DEFINITION.
Canine distemper is usually described as a specific, malignant, contagious, and infectious catarrhal fever, affecting all mucous surfaces, but primarily those of the respiratory tract. It is chiefly, but not essentially, a disease of the young animals of the canine race, appearing sporadically, enzootically or epizootically, and frequently fraught with ver serious complications and sequelae. Of these complications I shall have more to say later on.
HISTORY
It is uncertain if canine distemper was known to the ancients, but from the writings of Vigril, Elian, and other early authors we find mention of a disease affecting the dog which they termed “Cynache” or “Angina”, which appeared to have occurred as an epizootic, the lesions being confined chiefly to the throat in the form of abscesses. Aristotle merely mentions the fact that the dog was affected with three disease, of which “Cynache” was one. The disease has raged all over the Old World from as far back as A.D. 1028.
After a period of forty years of treating this scourge, it is very apparent to me that distemper itself rarely, if ever, is a “solo disease,” but it might be aptly described as a multiple toxaemia. These other toxins are not, as termed by the “old school,” secondary invaders, but they come along at the same time, coupled with distemper, constituting a very potent assortment of gangsters, and they act just time as rough as do our modern gangsters.
After years of research it is finally established that distemper is due to an ultra visible virus.
Distemper itself is a simple thing to treat and cure, but unless the accompanying gangsters are taken into account, it is a horse of another color. This is where the “old school” falls down by not recognizing the gangsters and just diagnosing the whole conglomeration as distemper and neglecting the worst part of the condition. So, viewed through “old school” eyes, canine distemper remains just as much of a muddle as ever and I fear it will always be such so long as they pursue the even tenor their ways.
After all the much flaunted varieties of serums, such as the so-called “Laidlaw Dunkin,” “Homologous Serum,” and many others, the “old school” mortality in this disease is still terrific, and I would not care to try to estimate the percentage there of. I am, you will assume, speaking chiefly of California.
Giving the devil his due, I will say that the serums have had a very hard row to how on account of the many mistaken diagnoses by the “old school.” Their use in other disease conditions than the one for which they were manufactured has done them immeasurable harm. Their indiscriminate use is hard on the patient, merely superimposing a load of foreign protein upon an already toxin-laden body, which doubles his burden and hastens many a patient to a premature grave.
It is sad, in this day and age, that the “old school” still jumps to the conclusion that when a dog-especially a young dog, say from six months to a year-shows evidence of vomition, diarrhoea, cough, conjunctival injection, nasal discharge, and convulsions, it must of necessity be the victim of a case of distemper, when it can be a host of other things.
Such is the case, however, and many a poor little canine patient, suffering from something entirely different from distemper, is given a Sub-Q dose, or “shot,” as the public like to term it, and in reality it might better be shot with a bullet and thus spared a great deal of suffering, instead of the slow, lingering illness, ultimately ending in death.
This sort of thing is going on year after year, and the “old
school” cannot, or will not, see that they are getting nowhere faster and faster. I once traveled the same road, and believe me, it is a road of sorrow, heartbreak, and tears.
It might be well here to list a few conditions that are very often diagnosed as distemper, and treated as such, entailing long drawn out hospital cases, very often ending fatally. The usual picture of the majority of these cases is as follows:.
Foremost I list -.
Poliomyelitis.
Streptococcus, all or any variety.
Distemper itself.
B. coli toxaemia.
Auto-intoxication.
Food toxins the following organisms often showing up in the picture:.
Bach’s.
Dysentery.
Gaertner.
Fecalis alkaligenes.
Morgan.
Proteus.
Coli mutabile, etc., etc.
Of late, three other organisms have been found to affect a large percentage of the canine species, viz., two Spirochetes, one the Leptospira canicola, the other the Leptospira icterohaemorrhagia The generic name Leptospira was given by Noguchi in1917. However, the organisms were first described by Inado and Ido in Japan. Leptospira canicola parasitizes the dog without demonstrable symptoms at times, and a dog can carry the parasite for a long time without untoward symptoms.
