60 DISEASES or Doas. 



upwards and backwards, so much so that the dlrecQon is ap- 

 parent to the eye, as the injured side is thereby made higher, and it 

 can be also readily felt. The assistant should hold the dog round 

 the loins steady in one position, whilst the operator, taking hold of 

 the dislocated Umb above the stifle-joiat, must retract the thigh 

 bone downwards and forwards. The same principle must guide 

 similar operations for the reduction of dislocation of other joints. 

 It will be evident that rest will be needed, and much exercise cannot 

 be safely allowed for some time. There is always a disposition to 

 repetition of dislocation. 



DISTEISFES.— This is the malady of dogs most general and 

 fatal, and with the exception of rabies the most dreaded. When first 

 discovered in France, from which country we imported it, it was and 

 is still named distemper, yet it has always appeared to me that the 

 name is unhappily chosen, as being too indefinite for coirect applica- 

 tion to a disease marked by such varying phases. The term is 

 used very loosely; and if a horse has the " strangles," a pig the 

 "measles," or the cattle are suffering, no matter from what — foot- 

 and-mouth disease, pleuro-pneumonia, or rinderpest, this convenient 

 word is forced into service, and made to do duty for aU. Distemper 

 Js also known as the " dog-Ul " ; the Scotch term for it, "snifters," 

 is to a certain extent better, as graphically conveying to the mind 

 one important feature of the disease, namely, the snifting noise — 

 half cough, half sneeze — made by the dog in his efforts to get rid of 

 the niatter which accumulates in the nostrils ; but that- term is too 

 limited to adequately describe a disease which has been well called 

 " the scourge of the kennel," and which assumes so many forms and 

 complications that it has been well called the Protean malady. 



The exact date when this disease first appeared in England is not 

 certain, but probably it w^as introduced about the beginning of the 

 last century, or the end of the seventeenth. Gervase Markham, 

 who, early in the seventeenth century, wrote copiously about dogs, 

 horses, and their diseases, does not mention it by name, or describe 

 it ; and Nicholas Cox, in " The Gentleman's Recreations," published 

 1677, is also silent about it, although he refers to madnees, swelling 

 in the throat, mange, formica, etc., the last being what we now 

 call canker of the ear. That the disease was recognised on the 

 Continent before it was in this country is evident from the fact that 

 it is referred to by French writers of sporting books at a period 

 earlier than any of our own writers have noticed it, and considering 

 how contagious it is, the presumption is that it was brought from 

 France through imported dogs. However that may bo, it is now a 

 Qrmly established disease among us, and one that up to recent yean 



