DISTEMPER, a germ disease of the dog family commonly considered as a form of in fluenza. It affects not only the domestic dog but also foxes, wolves, jackals and the hyena. It generally attacks young dogs— dogs over a year old rarely take it — and only once during life. In large cities the disease may break out at any time; in the small towns and in the country it is more prevalent in hot weather. It is contagious in the highest degree, and is only communicable by infection. In most cases a running from the nose and eyes is one of the first and chief symptoms. This defluxion be comes after some time mucous and purulent, loading the eyes and obstructing the nostrils and whenever the animal is subjected to a draught of air, or excitement of any kind, it has violent fits of coughing combined with vomiting, it soon begins to lose appetite, its flesh begins to waste and it becomeslistless and irritable. All the mucous membranes of the body are affected. If the disease be virulent, symptoms of affection of the brain manifest themselves accompanied by convulsions or by convulsive twitchings, resembling Saint Vitus' dance. In such cases the dog is often sup posed to be mad, and frequently destroyed in consequence. Pneumonia is not an infrequent
supervention of the disorder, and the bowels are more or less affected by diarrhota and dysenteric discharges. In the . first stage of the disease laxatives, emetics, and occasional bleeding are the principal remedies; diarrhoea should be checked by astringents, and to re duce the violence of the fits warm bathing and antispasmodics should be resorted to. Medicine, however, is quite secondary in the treatment of distemper: good nursing and dry comfortable quarters in an even temperature are the essentials. The disease generally runs its course in from two to three weeks. The death rate from it is much larger in the large cities than in small towns and rural districts.
The term distemper is sometimes applied erroneously to influenza in horses, and to epi zootic pleuro-pneumonia in cattle.
Consult Hill, I. W., (Management and Dis eases of the Dog' (new ed., London 1881) ; Hutyra and Marek, (Pathology and Therapeu tics of Diseases of Animals,' Vol. I (Chicago 1912) ; Muller and Glass, (Diseases of the Dog (3d ed., London 1911).