Diseases of the Nervous System: Epilepsy
in the dog assumes a most fatal character. It is an accompaniment, or a consequence, of almost every other disease. When the puppy is undergoing the process of dentition, the irritation produced by the pressure of the tooth, as it penetrates the gum, leads on to epilepsy. When he is going through the stages of distemper, with a very little bad treatment, or in spite of the best, fits occur. The degree of intestinal irritation which is caused by worms, is marked by an attack of epilepsy. If the usual exercise be neglected for a few days, and the dog is taken out, and suffered to range as he likes, the accumulation of excitability is expended in a fit.
The dog is, without doubt, the most intellectual animal. He is the companion and the friend of man: he exhibits, and is debased by some of his vices; but, to a greater degree than many will allow, he exhibits all the intelligence and the virtues of the biped. In proportion to his bulk, the weight of his brain far exceeds that of any other quadruped — the very smallest animals alone being excepted, in whom there must be a certain accumulation of medullary matter in order to give origin to the nerves of every system, as numerous in the minutest as in him of greatest bulk.
As it has been said of the human being that great power and exertion of the mental faculties are sometimes connected with a tendency to epilepsy, and, as violent emotions of joy or of grief have been known to be followed by it, I can readily account for its occurrence in the young dog, when frightened at the chiding of his master, or by the dread of a punishment which he was conscious that he had deserved. Then, too, I can understand that, when breaking loose from long confinement, he ranges in all the exuberance of joy; and especially when he flushes almost his first covey, and the game falls dead before him, his mental powers are quite overcome, and he falls into an epileptic fit.
treatment of epilepsy in the dog is simple, yet often misunderstood. It is connected with distemper in its early stage. It is the produce of inflammation of the mucous passages generally, which an emetic and a purgative will probably, by their direct medicinal effect, relieve, and free the digestive passages from some source of irritation, and by their mechanical action unburthen the respiratory ones.
When it is symptomatic of a weak state of the constitution, or connected with the after stages of distemper, the emeto-purgative must be succeeded by an anodyne, or, at least, by that which will strengthen, but not irritate the patient.
A
is an admirable auxiliary in epilepsy connected with distemper; it is a counter-irritant and a derivative, and its effects are a salutary discharge, under the influence of which inflammation elsewhere will gradually abate.