The Appearance of a New Clinical Picture

A New Clinical Picture

In the last few years, the picture of dog and cat physiology has been rapidly transformed for the worse.

Two violent changes have occurred, the first being a large quantity of diseases and secondly the relative behavior.

This development of strong and intense new disease patterns were absolutely missing in previous years. Skin was the most stricken organ, with dry or wet dermatitis of considerable severity. Numerous animals were affected by various degrees of severity. Frequently, the sore skin hot spot would make the animal do self-biting or furious scratching of the shoulder, back, or croup area. It’s not that the animals were crazy, they were simply trying to get to the specific zone to “massacre” the itch. During the summer, I saw six or seven disease cases a day.

Pyoderma has exploded with these animals. The spaces between their toes were sprinkled with blisters and bubbles full of pus. Even their elbows and chins were often severely affected. Numerous dogs were also affected on the skin of the abdomen, with thickening coming to pachyderm (thick skin like the one of an elephant) and lichenification (thickening marked by numerous furrows).

Many males were affected from dermatitis of the scrotum. The skin of this delicate organ thickened and closed around, it was very sore and the poor animal had to sit carefully, licking with its tongue to cope with the pain.

The otitis was also very serious, usually chronic and unilateral, often with significant tissue degeneration, forcing colleagues to create new surgical techniques to try to resolve such cases (it came to modifying the structure of the ear canal to drain abundant purulent secretions, which had caused impressive cell ulceration and proliferation).
In the more serious cases, there were colleagues who had to completely remove the ear canal.

Dermatitis has clearly always existed, but the new forms and symptoms we observed were markedly different and more violent than the classical form.
For example, it was common to find wet dermatitis that affected almost the entire skin surface of the animal, sometimes just sparing the head.
I happened to see animals almost in meat alive on the whole body, really scary scene. Many granuloma paws, circumscribed lesions and so itchy that the dog or cat constantly licking or scratching. Obviously the picture were different from the sarcoptic mange and the demotic one, also very frequent in that historical period.

At the gastrointestinal level was not better with the appearance of the chronic gastritis and enteritis hemorrhagic.
Even the ocular system was often involved with keratitis (cornea inflammation) uveitis and panoftalmity (pathologies that concerned almost the entire eyeball), also with an itch that made more than one animal to further damage their eye by scratching with its paw.
Stomatitis (inflammation of the mouth) and gingivitis, especially in cats, was very frequent.
The uterus was also affected, with serious secondary infections and inflammations.

The pathologies I just described were not present when I started practicing my profession, in the short period between 1975 to 1980, I have dedicated a large part of my time towards analyzing possible causes of these serious clinical conditions that are afflicting a significant number of cats and dogs.

Through the spirit of observation (which is a particular skill for me, in other scenarios I wouldn’t see an elephant passing by in front of my eyes), I was able to identify a clear relation between certain foods and the practical and instant development of the various diseases just described.

I discovered that the main cause was the essential food element: the meat.

How was it possible that essentially carnivorous animals were having problems with this nutrient?

I understood immediately, it was obviously not the meat itself causing the problem, but rather something alien found inside.