360 The Management and Diseases of the Dog. . 
dition sometimes follows swimming, particularly in cold 
seasons of the year. The symptoms, though in some 
respects not unlike those of rheumatism, differ from them 
in the rapidity with which they pass off when warmth and 
free circulation to the part are restored. The hind parts 
are those generally affected. The treatment consists in 
brisk exercise, and friction to the part. 
DISEASES OF THE HEART. 
Diseases of the heart are not very frequently met with in 
canine practice, except as the result of complications of 
other maladies. . 
Fatty degeneration is, perhaps, the most common form 
met with; several instances of this I have seen when 
making post-mortem examinations of animals. 
“In examining a heart thus diseased, the eye first notices 
the fainter tracing, or the utter absence of those transverse 
marks which cross the fibres of all the voluntary muscles, 
and less distinctly those of the involuntary muscle, the 
heart. In an early stage of the disease these cross-lines 
are dimly seen, and the fibre is studded here and there with 
small dark points. When the disease is more decidedly 
expressed the dots are more numerous and the strie_dis- 
appear. These dots are little globules of oil lying within 
the sheath of the fibre, they make it soft and friable. 
“The parts of the heart which have undergone this 
change are altered in colour as well as in consistence. They 
are pale, like a faded leaf, or of a yellowish-brown, or a 
muddy-pink colour, and they commonly have a spotty ot 
mottled appearance. The change of texture varies in 
degree and in extent. It may render the muscle merely 
' soft and flabby, or it may reduce it to a state in which it 
feels like.a wet kid glove, and can be torn as readily as wet 
brown paper. Every chamber of the heart is liable to this 
kind of disease, but most of all the left ventricle, then the 
