Rheumatism and Palsy

I do not know any animal so subject to

rheumatism

as the dog, nor any one in which, if it is early and properly treated, it is so manageable.

We agree with our author, that the canine family are exceedingly liable to inflammation of the fibrous and muscular structures of the body, and there is no disease from which they suffer more, both in their youth and old age, than rheumatism. No particular species of dogs are more subject to its attacks than others, all being alike victims to its ravages. Mr. Blaine remarks, that the bowels always sympathize with other parts of the body suffering under this disease, and that inflammation will always be found existing in the abdominal viscera, if rheumatism be present, and the lower bowels will be attended with a painful torpor, which he designates as rheumatic colic. We ourselves noticed, that old setters particularly, when suffering from this disease, are frequently attacked with an acute diarrhoea, or suffer from obstinate constipation attended by griping pains, but did not know that this state of things was so uniform an accompaniment to the other affection. There are two varieties of rheumatism, the acute and chronic, both of which are attended with either general fever or local inflammation. The attacks usually come on rather suddenly, the joints swell, the pulse becomes full and tense, the parts tender, and the eyes blood-shot, the stomach deranged, and the bowels costive. Severe lancinating pain runs through the articulation, and along the course of the larger muscles, the tongue is coated, the muzzle hot and dry, and the poor animal howls with agony. The breathing becomes laboured, all food is rejected, and if you attempt to move the sufferer he sends forth piteous cries of distress. The causes of this serious affection are very numerous; among the most usual and active agents may be enumerated, exposure to atmospherical vicissitudes, remaining wet and idle after coming from the water, damp kennels, suppressed perspiration, metastasis of eruptive diseases, luxurious living, laziness and over-feeding. These and many other causes are all busy in the production of this disease. Duck dogs on the Chesapeake, we have noticed as often suffering from this affection, owing no doubt to the great exposure they are obliged to endure; but few of them arrive at old age without being martyrs to the chronic form. Chronic rheumatism, generally the result of the other form of disease, is most usually met with in old dogs: it is attended with little fever, although the local inflammation and swelling is sometimes considerable. The pain is often stationary in one shoulder or loin, at other times shifts about suddenly to other portions of the body. The muscles are tender and the joints stiff, the animal seems lame till he becomes healed, and limber when all appearance of the disease vanishes. In old cases the limbs become so much enlarged, and the joints so swollen, that the dog is rendered perfectly useless, and consequently increases his sufferings by idleness. This form of the disease is known as gout.
Treatment of acute rheumatism — bleeding largely is very important in this affection, and if followed up with two or three purges of aloes, gamboge, colocynth and calomel will arrest the progress of this disease.

Made into four pills, two to be given at night, and the other the following morning. If these medicines should not be handy, give a large purging ball of aloes, to be followed by a full dose of salts. When the inflammatory action is not sufficiently high to demand depletion, warm bathing, friction and keeping the dog wrapped up in blankets before a fire will generally afford relief. If the pain appear very severe, it will be necessary to repeat the baths at short intervals: great attention must be paid to the state of the bowels: if a diarrhoea supervenes, it must not he checked too suddenly, by the use of astringent medicines, but rather corrected by small doses of oil and magnesia. If constipation attended with colic be the character of the affection, small quantities of oil and turpentine in connexion with warm enemata will be the proper remedies. If paralysis should occur, it will be found very difficult to overcome, but must be treated, after the reduction of inflammation, upon principles laid down under the head of this latter affection. Blisters to the spine, setons, electricity, [acupuncturation], &c.
Treatment of chronic rheumatism — warm baths are useful, and warm housing absolutely necessary, attention to diet, and an occasional purge of blue mass and aloes, together with electricity, acupuncture, rubefacient applications to the spine, &c. — L.

[warm]

bath — perchance a bleeding — a dose or two of the castor-oil mixture, and an embrocation composed of spirit of turpentine, hartshorn, camphorated spirit, and laudanum, will usually remove it in two or three days, unless it is complicated with muscular sprains, or other lesions, such as the

chest-founder

of kennels.

This chest-founder is a singular complaint, and often a pest in kennels that are built in low situations, and where bad management prevails. Where the huntsman or whippers-in are too often in a hurry to get home, and turn their dogs into the kennel panting and hot; where the beds are not far enough from the floor, or the building, if it should be in a sufficiently elevated situation, has yet a northern aspect and is unsheltered from the blast, chest-founder prevails; and I have known half the pack affected by it after a severe run, the scent breast-high, and the morning unusually cold. It even occasionally passes on into palsy.

The veterinary surgeon will be sometimes consulted respecting this provoking muscular affection. His advice will comprise — dryness, attention to the bowels, attention to the exercise-ground, and perhaps, occasionally, setons — not where the huntsman generally places them, on the withers above, but on the brisket below, and defended from the teeth of the dog by a roller of a very simple construction, passing round the chest between the fore legs and over the front of the shoulders on either side.

The pointer, somewhat too heavy before, and hardly worked, becomes what is called chest-foundered. From his very make it is evident that, in long-continued and considerable exertion, the subscapular muscles will be liable to sprain and inflammation. There will be inflammation of the fasciæ;, induration, loss of power, loss of nervous influence and palsy. Cattle, driven far and fast to the market, suffer from the same causes.

