68 THE DISEASES OF THE DOG. 



that all animals in which the legs are twisted and deformed 

 are suffering from this disorder, for young dogs which 

 have not been allowed sufficient exercise during develop- 

 ment will have bodies too heavy for their legs, and the 

 latter will yield under the superincumbent weight and, 

 moreover, will, like all imperfectly used parts, develop 

 but indifferently. Also green-stick fractures of the limb 

 bones, and bones not " set " straight in young animals, 

 give rise to deformity of the limbs. In truly rickety 

 animals the joints especially will be found enlarged, and 

 the head and belly will be disproportionately big. The 

 disease appears at birth, the bones are soft and yield under 

 the weight of the animal, also it is observed that only false 

 union results from the frequent fractures in such cases. 

 The nutritive functions in general are unsatisfactory in 

 natural rickets, and it has been supposed to result 

 especially from the deleterious practice of breeding in 

 and in. 



Treatment. — Avoid rickety parents or such as have 

 produced rickety offspring ; rear all pups on correct 

 hygienic principles, giving good food, healthy milk, plenty 

 of exercise, and adequate shelter. Give bone dust, lime- 

 water, crushed egg-shells, with a view to supplying cal- 

 careous matter to the system, and especially give such 

 nutritive diet as is found to be best suited to the digestion 

 of the patient. Cod-liver oil has been proved to be highly 

 beneficial. 



Leukemia, as a disease of lower animals, has been 

 specially studied by Siedamgrotzsky. It consists in excess 

 of white corpuscles and relative deficiency of red, due to 

 hyperplasia of the blood-making organs, spleen, lymphatic 

 glands, and marrow ; hence it assumes three forms, splenic, 

 lymphatic, and myelitic, as discoverable by autopsy rather 

 than diagnosis. It is more frequent in dogs and cats than 

 in other domesticated animals, and a predisposition to it is 

 most marked in middle and advanced life. The cause is 

 obscure ; the spleen is most frequently enlarged, the result 

 of prolonged hyperemia of the organ, which at first is soft 

 and distended with blood, later, firm and anaemic, its 



