DISTEMPER. 63 



Those which I shall now enumerate may be considered as the local 

 complications of the complaint. 



1st. THE AFFECTIONS OF THE CHEST. In accordance with the 

 theory, that the essence of the disease consists in impurity of the 

 blood, in consequence of the failure to act of its proper depurating 

 organs, the lungs, liver, and kidneys, I should, a priori, expect 

 that in the dog the lungs would be the most likely organs to be 

 attacked, because they, with the tongue and nostrils, do their own 

 duty, and also that performed by the skin in man and many other 

 animals. They are, in fact, the main purifiers in the dog, and 

 they may be expected to be the first attacked, and so they gene- 

 rally are, though in some epidemics the liver and stomach seem 

 to suffer in a still greater proportion. As a general rule, there- 

 fore, you may expect, in the early stage of distemper, to meet with 

 a short, dry, husky cough, with sneezing, or sniffing through the 

 nostrils, the result of irritation and congestion of the mucous 

 membrane of the nose and windpipe. This state goes on for some 

 days, and occasionally lasts during the whole attack ; but generally, 

 at the end of a week, a thick yellow offensive discharge appears 

 from the nose and eyes, and, after each fit of coughing, from the 

 lungs also. The ear, applied to the chest, detects great rattling of 

 mucus, and, on percussion, there is usually more dullness than 

 natural. Respiration is somewhat quicker than in a state of 

 health, but there is not generally that amount of distress in 

 breathing which accompanies inflammation of the substance of the 

 lungs, or pneumonia, as it is technically called. In some cases 

 true pneumonia or else pleurisy supervenes, which may be detected 

 by the peculiar symptoms hereafter to be described. 



