304 THE MANAGEMENT AND DISEASES OF THE DOG. 



than the imaginary power of vaccination, be the lymph what 

 it may. 



Lately, efforts have been made, though unsuccessfully, to 

 establish an identity between distemper and human typhoid 

 fever: for, "as Professor Axe pertinently remarks, "Did dis- 

 temper in the dog possess the property of communicating 

 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 secretion and excretion of- the body ; 

 but in no case have I suffered the least constitutional disturb- 

 ance. This illustration, it may be argued, is worthless in it- 

 self, and is capable of explanation on the ground of insus- 

 ceptibility ; but the same remarks "ppiy to scores of others 

 who have been exposed from time to time in a similar man- 

 ner." In regard to the propagation of the typhoid contagium. 

 Dr. Budd says : " If the poison from which t)'phoid fever 

 springs were capable of being bred elsewhere than in the hu- 

 man 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 sustenance for our own. And yet it ap- 

 pears 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- 

 strickens 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 

 thronged the yard, continued to enjoy perfect health. Yet 

 the pond from which the latter drank was being continually 

 polluted by a drain which received the whole bulk of the 

 intestinal discharges from the fever patients ! * The state- 

 ment of ' H. H.' that the symptoms of distemper in the dog 

 and typhoid fever in man are ' alike,' is true only so far as 

 * This is strong evidence : sufficiently so to be conclusive. — ^J. W. H. 



