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.
Very often a dog has a convulsion out of a clear sky, and in a case of this ind do not diagnose distemper hurriedly but first of all ascertain whether the poor dog is harboring this parasite. The points of predilection of Leptospira icterohaemorrhagia it seems to prefer the small intestines, gall bladder, common bile duct, liver, and spleen.
Meyer and others have investigated these organisms in the San Francisco area where it has been found much more prevalent than heretofore realized. I find Leptospirosis very prevalent in the southern part of the state, the canicola being the one more often found, though quite a number of cases of the icterohaemorrhagia form are encountered.
Another, Toxoplasma, member of the family Toxoplasmata, is
also encountered in many of these cases. This organism, the genus of which was created in 1909 by Nicolle and Manceau, is believed to be a protozoa but does not fit in with established classifications and will no doubt find itself classed as a protozoa.
The Toxoplasma cuniculi i very prevalent in Southern California and seems to be the chief enemy of this family. In a few blood specimens from the Mexican Border I have found the Toxoplasma gondii, but only in that particular area. The Toxoplasma cuniculi is the one usually encountered.
Fortunately, all or any of these conditions can be met and a great majority of them cured, by none other than the “indicated homoeopathic remedy,” which, after all, is merely history repeating itself.
A few words on the method of differentiating these gangsters which accompany distemper:.
Granting that the aforementioned remarks are true and that all these varying toxins and organisms enter into the picture of a case diagnosed as distemper, it might be asked, and rightly so, how the deuce do you verify such multiple findings? For instance, “Mrs. Flitter Breeches” places a dog on my examination table and wants to know just what is the matter with her dog, and she wants to know right now, and wants a remedy right now that will cure her dog of whatever it has.
She is not willing to take the dog home to await the outcome of a laboratory finding, such as a blood or other culture. She wants to know about it immediately, with as little delay as possible. I find that most of them will gladly permit the taking of a bold sample and will be perfectly satisfied to come back later in the day for a report. The only other avenue open is guessing, and giving a flock of pills, most of which wind up on the floor, or perhaps give the dog a “shot” of something.
What are we going to do with the blood sample taken?.
All of this, together with the fact that the subjective symptoms in the practice of veterinary homoeopathy is a closed book, led me to investigate the use of”Unseen Forces” to help unfold that book. The results of my investigation and research, with the great aid of my co-worker, Mr. W.W.Robinson., Jr., have culminated in the development of a system which we have tentatively designated as “Magnae Frequentiae”.
We of the Pacific Coast have completely discarded the concept of resistance and have substituted the concept of “Inductance” – and an entirely new approach becomes possible.
The phenomenon of inductance is a little more difficult to grasp than that of resistance, but think of it in this fashion: Inductance can be thought of as an electrical field, created in a coil of wire as an electrical current flows through it. The extent of the electrical field (expressed in a unit known as the “Maxwell”) depends upon the size and shape of the coil, the number of turns, and the steadiness of the current. If the correct condensing system is related to the inductance field a “tuned circuit” is the result.
It therefore follows that with the proper inductance and capacity a correct tuned circuit can be set up to act as a “carrier circuit” for the oligodynamic signals from a blood or other type of specimen. Just how the “carrier circuit” is energized is, for the time being, a confidential matter.
Think of the “carrier circuit” as analogous to your telephone. If the line is between two telephones and no one is talking, only a faint hum is heard. This is the hum of the “carrier circuit” waiting to conduct sounds. The sounds alter the pattern of the carrier waves by impressing upon them the vibratory pattern of the voice.
