112 
MONTHLY REPORT OF DISEASES. 
This has also proved a more than usually healthy month as it 
regards horses. 
Distemper has materially diminished among dogs, and as¬ 
sumed also a different character ; the two that were lost died in 
fits. Diarrhoea also became less frequent when the winter began 
to set in, and not a single case has occurred since the beginnins: 
of January. 
The cases which, hesitatingly, we have ranked under com¬ 
pression of the brain,deserve more attention than they have 
hitherto received from veterinarians. They are characterized by 
the dog running round and round, always in the same way, 
and usually with the head inclined to the side on which he 
turns. They all died, and nineteen out of twenty have died. 
This almost uniform fatality, however, has not diminished the 
vigour with which the disease has been attacked. We used to 
think that the primary disease was one of the bowels, and that 
the nervous system was sympathetically affected ; but we have 
purged and purged again, until it was a moot point whether 
we did not lose the dog by the irritation of the mucous mem¬ 
brane which we produced; in no one case, however, did we 
produce the slightest remission of the symptoms. The incli¬ 
nation, however, and the strong inclination of our opinion 
is, that it is primarily an affection of the head—pressure on 
the brain—and partial, local pressure. There was not oppor¬ 
tunity to examine either of these dogs after death, but in every 
case where post-mortem examination has been practicable, we 
have found compression in the form of bony spiculse, local ex¬ 
travasation of blood, effusion of serous fluid. There seems to be 
much similarity between this disease and the ^'gig, or goggles^' 
in sheep; but from the secure protection afforded to the cranium 
by the temporal muscle, we are deprived of the means which 
we sometimes possess in the sheep of ascertaining the nature and 
the exact situation of the pressure by the softening of the 
cranial bones. This same defence of the skull, and provision for 
sufficiently strong action of the lower jaw, deprive us of much 
of the effect of a blister, for the brain is deeply seated, and can 
scarcely be sufficiently affected through such an enormous mass 
of muscle. We have not space for farther remark. Y. 
TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
Mr. Vines in our next. 
