The Dog

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We may here, likewise, be enabled to distinguish between rabies and
distemper. When a person, unacquainted with dogs, sees a dog struggling
in a fit, or running along unconscious of every surrounding object, or
snapping at everything in his way, whether it be a human being or a
stone, he raises the cry of "mad dog," and the poor brute is often
sacrificed. The very existence of a fit is proof positive that the dog
is not mad. No epilepsy accompanies rabies in any stage of that disease.

The inflammation of the membrane of the nose and fauces is sometimes
propagated along that of the windpipe, and the dog exhibits unequivocal
proofs of chest affection, or decided pneumonia.

At other times the bowels become affected, and a violent purging comes
on. The faeces vary from white with a slight tinge of gray, to a dark
slate or olive colour. By degrees mucus begins to mingle with the faecal
discharge, and then streaks of blood. The faecal matter rapidly lessens,
and the whole seems to consist of mingled mucus and blood; and, from
first to last, the stools are insufferably offensive. When the mingled
blood and mucus appear, so much inflammation exists in the intestinal
canal that the case is almost hopeless.

The discharge from the nose becomes decidedly purulent. While it is
white and without smell, and the dog is not too much emaciated, the
termination may be favourable; but when it becomes of a darker colour,
and mingled with blood, and offensive, the ethmoid or turbinated bones
are becoming carious, and death supervenes. This will particularly be
the case if the mouth and lips swell, and ulcers begin to appear on
them, and the gums ulcerate, and a sanious and highly offensive
discharge proceeds from the mouth. A singular, half-fetid smell arising
from the dog, is the almost invariable precursor of death.

When the disease first visited the continent, it was regarded as a
humoral disease. Duhamel, who was one of the earliest to study the
character of the malady, contended that the biliary sac contained the
cause of the complaint; the bile assumed a concrete form, and its
superabundance was the cause of disease. Barrier, one of the earliest
writers on the subject, described it as a violent irregular bilious
fever. Others regarded it as a mucous discharge, or a depurative; and
others, as a salutary crisis, removing from the constitution that which
oppressed the different organs. Others had recourse to inoculation, in
order to give it a more benign character; and others, and among them
Chabert, considered that it possessed a character of peculiar malignity,
and he gave it a name expressive of its nature and situation--'nasal
catarrh'. It exhibited the ordinary symptoms of coryza: it was a
catarrhal affection in its early stage; but it afterwards degenerated
into a species of palsy. The causes were unknown. By some, they were
attributed to the natural voracity of the dog; by others, to his
occasional lasciviousness; by others, to his frequent feeding on
carrion, or the refuse of fat and soups.

There is no doubt that nasal catarrh is, to a very considerable degree,
contagious on the continent. It often spreads over a wide extent of
country, and includes numerous animals of various descriptions. It is
complicated with various diseases; and particularly, at an early stage,
with ophthalmia. It may be interesting to the reader to trace the
progress of the disease among our continental neighbours. It commences
with a certain depression of spirits; a diminution of appetite; a
heaviness of the head; a heat of the mouth; an attempt to get something
from the throat; an insatiable thirst; an elevated temperature of the
body; a dry and painful suffocating cough; and all these circumstances
continue twenty to thirty days, until at length the dog droops and dies.

The duration of distemper is uncertain. It sometimes runs its course in
five or six days; or it may linger on two or three months. In some cases
the emaciation is rapid and extreme: danger is then to be apprehended.
When the muscles of the loins are much attenuated, or almost wasted,
there is little hope; and, although other symptoms may remit, and the
dog may be apparently recovering, yet, if he continues to lose flesh, we
may be perfectly assured that he will not live. On the other hand, let
the discharge from the nose be copious, and the purging violent, and
every other symptom threatening, yet if the animal gains a little flesh,
we may confidently predict his recovery.

When the dog is much reduced in strength and flesh, a spasmodic
affection or twitching of the muscles will sometimes be observed. It is
usually confined at first to one limb; but the most decisive treatment
is required, or these spasms will spread until the animal is altogether
unable to stand; and while he lies every limb will be in motion,
travelling, as it were, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, until the
animal is worn out, and dies of absolute exhaustion. When these spasms
become universal and violent, they are accompanied by constant and
dreadful moans and cries.

