DIABETES MELLITUS IN DOGS. 
633 
3d. After polyuria appeared emaciation was quite rapid. 
4th. Those cases allowed to approach a natural termination, 
instead of showing - a diabetic coma, as of the human, rather 
showed depressed psyche, followed by what appeared to be in- 
tense excitement of the higher centres. 
5th. The four patients which alone were examined, while 
showing fatty degeneration in various organs, likewise showed 
serious structural change in the pancreas. Whereas nearly all 
post-mortem examinations conducted upon animals show the 
changes in this gland, like those of the superficial salivary 
glands, outside of those incidental to digestion, to be extremely 
rare, very rarely indeed do the tissues of the pancreas show 
fatty degeneration. 
That the so-called diabetes mellitus is always the result of a 
single, always demonstrable lesion in any one part of the body, 
I doubt; rather am I inclined to think that the next decade will 
see this name submerged from the text-books as the name of any 
disease, and in its place will stand a word or words which will at 
least have some reference to the correct pathology. Certainly 
as it stands to-day a name could scarce bear less meaning as to its 
pathology. In this day of advancement we have no more reason 
to be satisfied with this sort of nomenclature in our text-books 
for the distribution of knowledge than we would have to call 
acute laryngitis “ hoarseness ” or tetanus “lockjaw.” We must 
look up these cases. We must study them carefully as indi¬ 
viduals and as a profession seeking truth, and undoubtedly with 
this will come a grouping of what now is blindly called diabetes 
mellitus into several distinct diseases, with distinctly different 
causes, with this excretion of grape sugar in the urine only as a 
symptom common to all. 
I have said that the pathology of these conditions is not 
entirely unknown, and would remind you of and would gladly, 
did time permit, go with you over the footsteps, as it were, of 
some of our modern miners of the mysteries of physiology and 
pathology, as they have worked their ways along the dark paths 
and recesses of this strange disease or diseases. 
