Dogs and All about Them

DISTEMPER. Although more than one hundred years have elapsed since this was first imported to this country from France, a great amount of misunderstanding still prevails among a large section of dog-breeders regarding its true nature and origin. The fact is, the disease came to us with a bad name, for the French themselves deemed it incurable. In this country the old-fashioned plan of treatment was wont to be the usual rough remedies--emetics, purgatives, the seton, and the lancet. Failing in this, specifics of all sorts were eagerly sought for and tried, and are unfortunately still believed in to a very great extent. Distemper has a certain course to run, and in this disease Nature seems to attempt the elimination of the poison through the secretions thrown out by the naso-pharyngeal mucous membrane. Our chief difficulty in the treatment of distemper lies in the complications thereof. We may, and often do, have the organs of respiration attacked; we have sometimes congestion of the liver, or mucous inflammation of the bile ducts, or some lesion of the brain or nervous structures, combined with epilepsy, convulsions, or chorea. Distemper is also often complicated with severe disease of the bowels, and at times with an affection of the eyes. Causes--Whether it be that the distemper virus, the poison seedling of the disease, really originates in the kennel, or is the result of contact of one dog with another, or whether the poison floats to the kennel on the wings of the wind, or is carried there on a shoe or the point of a walking-stick, the following facts ought to be borne in mind: (1) Anything that debilitates the body or weakens the nervous system paves the way for the distemper poison; (2) the healthier the dog the more power does he possess to resist contagion; (3) when the disease is epizootic, it can often be kept at bay by proper attention to diet and exercise, frequent change of kennel straw, and perfect cleanliness; (4) the predisposing causes which have come more immediately under my notice are debility, cold, damp, starvation, filthy kennels, unwholesome food, impure air, and grief.