In the pointer and the hound, and particularly when there is little
discharge from the eyes or nose, an intense yellowness often suddenly
appears all over the dog. He falls away more in twenty-four hours than
it would be thought possible; his bowels are obstinately constipated; he
will neither eat nor move; and in two or three days he is dead.

In the pointer, hound, and greyhound, there sometimes appears on the
whole of the chest and belly a pustular eruption, which peels off in
large scales. The result is usually unfavourable. A more general
eruption, however, either wearing the usual form of mange, or
accompanied by minute pustules, may be regarded as a favourable symptom.
The disease is leaving the vital parts, and expending its last energy on
the integument.

The 'post-mortem' appearances are exceedingly unsatisfactory: they do
not correspond with the original character of the disease, but with its
strangely varying symptoms. If the dog has died in fits, we have
inflammation of the brain or its membranes, and particularly at the base
of the brain, with considerable effusion of a serous or bloody fluid. If
the prevailing symptoms have led our attention to the lungs, we find
inflammation of the bronchial passages, or, in a few instances, of the
substance of the lungs, or the submucous tissue of the cells. We rarely
have inflammation of the pulmonary pleura, and never to any extent of
the intercostal pleura. In a few lingering cases, tubercles and vomicae
of the lungs have been found.

If the bowels have been chiefly attacked, we have intense inflammation
of the mucous membrane, and, generally speaking, the small intestines
are almost filled with worms. If the dog has gradually wasted away,
which is often the case when purging to any considerable extent has been
encouraged or produced, we have contraction of the whole canal,
including even the stomach, and sometimes considerable enlargement of
the mesenteric glands [1].

The membrane of the nose will always exhibit marks of inflammation, and
particularly in the frontal sinuses and ethmoidal cells; and I have
observed the portion of membrane on the septum, or cartilaginous
division of the nostrils, between the frontal sinuses and ethmoidal
cells, to be studded with small miliary tubercles. In advanced stages of
the disease, attended with much defluxion from the nose, the cells of
the ethmoidal bone and the frontal sinuses are filled with pus.

Ulceration is sometimes found on the membrane of the nose, oftenest on
the spot to which I have referred--occasionally confined to that; and
now and then spreading over the whole of the septum, and even corroding
and eating through it; generally equal on both sides of the septum; in a
few instances extending into the fauces; seldom found in the larynx, but
occasionally seen in the bronchial passages. The other viscera rarely
present any remarkable morbid appearance.

The distemper is clearly a disease of the mucous membranes, usually
commencing in the membrane of the nose, and resembling nasal catarrh. In
the early stage it is 'coryza', or nasal catarrh; but the affection
rapidly extends, and seems to attack the mucous membranes generally,
determined to some particular one, either by atmospheric influence or
accidental causes, or constitutional predisposition. The fits arise from
general disturbance of the system, or from the proximity of the brain to
the early seat of inflammation.

This account of the nature and treatment of distemper will, perhaps, be
unsatisfactory to some readers. One thing, however, is clear, that for a
disease which assumes such a variety of forms, there can be no specific;
yet there is not a keeper who is not in possession of some supposed
infallible nostrum. Nothing can be more absurd. A disease attacking so
many organs, and presenting so many and such different symptoms, must
require a mode of treatment varying with the organ attacked and the
symptom prevailing. The faith in these boasted specifics is principally
founded on two circumstances--atmospheric influence and peculiarity of
breed. There are some seasons when we can scarcely save a dog; there are
others when we must almost wilfully destroy him in order to lose him.
There are some breeds in which, generation after generation, five out of
six die of distemper, while there are others in which not one out of a
dozen dies. When the season is favourable, and the animal, by hereditary
influence, is not disposed to assume the virulent type of the disease,
these two important agents are overlooked, and the immunity from any
fatal result is attributed to medicine. The circumstances most conducive
to success will be the recollection that it is a disease of the mucous
surfaces, and that we must not carry the depleting and lowering system
too far. Keeping this in view, we must accommodate ourselves to the
symptoms as they arise.

The natural medicine of the dog seems to be an emetic. The act of
vomiting is very easily excited in him, and, feeling the slightest
ailment, he flies to the dog-grass, unloads his stomach, and is at once
well. In distemper, whatever be the form which it assumes, an emetic is
the first thing to be given. Common salt will do when nothing else is at
hand; but the best emetic, and particularly in distemper, consists of
equal parts of calomel and tartar emetic. From half a grain to a grain
and a half of each will constitute the dose.

