It is attended with excessive debility, and,
unless properly combated, is rapidly fatal.

The stomach and intestines are always involved; I have never known a case
in which either escaped. The affection of the first is generally shown by
sickness during the earliest stage; when also the derangement of the last
is denoted by either costiveness or relaxation, the bowels never being
perfectly regular; towards the latter stages, or about the third or fourth
week, the appetite sometimes becomes enormous; the craving for food is
then unnatural, and is so intense that no quantity can appease the hunger.
The animal will eat anything; dry bread is taken with avidity, and stones,
cinders, straw, and every species of filth are eaten with apparent relish.
Such, however, is not always the case, since it is not unusual for the
appetite entirely to fail. In either instance the dog rapidly wastes; the
flesh seems to melt as it were away, and the change produced by a few days
is startling; from having been fat, a thinness which exposes every bone is
witnessed in a shorter time than would be supposed possible. At this
period vomiting may come on; but when the animal is morbidly ravenous, the
stomach does not generally reject its contents. After death I have found
it loaded with the most irritating substances, and always acutely
inflamed; but no sickness in any instance of this kind has been observed.
Vomiting is most generally absent, but the protruded and reddened
appearance of the anus will give a clue to the actual condition of the
alimentary tube. The stomach is inflamed, not throughout, but in various
parts which are in different stages of disease. The pyloric orifice is
always more affected than the cardiac; the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum,
are inflamed; the caecum is enlarged, inflamed, and generally impacted. The
rectum, however, suffers most severely; it is much reddened and thickened,
often to an extraordinary degree. I have known blood to be exuded from the
surface of this bowel in such quantities as to destroy the life from
actual hemorrhage. In one case, however, a spaniel vomited more than
half-a-pint of blood previous to its death, which took place two hours
afterwards. A small quantity of blood is ordinarily passed with the faeces
toward the latter stage; but in several cases a large amount of pure
blood, partly coagulated and unmingled with any faecal matter, has flowed
from the body in a continued stream, to which there