General Diseases. : 311 
but only for those in which the disease assumes the forms 
herein described, and from which I have derived the greatest 
benefit. 
Nature, in many instances, works her own cure ; while. 
numerous methods of treatment produce mischief, and 
result in death. 
Distemper may be described as a catarrhal fever, 
generally affecting the mucous membranes of the head, air- 
passages and alimentary tract, in which the nervous system 
frequently becomes involved—hence distemper fits, and 
local or general paralysis. It is a highly contagious 
disease. Age is no preventative; at any period of life 
dogs are liable to become infected. 
But Mr. Fleming correctly observes, ‘It is more parti- 
cularly a disease of youth, and is much more frequent and 
fatal among highly-bred, pampered animals than those 
which live in a less artificial manner, and whose constitution 
is less modified by breeding and rearing.” * 
Neither does one attack render a dog secure from 
a second; but in the latter it is invariably contracted 
by contagion alone, and is usually of a much milder 
form. , 
Distemper is not, as many persons suppose, a necessary 
. disease, as numbers of dogs pass through life without ever 
becoming the subjects of it. The fact of the malady being 
unknown in this country prior to the seventeenth century (?) 
strongly supports this view, as dogs then were probably 
as numerous as now, though not perhaps so quite mixed in 
breed. 
In all cases it is ushered in with catarrhal symptoms, 
and these, as the malady proceeds, may become compli- 
cated with pneumonia, jaundice, enteric disease, epilepsy, 
chorea, or paralysis ; though the two latter are, as a rule, 
* “Veterinary Sanitary Science and Police,” vol. ii. p. 294. 
