CANINE DISTEMPER—ITS CAUSES, SYMPTOMS, SEQUELS & TREATMENT. 27 
causes of typhus fever in the human subject. And this disease 
once established, soon spreads to all within its reach of its in¬ 
fluence. The infection seems to be carried with them by dogs 
after their convalesence. I have frequently known of a severe 
attack supervene upon the contact with a puppy in the slips 
which was sufficiently recovered to run, though of course not in 
a fit state for such an exertion. 
The kennel also seems to retain the infection for a long time 
it being most probably absorbed in the urine, etc. 
The walls, etc. should be well washed with chloride of lime 
or some other disinfecting fluid. After the dogs are removed 
some time should elapse before others are placed in them. Dogs 
seem to be particularly liable to distemper when approaching 
maturity, the greater number being attacked between nine and 
eighteen months old, but in the typhus fever of man it is not con¬ 
fined to that age; the suckling and the old dog are also open to 
its attack, though in a much less degree. 
As in the human being again, one attack generally though 
not always preserves the individual from another attack. 
Indeed the laws of contagion and the statistics of the two 
diseases are precisely the same, making allowance of course for 
the difference in the time of coming to maturity, and reckoning 
age in the dog by months and in the man by years, so that a dog 
twenty-one months old may be considered as mature, as a man 
twenty-one years of age. 
Period of Incubation .—This disease like typhus fever takes 
from ten days to two weeks after infection before making its ap¬ 
pearance. 
Duration .—Distemper varies in the length of attack from a 
few days to two or even three months ; but the average period 
like that of typhus fever is twenty-one days. 
Diagnosis .—In its wildest form distemper is very often mis¬ 
taken for ephemeral feveror influenza. Severe distemper is most 
likely to be confounded with hydrophobia, from which it may be 
distinguished either by the absence of all aberration of intellect, 
or by the difference of the form of its manifestations. In distem- 