This will act first as an emetic, and afterwards as a gentle purgative.
Then, if the cough is urgent, and there is heaving at the flanks, and
the nose is hot, a moderate quantity of blood may be taken--from three
to twelve ounces--and this, if there has been previous constipation, may
be followed by a dose of sulphate of magnesia, from two to six drachms.

In slight cases this will often be sufficient to effect a cure: but, if
the dog still droops, and particularly if there is much huskiness, the
antimonial or James's powder, nitre and digitalis, in the proportion of
from half a grain to a grain of digitalis, from two to five grains of
the James's powder, and from a scruple to a drachm of nitre, should be
administered twice or thrice in a day. If on the third or fourth day the
huskiness is not quite removed, the emetic should be repeated.

In these affections of the mucous membranes, it is absolutely necessary
to avoid or to get rid of every source of irritation, and worms will
generally be found a very considerable one in young dogs. If we can
speedily get rid of them, distemper will often rapidly disappear; but,
if they are suffered to remain, diarrhoea or fits are apt to supervene:
therefore some worm medicine should be administered.

I have said that vomiting is very easily excited in the dog; and that
for this reason we are precluded from the use of a great many medicines
in our treatment of him. Calomel, aloes, jalap, scammony, and gamboge
will generally produce sickness. We are, therefore, driven to some
mechanical vermifuge; and a very effectual one, and that will rarely
fail of expelling even the tape-worm, is tin filings or powdered glass.
From half a drachm to a drachm of either may be advantageously given
twice in the day. There may generally be added to them digitalis,
James's powder, and nitre, made into balls with palm oil and a little
linseed meal. This course should be pursued in usual cases until two or
three emetics have been given, and a ball morning and night on the
intermediate days. Should the huskiness not diminish after the first two
or three days, if the dog has not rapidly lost flesh, I should be
disposed to take a little more blood, and to put a seton in the poll. It
should be inserted between the ears, and reaching from ear to ear.

When there is fever and huskiness, and the dog is not much emaciated, a
seton is an excellent remedy; but, if it is used indiscriminately, and
when the animal is already losing ground, and is violently purging, we
shall only hasten his doom, or rather make it more sure.

It is now, if ever, that pneumonia will be perceived. The symptoms of
inflammation in the lungs of the dog can scarcely be mistaken. The quick
and laborious breathing, the disinclination or inability to lie down,
the elevated position of the head, and the projection of the muzzle,
will clearly mark it. More blood must be subtracted, a seton inserted,
the bowels opened with Epsom salts, and the digitalis, nitre, and
James's powder given more frequently and in larger doses than before.

Little aid is to be derived from observation of the pulse of the dog; it
differs materially in the breed, and size, and age of the animal. Many
years' practice have failed in enabling me to draw any certain
conclusion from it. The best place to feel the pulse of the dog is at
the side. We may possibly learn from it whether digitalis is producing
an intermittent pulse, which it frequently will do, and which we wish
that it should do: it should then be given a little more cautiously, and
in smaller quantities.

If the pneumonia is evidently conquered, or we have proceeded thus far
without any considerable inflammatory affection of the chest, we must
begin to change our plan of treatment. If the huskiness continues, and
the discharge from the nose is increased and thicker, and the animal is
losing flesh and becoming weak, we must give only half the quantity of
the sedative and diuretic medicine, and add some mild tonic, as gentian,
chamomile, and ginger, with occasional emetics, taking care to keep the
bowels in a laxative but not purging state. The dog should likewise be
urged to eat; and, if he obstinately refuses ail food, he should be
forced with strong beef jelly, for a very great degree of debility will
now ensue

We have thus far considered the treatment of distemper from its
commencement; but it may have existed several days before we were
consulted, and the dog may be thin and husky, and refusing to eat. In
such case we should give an emetic, and then a dose of salts, and after
that proceed to the tonic and fever balls.

Should the strength of the animal continue to decline, and the discharge
from the nose become purulent and offensive, the fever medicine must be
omitted, and the tonic balls, with carbonate of iron, administered. Some
veterinary surgeons are very fond of gum resins and balsams. Mr. Blaine,
in his excellent treatise on the distemper in his Canine Pathology,
recommends myrrh and benjamin, and balsam of Peru and camphor. I much
doubt the efficacy of these drugs. They are beginning to get into
disrepute in the practice of human medicine; and I believe that if they
were all banished from the veterinary Materia Medica we should
experience no loss. When the dog begins to recover, although not so
rapidly as we could wish, the tonic balls, without the iron, may be
advantageously given, with now and then an emetic, if huskiness should
threaten to return; but mild and wholesome food, and country or good
air, will be the best tonics.

