Treatment: Wash daily for a week with Pearsons fluid diluted eighty times with warm water. Afterwards dry and comb out all mats. In very bad cases it is best to cut the hair off short.
Mange (Sarcoptic or Common):
Symptoms: This disease, which is very contagious from one dog to another, and readily caught by people, is due to a small insect. The complaint once contracted soon spreads more or less all over the body, but the most favourite spots for it to attack is the skin around the eyes, the outside of the ears, the elbows, and the outside of the hind legs, as well as the skin covering the abdomen, and underneath parts of the chest. Small red spots like flea-bites appear where the insect burrows into the epidermis, and the acrid matter which they excrete sets up intolerant irritation, causing the dog to constantly scratch, breaking the coat, which is now very brittle, and leaving bare patches, besides injuring the skin and creating sores which dry and scab. If there is any doubt about the case, the skin should be scraped where bad with a knife, and the scrapings examined under a microscope, and if the disease is mange the parasite will be found.
Treatment: The disease is easily cured, and the specific remedy is powdered sulphur, one part mixed with eight parts of vegetable oil, which should be thoroughly well rubbed all over the dog every four days for three times; three or four days after the last dressing, the dog may be washed.
It is important to thoroughly disinfect the kennels by fumigation, and well washing the walls and floors with a strong solution of Pearson’s fluid; also all the collars, leads, combs, and brushes used for the dog, should be disinfected by baking or soaking in a solution of Pearson’s fluid.
Mange (Follicular):
A skin disease confined principally to puppies, though adult dogs do occasionally contract it. It is not contagious to people.
Symptoms: It is a slowly progressive disease, and may commence with a single circular bare patch, about the size of a shilling, on the face or side of nose. The disease is, of course, not confined to the head, as the first sign may appear on some part of the body or one of the legs. The patch is generally of a dirty grey colour, and upon which will be found a number of reddish pimples or elevations of the skin, somewhat larger than those seen in ordinary mange; some contain a blood-coloured fluid, others ordinary pus, or matter tinged with blood, which is easily evacuated by squeezing. This fluid contains the parasite, which looks, when examined under the microscope, like a small silk-worm.
As time goes on, the original patch increases in size and others form, the pimples break, one running into another, and unhealthy-looking sores result. When these wounds heal, the skin has a dry, corrugated appearance, and little excrescences of skin are formed, and the hair does not always grow again.
The skin in follicular mange generally turns a dark greyish-blue or black colour, and the disease is called by some people “black mange”.