DISTEMPER. 363 
Distemper tends intrinsically to end after running a certain time, therefore 
it is self-limited. It naturally, also, tends to recovery, and fatal results due to 
the disease alone must be rare indeed; while complications or faulty manage- 
ment are, as a rule, accountable for them. In treatment these facts should be 
kept in sight, with another, no less important, namely, that reliable means of 
arresting this disease, or even of shortening its run, have not as yet been dis- 
covered. Consequently so called distemper-cures are delusions. Nor are 
active measures addressed to the disease itself justifiable except at first. By 
this is meant that the mere fact that the disease is present does not alone war- 
rant the use of drugs beyond what might be called the preparatory treatment, 
for when the victim is carefully cared for it may run its course and recovery 
occur without further medication being required. 
The medical treatment of distemper therefore should be expectant. In 
other words, the caretaker, after the initial treatment, should withhold drugs 
until he sees that they are absolutely needed. The patient should be carefully 
watched always, and as long as he is doing well under good nursing it should 
be relied on to pull him through; the fact being in mind that his situation can 
be likened to that of a person in danger of drowning not far from shore. 
If he drowns it is because his strength gives out before he can touch bottom. 
As a person in this situation only requires to be buoyed up for a short time, 
so the dog with distemper may need only supporting measures, as nourish- 
ment, stimulants, etc., to live until the disease has ended. 
As has been aptly said of physicians, ‘‘ Our endeavor is no longer, like that 
of mariners of old, to appease the fury of the storm-god by offerings and 
prayer; it is enough for us to keep our good craft seaworthy, and steer her 
safe ’mid rocks and quicksands; the storm will cease without our bidding 
when once its fury is spent.” 
Again it is urged that distemper patients be nursed with exceeding care, 
generously nourished, to obviate the danger of exhaustion, and closely watched 
always, that complications or other accidents may be immediately detected 
and properly combated by the right measures. And all the time if medicines 
are used let it be for definite purposes. ‘Treat not the disease merely, but the 
disturbing symptoms as they arise. That is, if there be diarrhcea, check it 
with the appropriate medicines; if a degree of prostration dangerous to life is 
threatened, meet the emergency with stimulants ; and so on. 
Let the important fact sink deeply into the mind of the reader that infec- 
tion having once occurred, no matter what may be its exact nature, whether 
distemper, septicemia, or other form, and whatever the kind of infecting 
germ, in all cases one element of treatment is imperatively demanded, namely, 
that the strength of the animal be kept up by means of food and stimulants, 
to counteract the pronounced general depression that is invariable in cases of 
septic infection. 