If the discharge from the nose become very offensive, the lips swelled
and ulcerated, and the breath fetid, half an ounce of yeast may be
administered every noon, and the tonics morning and night; and the mouth
should be frequently washed with a solution of chloride of lime.

At this period of the disease the sub-maxillary glands are sometimes
very much enlarged, and a tumour or abscess is formed, which, if not
timely opened, breaks, and a ragged, ill-conditioned ulcer is formed,
very liable to spread, and very difficult to heal. It is prudent to
puncture this tumour as soon as it begins to point, for it will never
disperse. After the opening, a poultice should be applied to cleanse the
ulcer; after which it should be daily washed with the compound tincture
of benjamin, and dressed with calamine ointment. Some balls should be
given, and the animal liberally fed.

Should the fits appear in an early stage, give a strong emetic; then
bleed, and open the bowels with five or six grains of calomel and a
quarter grain of opium: after this insert a seton, and then commence the
tonic balls.

The progress of fits in the early stages of the disease may thus be
arrested. The occurrence of two or three should not make us despair;
but, if they occur at a later period, and when the dog is much reduced,
there is little hope. This additional expenditure of animal power will
probably soon carry him off. All that is to be done, is to administer a
strong emetic, obviate costiveness by castor oil, and give the tonic
balls with opium.

Of the treatment of the yellow disease little can be said; we shall not
succeed in one case in twenty. When good effect has been produced, it
has been by one large bleeding, opening the bowels well with Epsom
salts, and then giving grain doses of calomel twice a day in a tonic
ball.

While it is prudent to obviate costiveness, we should recollect that
there is nothing more to be dreaded, in every stage of distemper, than
diarrhoea. The purging of distemper will often bid defiance to the most
powerful astringents. This shows the folly of giving violent cathartics
in distemper; and, when I have heard of the ten, and twenty, and thirty
grains of calomel that are sometimes given, I have thought it fortunate
that the stomach of the dog is so irritable. The greater part of these
kill-or-cure doses is ejected, otherwise the patient would soon be
carried off by super-purgation. There is an irritability about the whole
of the mucous membrane that may be easily excited, but cannot be so
readily allayed; and, therefore, except in the earliest stage of
distemper, or in fits, or limiting ourselves to the small portion of
calomel which enters into our emetic, I would never give a stronger
purgative than castor-oil or Epsom salts. It is of the utmost
consequence that the purging of distemper should be checked as soon as
possible.

In some diseases a sudden purging, and even one of considerable
violence, constitutes what is called the crisis. It is hailed as a
favourable symptom, and from that moment the animal begins to recover;
but this is never the case in distemper: it is a morbid action which is
then going on, and which produces a dangerous degree of debility.

The proper treatment of purging in cases of distemper, is first to give
a good dose of Epsom salts, in order to carry away anything that may
offend, and then to ply the animal with mingled absorbents and
astringents. A scruple of powdered chalk, ten grains of catechu, and
five of ginger, with a quarter of a grain of opium, made into a ball
with palm oil, may be given to a middle-sized dog twice or thrice every
day. To this may be added injections of gruel, with the compound chalk
mixture and opium.

When the twitchings which I have described begin to appear, a seton is
necessary, whatever may be the degree to which the animal is reduced.
Some stimulating embrocation, such as tincture of cantharides, may be
rubbed along the whole course of the spine; and the medicine which has
oftenest, but not always, succeeded, is castor-oil, syrup of buckthorn,
and syrup of white poppies, given morning and night, and a tonic ball at
noon. If the dog will not now feed, he should be forced with strong
soup. As soon, however, as the spasms spread over him, accompanied by a
moaning that increases to a cry, humanity demands that we put an end to
that which we cannot cure. Until this happens I would not despair; for
many dogs have been saved that have lain several days perfectly
helpless.

