs to drink from a bucket he is carrying from stall 

 to stall instead of filling the dogs' pans. 



"Distemper is not transmissible to man, but is to cats, wolves, foxes, jackals, 

 hyenas and monkeys; and as is the case in many highly contagious diseases, one 

 attack successfully overcome with but few exceptions renders immunity from a 

 second attack of the malady. One of the theories advanced as an explanation or' 

 this fact is that in contagious diseases the specific poison combines with some 

 chemical constituent of the system which is essential to the production of the 

 disease, and that after this constituent has been destroyed as it will be through 

 combining with the germand the animal has recovered it is impossible for the 

 germ to produce systemic disturbances again because the constituent necessary for 

 its combination is absent from the system. 



"There are innumerable channels through which a dog may be infected with 

 distemper. The germ is of remarkable vitality, and is conveyed through the air or 

 on a person's clothes, or a dog which has already had the disease can. convey the 

 germ in its coat from a sick dog to a well one. The use of kennels, feeding dishes, 

 or shipping crates that have been previously used by an affected animal are common 

 modes of inoculation, Dog shows are a fertile source of the spread of the disease, 



