Symptoms. After a febrile condition of variable length, but usually of a high intensity, red spots appear on the head, neck, chest, belly or inside the arms and thighs, at first like flea bites, but passing through the stage of papule to become vesicular on the sixth day. About the ninth or tenth day they become purulent, and in two or three days more a black, concave, circular crust has formed which is soon detached. The eruption may be local or general, discrete or confluent and the issue of the case will depend much on this character. In exceptional cases the eruption invades the mouth, eye, throat, stomach, or intestines. Croker notes the accompaniment of a fatal lobular catarrhal pneumonia.
It must be carefully distinguished from urticaria, eczema, and eruptions due to pustulating irritants.
Treatment is in the main the same as for sheep, care being taken to secure perfect cleanliness, pure air, dry clean litter, easily digested food, and protection from crowding, undue heat, cold or wet. Buttermilk and other acidulous and diuretic drinks are recommended, and careful attention to the state of the bowels throughout.
Prevention is still more important, and better than any treatment would be the most rigorous measures for its extinction along the lines laid down for sheep pox. Whether the infection has been derived from man or sheep it must be looked on as eminently dangerous to the class of animal from which it originated, and every available means used for its extinction.
DOG POX: VARIOLA CANINA.
Dog pox is rare, the affection occurring especially in the young. It is said to be derived in certain cases from smallpox patients (Weiskopf), and in others from sheep pox (Röll). The latter claims that the dog has also its own specific form. Dupuis and others claim experimental transmission from man to dog. At the same time eruptions connected with gastric or hepatic disorder, distemper, eczema, or aphthous fever are liable to be mistaken for it.
Symptoms. The young animals suffer from fever for a day or two, followed by heat and redness on the sides and belly, and points of deeper red, like flea bites, which gradually evolve through papules and vesicles to pustules, and terminate in crusts, that drop off leaving round bare spots. The vesicles may appear locally or generally and may be discrete or confluent. Sucking puppies, when attacked usually perish.
In treatment the same hygienic measures are demanded as for other animals, special care being required to keep the bowels and kidneys acting in a healthy manner. Perfect cleanliness must be secured, and nonstimulating easily digested food. Excessive fever would demand tepid baths, cold sponging, or acetanilid, and undue warmth, crowding and cold exposure must be alike guarded against.
In view of the alleged sources of the disease in man and sheep, the strictest seclusion of the affected dog, in disinfected surroundings will become absolutely essential and when this cannot be carried out he should be summarily destroyed.