General Diseases i 323 



recent deaths of valuable puppies from distemper will 

 doubtless induce breeders to give Professor Woodroffe 

 Hill's principle of inoculation an extended trial. We are 

 able to say, from cases under our own qbservation, and from 

 information received from various owners, that up to the 

 present the operation has been attended with uniform 

 success.'' 



Lately, efforts have been made, though unsuccessfully, 

 to establish an identity between distemper and human 

 typhoid fever : for, as Professor Axe pertinently remarks, 

 "Did distemper in the dog possess the property of commu- 

 nicating typhoid fever to man, it is difficult to understand 

 how myself and others have so long escaped infection. 

 During the past twelve years I have examined large 

 numbers of distempered dogs immediately after death, and 

 thus exposed myself to the emanations from every secre- 

 tion and excretion of the body ; but in no case have I 

 suffered the least constitutional disturbance. This illustra- 

 tion, it may be argued, is worthless in itself, and is 

 capable of explanation on the ground of insuscepti- 

 bility ; but the same remarks apply to scores of 

 others who have been exposed from time to time in a 

 similar manner." In regard to the propagation of the 

 typhoid contagium. Dr. Budd says : " If the poison from 

 which typhoid fever springs were capable of being bred 

 elsewhere than in the human body, it would surely be in 

 the bodies of animals which are made of flesh and blood 

 like ourselves, and from whose substance we draw susten- 

 ance for our own. And yet it appears to be almost certain 

 that this is not the case. In the most virulent outbreaks 

 of typhoid fever, there is no evidence that the domestic . 

 animals which gather round the fever-stricken dwellings 

 ever take the disease. At Cheffcombe, while nearly all the 

 human inmates of the infected homestead were laid low 

 by the poison, the dogs and cats which belonged to the 

 house, and the poultry, pigs, horses, and cattle which 

 Y— 2 



