Erasmus Darwin

“ Sickness at the commencement of a rainy season is very common among dogs, who assist themselves by eating the agrostris canina, or dog's grass, and thus empty their stomachs. The same occurs with less frequency to cats, who make use of the same expedient. ”

“ And the action of coughing, which is violently for an hour or longer, is probably excited by the stimulus of the thin fluid thus produced, as well as by the disagreeable sensation attending membranous inactivity; and resembles periodic catarrh not only in its situation on a mucous membrane, but in the discharge of a thin fluid. As it is partly restrainable, it does not come under the name of convulsion; and as it is not attended with difficult respiration, it cannot be called asthma; it is cured by very large doses of opium, see a case and cure in Sect. ”