"The treatment consists in careful nursing and cleanliness, keeping the animal moderately warm and comfortable. The disease rapidly produces intense debility, and therefore the strength should be maintained from the very commencement by frequent small doses of strong beef-tea, into which one grain of quinine has been introduced twice a day, a small quantity of port wine (from half to one teaspoonful) according to the size of the cat, and the state of debility. If there is no diarrhœa, but constipation, a small dose of castor oil or syrup of buckthorn should be given. Solid food should not be allowed until convalescence has set in. Isolation, with regard to other cats, and disinfection, should be attended to.
"Simple Catarrh demands similar treatment. Warmth, cleanliness, broth, and beef-tea, are the chief items of treatment, with a dose of castor oil if constipation is present. If the discharge obstructs the nostrils it should be removed with a sponge, and these and the eyes may be bathed with a weak lotion of vinegar and water."
"As regards inoculation for distemper," Dr. Fleming says, "it has been tried, but the remedy is often worse than the disease, at least as bad as the natural disease. Vaccination has also been tried, but it is valueless. Probably inoculation with cultivated or modified virus would be found a good and safe preventative."
I was anxious to know about this, as inoculation used to be the practice with packs of hounds.
It will be observed that Dr. Fleming treats the distemper as a kind of influenza, and considers one of the most important things is to keep up the strength of the suffering animal. Other members of the R.C.V.S., whom I have consulted, have all given the same kind of advice, not only prescribing for the sick animal wine, but brandy, as a last resource, to arouse sinking vitality. Mr. George Cheverton, of High Street, Tunbridge Wells, who is very successful with animals and their diseases, thinks it best to treat them homœopathically. The following is what he prescribes as efficacious for some of the most dire complaints with which cats are apt to be afflicted.
WORMS.
For a full-grown cat give 3 grains of santonine every night for a week or 10 days; it might be administered in milk, or given in a small piece of beef or meat of any kind. After the course give an aperient powder.
MANGE.
The best possible remedies for this disease are arsenicum, 2× trituration, and sulphur, 2× trituration, given on alternate days, as much as will lie on a threepenny piece, night and morning, administered as above.
A most useful lotion is acid sulphurous, 1 oz. to 5 oz. of water, adding about a teaspoonful of glycerine, and sponging the affected parts twice or thrice daily.