Diseases of the Nervous System: Turnside or Giddiness
This is a singular disease prevalent among cattle, but only occasionally seen in the dog. He becomes listless, dull, off his food, and scarcely recognises any surrounding object. He has no fit, but he wanders about the room fur several hours at a time, generally or almost invariably in the same direction, and with his head on one side. At first he carefully avoids the objects that are in his way; but by degrees his mental faculties become impaired; his sense of vision is confused or lost, and he blunders against everything: in fact, if uninterrupted, he would continue his strange perambulation incessantly, until he was fairly worn out and died in convulsions.
I used to consider the complaint to be uniformly fatal. I have resorted to every remedial measure that the case could suggest. I have bled, and physicked and setoned, and blistered, and used the moxa; but all without avail, for not in a single case did I save my patient.
No opportunity of
post-mortem
examination was lost. In some cases I have found spicula projecting from the inner plate of the skull, and pressing upon or even penetrating the
dura mater
. I know not why the dog should be more subject to these irregularities of cranial surface than any of our other patients; but decidedly he is so, and where they have pressed upon the brain, there has been injection of the membranes, and sometimes effusion between them.
In some cases I have found effusion without this external pressure, and, in some cases, but comparatively few, there has not been any perceptible lesion. Hydatids have been found in the different passages leading to the cranium, but they have not penetrated.
I used to recommend that the dog should be destroyed; but I met with two or three favourable cases, and, after that, I determined to try every measure that could possibly be serviceable. I bled, and physicked, and inserted setons, and tried to prevent the utter exhaustion of the animal. When he was unable longer to perform his circumvolutions, and found that he was foiled, he laid himself down, and by degrees resumed his former habits. He was sadly impatient and noisy; but in a few cases he was cured.
We have seen but two or three cases of this disease in dogs, are led to believe that it is quite uncommon with our domestic animals. One case in a valuable setter came on suddenly, and without any apparent cause (except perhaps over-feeding), and terminated fatally in the course of a few days. — L.
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