60 THE DISEASES OP THE DOG. 



lesions described by Blaine as being by " country people " 

 attributed to the animal having killed a toad or serpent, 

 or having been poisoned with some acrid herb), and dogs 

 affected with anthrax have been known to convey the 

 disease by their bite. 



Variola is rare in the dog and apt to be confused, in 

 hasty diagnosis, with the cutaneous form of distemper. 

 There seems to be a form of variola special to the canine 

 species, but evidence tends to show that smallpox and 

 vaccinia are communicable to the dog, the former being 

 liable to prove fatal, and the effects of vaccination being 

 usually trivial. Bosenroth ('Mag. f. Thierh.,' 1860, 

 p. 341) shows that Var. caninse is communicable to man. 

 Canine variola very closely resembles the allied disorders in 

 man and the sheep ; indeed, Leblanc has recorded an 

 instance of where eleven out of seventeen dogs died as a 

 result of disease caused by ingestion, as food, of the 

 carcasses of sheep affected with sheep-pox. The variola of 

 the dog is malignant or benign ; the pox may be confluent 

 or discrete, it passes through the various stages of ery- 

 thema, nodule, vesica, and pustule, and the latter becomes 

 flat or even concave on the surface. Desquamation fol- 

 lows and brownish spots are left. As these disappear, 

 small hairless spots with scars or " pits " are left to indi- 

 cate the seat occupied by the pox. These eruptions occur 

 especially where the skin is thin, such as over the belly, inside 

 the forearms and thighs. Their advent is preceded by fever, 

 they cease to develope as soon as the desquamative stage 

 has set in for any of the pustules. There are cases in 

 which the respiratory organs are involved, and broncho- 

 pneumonia, with specially early and rapid pus formation 

 from the whole of the lining mucous membrane of the air- 

 passages, occurs, there being much mucous rale and pro- 

 fuse discharge of pus from the nostrils, cough in the 

 earlier stages, and later very stertorous breathing, and a 

 tendency to rapid fatality. In other instances the alimen- 

 tary mucous membrane is invaded, there being profuse 

 diarrhoea of dark, offensive, bilious evacuations. In all 

 cases the breath and skin excretions smell very foul. The 



