“A medical friend was telling me one day of the way they now treat bad cases of pneumonia by putting the patient into an iced bath. This is done, of course, to get the temperature down, for what so often kills in cases of pneumonia is the collapse of the heart owing to high fever. Just at this time I had a very nice young dog-hound, who had been ill with distemper for a long time; it turned to pneumonia and he was ‘blowing’ like a grampus. He had a temperature of 105°,[[4]] and was apparently as good as dead and would have been so in an hour. We carried him into the feeding room and turned the cold water hose on him—down his neck, back and all over him. He very soon began to revive and in a short time stood up with his stern erect, evidently enjoying the treatment; he stopped ‘blowing’ after a short time, and in about fifteen minutes his temperature was 101½°. We carefully dried him without rubbing him more than we could help, and put him back into hospital. He seemed quite comfortable, the ‘blowing’ had entirely ceased and did not return.
“That hound did well for the next ten days, and we quite thought we had saved him when he suddenly died of heart failure. I own this experiment was not a success entirely, but here we had a case of very bad pneumonia in which the patient after a long illness was at the point of death, who through our success in getting his temperature down and completely stopping the ‘blowing,’ lived on and did well for ten days. I firmly believe if his strength had not been undermined by a long spell of illness before we tried the experiment that he would have recovered.
“I have tried all the so-called ‘cures’ for distemper, both old receipts and new, in the form of balls, powders, and liquid, and have come to the conclusion that they have little to do with a hound’s recovery.
“You use someone’s ‘Distemper Balls’ one year when you happen to have a mild run of the disease, and having very few fatal cases that year, you at once think it is this wonderful ball that has cured them!
“Next year you use the same ‘cure’ and your young hounds die like flies. I notice that puppies at walk often get what seems to be distemper and get over it, but when they come in down they go with the kennel distemper and they die.
“We always keep going in the hospital one or more Cresoline lamps, such as are sold at chemists, for burning in rooms of children suffering from whooping cough; this, I am sure, helps the lung and throat cases, and at any rate is a good disinfectant and can do no harm. I am now erecting, detached from the rest of the kennel buildings, a large brick hospital with a range of hot water pipes round three sides of the room, with Tobin ventilators to admit fresh air without creating a draught, and a good-sized lantern skylight in the roof to let out the foul air; and hope this may help us to nurse a larger proportion of distempered hounds through their trouble.
“It is a curious fact, but I have constantly observed that when, as there often are, among the lot ‘down’ with the disease, a young hound or two which, by reason of size or some other cause, are useless, and for that reason get no extra attention and no physic; these pull through without difficulty, whilst the pick of the entry, with every care bestowed upon them, die off wholesale. I am quite sure the distemper one gets in hound-kennels is quite different from that which the ordinary cur dog gets.
“I have tried carefully for two seasons Dr. Physallix’s inoculation serum, under two different veterinary surgeons, both clever men; but all to no purpose, the mortality being quite as high in the inoculated cases as in the whelps that had not been inoculated.”
Mr. Barclay holds that the subject of distemper is one that should receive the special attention of the M.F.H. Association, that it should be taken up in earnest and researches pursued systematically.
Mr. Assheton Biddulph (King’s County) holds that the strictest care and cleanliness in the kennel do much to minimise the consequences of an attack of distemper. In his kennels a very thorough system of cleaning and ventilation, combined with very free use of disinfectants, is enforced. The kennels are washed carefully and often with disinfectants, and are subjected to a weekly purification with chloride of lime, which is spread about under the benches; moreover, they are washed out at intervals daily with some carbolic fluid. “For several years,” says Mr. Biddulph, “I had no distemper in my kennels, from the time I began to follow the system above mentioned; and I feel convinced that it was neglect and the omission to carry out my orders that caused a sore visitation of it some five years ago. Since then I have had years without suffering an attack at all, and when the disease has appeared it has been in the mildest form.”