As to the chorea which I have mentioned as an occasional sequel of
distemper, if the dog is in tolerable condition, and especially if he is
gaining flesh, and the spring or summer is approaching, there is a
chance of his doing well. A seton is the first thing; the bowels should
be preserved from constipation; and the nitrate of silver, in doses of
one-eighth of a grain, made into a pill with linseed meal, and increased
to a quarter of a grain, should be given morning and night.

We should never make too sure of the recovery of a distempered dog, nor
commit ourselves by too early a prognosis. It is a treacherous disease;
the medicines should be continued until every symptom has fairly
disappeared; and for a month at least.

It may be interesting to add the following account of the distemper in
dogs, by Dr. Jenner. Several of our modern writers have copied very
closely from him.

"That disease among dogs which has familiarly been called the
'distemper,' has not hitherto, I believe, been, much noticed by
medical men. My situation in the country favouring my wishes to make
some observations on this singular malady, I availed myself of it,
during several successive years, among a large number of foxhounds
belonging to the Earl of Berkeley; and, from observing how frequently
it has been confounded with hydrophobia, I am induced to lay the
result of my inquiries before the Medical and Chirurgical Society. It
may be difficult, perhaps, precisely to ascertain the period of its
first appearance in Britain. In this and the neighbouring counties, I
have not been able to trace it back beyond the middle of the last
century; but it has since spread universally. I knew a gentleman who,
about forty-five years ago, destroyed the greater part of his hounds,
from supposing them mad, when the distemper first broke out among
them; so little was it then known by those most conversant with dogs.
On the continent I find it has been known for a much longer period; it
is as contagious among dogs as the small-pox, measles, or scarlet
fever among the human species; and the contagious miasmata, like those
arising from the diseases just mentioned, retain their infectious
properties a long time after separation from the distempered animal.
Young hounds, for example, brought in a state of health into a kennel,
where others have gone through the distemper, seldom escape it. I have
endeavoured to destroy the contagion by ordering every part of a
kennel to be carefully washed with water, then whitewashed, and
finally to be repeatedly fumigated with the vapour of marine acid, but
without any good result.

"The dogs generally sicken early in the second week after exposure to
the contagion; it is more commonly a violent disease than otherwise,
and cuts off at least one in three that are attacked by it. It
commences with inflammation of the substance of the lungs, and
generally of the mucous membrane of the bronchi. The inflammation at
the same time seizes on the membranes of the nostrils, and those
lining the bones of the nose, particularly the nasal portion of the
ethmoid bone. These membranes are often inflamed to such a degree as
to occasion extravasation of blood, which I have observed coagulated
on their surface. The breathing is short and quick, and the breath is
often fetid; the teeth are covered with a dark mucus. There is
frequently a vomiting of a glairy fluid. The dog commonly refuses
food, but his thirst seems insatiable, and nothing cheers him like the
sight of water. The bowels, although generally constipated as the
disease advances, are frequently affected with diarrhoea at its
commencement. The eyes are inflamed, and the sight is often obscured
by mucus secreted from the eyelids, or by opacity of the cornea. The
brain is often affected as early as the second day after the attack;
the animal becomes stupid, and his general habits are changed. In this
state, if not prevented by loss of strength, he sometimes wanders from
his home. He is frequently endeavouring to expel by forcible
expirations the mucus from the trachea and fauces, with a peculiar
rattling noise. His jaws are generally smeared with it, and it
sometimes flows out in a frothy state, from his frequent champing.

"During the progress of the disease, especially in its advanced
stages, he is disposed to bite and gnaw anything within his reach; he
has sometimes epileptic fits, and a quick succession of general though
slight convulsive spasms of the muscles. If the dog survive, this
affection of the muscles continues through life. He is often attacked
with fits of a different description; he first staggers, then tumbles,
rolls, cries as if whipped, and tears up the ground with his teeth and
fore feet: he then lies down senseless and exhausted. On recovering,
he gets up, moves his tail, looks placid, comes to a whistle, and
appears in every respect much better than before the attack. The eyes,
during this paroxysm, look bright, and, unless previously rendered dim
by mucus, or opacity of the cornea, seem as if they were starting from
their sockets. He becomes emaciated, and totters from feebleness in
attempting to walk, or from a partial paralysis of the hind legs. In
this state he sometimes lingers on till the third or fourth week, and
then either begins to show signs of returning health (which seldom
happens when the symptoms have continued with this degree of
violence), or expires. During convalescence, he has sometimes, though
rarely, profuse haemorrhage from the nose.