By [palsy], we mean a partial or complete loss of the powers of motion or sensation in some portion of the muscular system: this affection is very common to the canine race, and very few of them reach an advanced age without having at some time in their life experienced an attack of this malady.
The loins and hind legs suffer oftener than other parts, in fact we do not recollect ever meeting with paralysis of the fore limbs alone. Although the limbs become perfectly powerless, and are only dragged after the animal by the combined efforts of the fore legs and back, it is seldom that they lose their sensibility. — L.

Palsy is frequent, as in the dog. However easy it may be to subdue a rheumatic affection, in its early stage, by prompt attention, yet if it is neglected, it very soon simulates, or becomes essentially connected with, or converted into, palsy.

No animal presents a more striking illustration of the connexion between intestinal irritation and palsy than the dog. He rarely or never has enteritis, even in its mildest form, without some loss of power over the hinder extremities. This may at first arise from the participation of the lumbar muscles with the intestinal irritation; but, if the disease of the bowels continues long, it will be evident enough that it is not pain alone that produces the constrained and incomplete action of the muscles of the hind extremities, but that there is an actual loss of nervous power. A dog is often brought to the veterinary surgeon, with no apparent disease about him except a staggering walk from weakness of the hind limbs. He eats well and is cheerful, and his muzzle is moist and cool; but his belly is tucked up, and there are two longitudinal cords, running parallel to each other, which will scarcely yield to pressure. The surgeon orders the castor-oil mixture twice or thrice daily, until the bowels are well acted upon, and, as soon as that is accomplished, the dog is as strong and as well as ever. Perhaps his hind limbs are dragged behind him; a warm bath is ordered, he is dosed well wilh the castor-oil mixture, and, if it is a recent case, the animal is well in a few days. In more confirmed palsy, the charge, or plaster on the loins, is added to the action of the aperient on the bowels. The process may be somewhat slow, but it is seldom that the dog does not ultimately and perfectly recover.

It is easy to explain this connexion, although we should have scarcely supposed that it would have been so intimate, had not frequent experience forced it on our observation. The rectum passes through the pelvis. Whatever may be said of that intestine, considering its vertical position in the human being, it is always charged with fæces in the quadruped. It therefore shares more in the effect, whatever that may be, which is produced by the retention of fæces in the intestinal canal, and it shares also in the inflammatory affection of other parts of the canal. Almost in contact with this viscus, or at least passing through the pelvis, are the crural nerves from the lumbar vertebræ, the obtusator running round the rim of the pelvis, the glutal nerve occupying its back, and the sciatic hastening to escape from it. It is not difficult to imagine that these, to a certain degree, will sympathize with the healthy and also the morbid state of the rectum; and that, when it is inert, or asleep, or diseased, they also may be powerless too. Here is something like fact to establish a very important theory, and which should be deeply considered by the sportsman and the surgeon.

Loss of the contractile power of the sphincters of the bladder and rectum, sometimes attends this disease, and involuntary evacuations are constantly taking place, or costiveness and retention are the consequences. — L.

[Mr]

. Dupuy has given a valuable account of the knowledge we possess of the diseases of the spinal marrow in our domestic quadrupeds.

He has proved:

That in our domestic animals the spinal marrow is scarcely ever affected through the whole of its course.
That the dorsal and lumbar regions are the parts oftenest affected.
That inflammation of the spinal marrow of these regions always produces palsy, more or less complete, of the abdominal members.
That, in some cases, this inflammation is limited to the inferior or superior parts of the spinal marrow, and that there is loss only of feeling or of motion.
That sometimes animals die of palsy without any organic lesion.

Blows on the head, producing effusion on the brain, poisoning by lead, inflammation of the spinal marrow, affections of the nerves, caries of the spine, costiveness and affections of the bowels, are all productive of palsy. [If] the disease proceeds from rheumatism, or other inflammatory affections, independent of any organic lesion, the disease, if taken early, is not difficult to overcome in the young subject. Warm baths, bleeding, purging, and stimulating applications to the parts and along the spine, will answer. Castor oil and turpentine is a good purge: where the malady depends upon costiveness, purges of aloes should be administered in connexion with warm enemata, stimulating frictions along the spine, and hot baths. Croton oil dropped on the tongue will also be of great benefit: if there should be effusion or compression from fracture of the bones of the cranium, nothing but trephining will be of any service, as we can hardly hope for the absorption of the matter, and the removal of the spicula of bone can alone afford relief to the patient. Paralysis arising from poisoning should be treated as described under the head of mineral poisons. Chronic cases of paralysis arising from want of tone of the nerves and spinal marrow, repeated blistering, introduction of the seton along the spine, electricity, &c., have all been tried with some success.
[Strychnia], from its peculiar effects upon the animal economy, and its almost exclusive direction to the nerves of motion, makes it a medicine particularly applicable to the treatment of this disease. It may be given in all stages of the malady, but is most serviceable after the reduction of inflammatory action, and when we are convinced that the disease depends upon want of tone in the motor muscles.
Great care should be had in its administration, as it is a powerful poison in too large doses, to a large dog; commence with a quarter of a grain in pill, three times daily, and gradually increase to a half grain or more if the animal seems to bear it well. But it should be discontinued immediately on the appearance of any constitutional symptoms, such as spasmodic twitchings of the eyelids or muzzle. — L.

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