Animals: Running Fits

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When a dog starts to run wildly, most people at once assume that he is rabid. But more likely he has running fits, a canine disease harmless to humans. Last year The Sportsman (monthly) asked for money to pay a scientist to find out why dogs have such fits. Many a dog lover responded generously. Dr. L. Raymond Morrison of Harvard Medical School was engaged to do the work. Because at the end of the year's research the investigation is not completed, The Sportsman is making another appeal this month for $4,000 to continue Dr. Morrison's services.

Under the supervision of Dr. Stanley Cobb, Dr. F. Fremont Smith and Dr. Hans Zinsser of Harvard's Department of Neuropathology, Dr. Morrison killed five dogs suffering from running fits, made histological brain examination. He found the nuclei of the brain cells broken into bits, with chromatin scattered throughout the cell body. He discovered also great clusters of spider and mossy cells of the neuroglia around the small blood vessels in the white matter of the brain. In normal tissue, these supporting cells should be distributed in rows throughout the white matter. Cell peculiarities of the type found by Dr. Morrison are common in diseases like pellagra, which are caused by diet deficiency.

To see whether one dog could catch running fits from another, Dr. Morrison inoculated normal puppies with solutions made from the diseased brains. Several weeks later two of the puppies began to run wildly, seemed to have developed the fits. Although his results are not conclusive, Dr. Morrison's work indicates that running fits are induced by diet deficiency, are caused by an unknown virus.