Note 120 — ARRIAN ON COURSING.
William Dansey translation
Ψώρας ἐμπίπλασθαι. Mange is a chronic inflammation of the skin, constitutional in some dogs, in others infectious, and in a few cases I have known it hereditary.
Ancient sportsmen had great dread of mange in their kennels. Gratius, the only one who has entered much into canine pathology amongst the cynegetical writers, recommends that the first dog affected with mange should be destroyed, to prevent others from catching so loathsome a disease—a radical cure!
Gratii Cyneg. v. 408.
At si deformi lacerum dulcedine corpus Persequitur scabies, longi via pessima lethi, In primo accessu tristis medicina; sed unà Pernicies redimenda animâ, quæ prima sequaci Sparsa malo est, ne dira trahant contagia vulgi.
If, however, the disease be of a mild type and slow in its progress, it is curable, he says, with an ointment which he prescribes, but which I do not introduce here, as the cutaneous detergents of the scientific Delabere Blaine will be found by the reader far more efficacious. Venesection and purgation, as recommended by Savary, are most important auxiliaries to inunction:
Album Dianæ Leporicidæ. L. vi. p. 79.
Altera latrantum pestis, commercia quæ per Vicina insinuans sese, diffunditur agmen In totum, tenerosque brevi depascitur artus, Deformis scabies, hoc potu ventre soluto, Victa fugit, si vena die sit aperta sequenti: Atque malum bini post intervalla diei, Toto, quod docuit Fulloxius, unguine cures.
Mayster of Game. c. xix. fol. 70.
De Langley’s instructions to the kennel-man are excellent: “I wyll hym lerne that onys in the day he voyde the kenel and make it al clene, and remeve her strawe, and putt agayn ffressh new straw, a greet dele and ryght thikke; and ther as he leith it the houndes shall lye, and the place there as thei shuld lye shuld be made of tree a foot hie fro the erthe, and than the strawe should be leide upon, bi cause that the moystnesse of the erthe shuld not make hem morfound, ne engender other siknesse bi the which thei myght be the wors for huntyng,” &c. And before, he says: c. xiii. fol. 56.“The skabbe cometh to hem whan thei abiden in her kenel to longe and gon not on huntyng, or ellis her litter and couche is unclene kept, or ellis the strawe is not remevid and hur water not fressh; and shortly the hound is unclene, I hold, and evel kept or long waterles, havyn comonly this mamewe.”