The progress of fits in the early stages of the disease may thus be arrested. The occurrence of two or three should not make us despair; but, if they occur at a later period, and when the dog is much reduced, there is little hope. This additional expenditure of animal power will probably soon carry him off. All that is to be done, is to administer a strong emetic, obviate costiveness by castor oil, and give the tonic balls with opium.
the treatment of the yellow disease little can be said; we shall not succeed in one case in twenty. When good effect has been produced, it has been by one large bleeding, opening the bowels well with Epsom salts, and then giving grain doses of calomel twice a day in a tonic ball.
it is prudent to obviate costiveness, we should recollect that there is nothing more to be dreaded, in every stage of distemper, than diarrhœa. The purging of distemper will often bid defiance to the most powerful astringents. This shows the folly of giving violent cathartics in distemper; and, when I have heard of the ten, and twenty, and thirty grains of calomel that are sometimes given, I have thought it fortunate that the stomach of the dog is so irritable. The greater part of these kill-or-cure doses is ejected, otherwise the patient would soon be carried off by super-purgation. There is an irritability about the whole of the mucous membrane that may be easily excited, but cannot be so readily allayed; and, therefore, except in the earliest stage of distemper, or in fits, or limiting ourselves to the small portion of calomel which enters into our emetic, I would never give a stronger purgative than castor-oil or Epsom salts. It is of the utmost consequence that the purging of distemper should be checked as soon as possible.
In some diseases a sudden purging, and even one of considerable violence, constitutes what is called the crisis. It is hailed as a favourable symptom, and from that moment the animal begins to recover; but this is never the case in distemper: it is a morbid action which is then going on, and which produces a dangerous degree of debility.
The proper treatment of purging in cases of distemper, is first to give a good dose of Epsom salts, in order to carry away anything that may offend, and then to ply the animal with mingled absorbents and astringents. A scruple of powdered chalk, ten grains of catechu, and five of ginger, with a quarter of a grain of opium, made into a ball with palm oil, may be given to a middle-sized dog twice or thrice every day. To this may be added injections of gruel, with the compound chalk mixture and opium.
When the twitchings which I have described begin to appear, a seton is necessary, whatever may be the degree to which the animal is reduced. Some stimulating embrocation, such as tincture of cantharides, may be rubbed along the whole course of the spine; and the medicine which has oftenest, but not always, succeeded, is castor-oil, syrup of buckthorn, and syrup of white poppies, given morning and night, and a tonic ball at noon. If the dog will not now feed, he should be forced with strong soup. As soon, however, as the spasms spread over him, accompanied by a moaning that increases to a cry, humanity demands that we put an end to that which we cannot cure. Until this happens I would not despair; for many dogs have been saved that have lain several days perfectly helpless.
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