There is another important point, and that is in regard to a dog's bedding. The more frequently this can be .changed during sickness the better. When I have taken a lot of dogs to a bench show, my own and others, especially if I knew they had never had distemper, I have always made it a rule to give these dogs either one or the other of these remedies during the show, and for a few days after, as a safeguard against their contracting distemper at the show, and with only one exception in many years of exhibiting, I have never lost a dog from its being at a show. I believe, if this was made a practice by all exhibitors at dog shows, that we would not hear of so many cases of distemper as an after-result of exhibiting.

The following article on this disease was written by Wm. A. Bruette, D. V. S., ("Dent."), the well- known veterinary surgeon of Chicago. It is a very complete and comprehensive treatise on the subject by a man who has had experience with dogs for years, and who, besides being a qualified veterinarian, is also a gradute in human practice and is considered reliable authority by many dog fanciers:

"Distemper. (By Dent.) Of the various diseases that dogdom is heir to distemper is the one particular black cloud to the breeder, as its ravages are greater among the finely bred dogs kept in large kennels, or as pets, whose systems are weakened by in-and-in breeding, or the highly artificial life they are forced to lead. Dogs of low degree are susceptible to the malady, but rarely succumb. The common cur when attacked retires for a few days under the first available house or porch, to reappear perhaps a little thinner and more careworn, but with his usual independence and aggressiveness.

"The disease has been compared to typhoid fever in man, but I can see but little analogy between them. Distemper is an infantile disorder; typhoid fever is not. The diseases are communicated in an entirely different manner. The characteristic lesion of typhoid fever is a congestion and tumefaction of Pyer's patches (i. e., small collections of intestinal glands). In distemper the mucous membrane lining the bowels, when the alimentary tract is the seat of the action of the virus, may be ulcerated along its entire course, but the patches of Pyer are not particularly affected and never display those lesions so characteristic of typhoid.

"Of the various diseases man is subject to, measles most closely resembles distemper in dogs. Both are infectious infantile disorders transmitted through similar channels, and one attack successfully overcome renders immunity from a second through the course of the animal's life, with but a few exceptions. Catarrhal symptoms, pulmonary complications and dysentery are common to both; convulsions also appear in both measles and distemper; and finally the principal characteristic of measles, viz: the rash, which develops on the face coincident with the disease, spreading in twenty-four hours to all parts of the body, resembles the rash and pinkish prickly condition of the skin noticeable in some cases of distemper in the first stages, and the pimples that break out along the back and under the belly and thighs, and the dandruff and desquamation of the cuticle in the latter stages of distemper.

"The cause of distemper has been and is a subject that has been discussed and disagreed upon by authorities and breeders of experience in a very interesting manner. Some hold to the opinion that it may arise spontaneously, or as a result of damp, cold, poorly ventilated kennels, defective drainage, exposure, general neglect, improper putrescent food and other anti-hygienic conditions. More modern writers hold tenaciously to the germ theory, discarding altogether and scoffing at the theory of spontaneity as being based solely upon negative evidence and insist that the disease arises and exists solely as a result of infection of the system by the specific virus or contagion of distemper, and claim the earlier ideas of spontaneous origin are based solely upon failure to account for the disease by infection, and to observe and appreciate the remarkable vitality of the germ and the ease and innumerable channels by which it can be transmitted from an infected animal to one that was to all intents completely isolated.

"In the face of recent scientific investigation and discoveries, and in a disease so specifically contagious as distemper, it is impossible to discard the germ theory. The distinctive microbe which causes the disease - probably a bacillus - has not been isolated; but the virus has been cultivated, and in the seventh generation will produce the disease when inoculated in dogs, and still further attenuations of the virus will produce the disease in a mild form which affords the animal protection from future attacks. These experiments, while not successful in all ways, point conclusively to the fact that it is only a question of time when this disease will be as successfully inoculated against as smallpox is in the human family.

"Most dog breeders are firm in the conviction that they have had cases arise spontaneously, and the rapid dissemination the disease works under anti-hygenic surroundings will, as a more intimate knowledge of the life and manner in which specific disease producing micro-organisms operate, entitle hygienic surroundings, such as food, light and air, to an equal footing with the morbid poison so far as the severity or mortality of the disease is concerned.

"Germs and microbes of various kinds, capable of producing specific diseases, are found everywhere in earth, air and water. All animals swallow them in their food, breathe them into their lungs in countless numbers, and the body is at all times in contact with them, nevertheless they produce no disturbance of the system. In experiments microbes introduced into the blood of healthy animals were inactive, whereas if the same an mal became impoverished and weakened through foul air, impure food or water, or defective elimination, the blood became impure or loaded with decomposed matter; and an appropriate pabulum was created in which the germs lived, multiplied and set up their specific morbid action to the detr.ment and possible destruction of the economy. The natural conclus en is that while the specific germ is necessary for the production of a specific disease, it is equally essential that the system be in such a condition as to afford a proper pabulum for the reproduction, which is necessary for its specific action, otherwise it would be overcome by the economy and eliminated from the system; just as grains of wheat reproduce themselves and are potent under proper conditions of earth, air, water and heat, or are inert and disintegrate when thier surroundings are unsuitable. "Germs do net at all times attack the same organs and membranes. But the discharge from the particular set affected contains the virus in its most concentrated form. This accounts for the dread breeders have formed, through experience, of the nasal discharges of an affected animal, and for the vigorous objection frequently raised at a dog show by some veteran owner who has observed a careless attendant allowing the dogs to drink from a bucket he is carrying from stall to stall instead of filling the dogs' pans.