22-i 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



after each bite, and thus recharges his fangs with 

 the poisonous material. In a report from Amer- 

 ica, it is stated that, of *75 cases, the injury was 

 received on the hand in 40 instances, on the face 

 in 15, on the leg in 11, on the arm in 9. 



It is this frequent immunity from the disease 

 in persons who have been bitten that has tended 

 to confer reputation upon so many vaunted meth- 

 ods of prevention. Ignorant men and knavish 

 men have not failed to take advantage of this. 

 They announce that they are in possession of 

 some secret remedy which will prevent the virus 

 from operating ; they persuade the friends of 

 those who die that the remedy was not rightly 

 employed, or not resorted to sufficiently early ; 

 and they persuade those who escape that they 

 escaped by virtue of the preventive remedy. If 

 the plunder they reap from the foolish and the 

 frightened were all, this would be of less conse- 

 quence ; but, unfortunately, the hope of security 

 without their undergoing a painful operation 

 leads many to neglect the only trustworthy mode 

 of obtaining safety. 



A still more anxious inquiry next arises. 

 Whoever has been bitten by a rabid or by a sus- 

 pected animal must be considered, and will gen- 

 erally consider himself, as being in more or less 

 danger of hydrophobia. This dread is not en- 

 tirely removed even by the adoption of the best 

 means of prevention. Now, how long does this 

 state of hazard continue ? When is the peril 

 fairly over ? After what lapse of time may the 

 person who has sustained the injury lay aside all 

 apprehension of the disease ? To this inquiry no 

 satisfactory reply can be given. In a vast ma- 

 jority of instances, indeed, the disorder has 

 broken out within two months from the infliction 

 of the bite. But the exceptions to this rule are 

 too numerous to permit us to put firm trust in 

 the immunity foreshadowed by that interval. 

 Cases are recorded in which five, six, eleven, 

 nineteen months have intervened between the 

 insertion of the poison and the eruption of the 

 consequent malady. Nay, there are well-authen- 

 ticated instances, as I have already said, of the 

 lapse of twenty-five months, of more than five 

 years, or even of seven years. In these cases it 

 is most probable that some unsuspected reinocu- 

 lation, some fresh application of the peculiar 

 virus, has taken place. If not, then we must 

 conclude that the poison really lies imprisoned 

 in the bitten part, and only becomes destructive 

 when, under certain obscure conditions, and at 

 indefinite periods, it gets into the circulation. 



I say nothing about the morbid appearances 



found in persons dead of hydrophobia, for I am 

 not addressing professional readers. But, as a 

 help toward determining whether a dog which 

 may have been destroyed under equivocal cir- 

 cumstances was indeed rabid, it may be useful to 

 state that in the stomach of a really mad dog 

 there are always to be found very unnatural con- 

 tents — straw, hay, coal, sticks, horse -dung, 

 earth — as well as a quantity of a dark fluid, like 

 thin treacle, altered blood in fact. 



And here it may be well to deprecate and de- 

 nounce a practice much too common with us, 

 that, namely, of at once destroying a suspected 

 dog, by which some one has been bitten, but 

 about the true condition of which there exists no 

 absolute certainty. The dog should be securely 

 isolated and watched ; a day or two will be suffi- 

 cient for solving the anxious question. If he 

 should prove really mad, he should then of 

 course be put to death, as mercifully as may be. 

 If, on the other hand, he remains well, not only 

 will the life of a possibly useful and favorite 

 animal be saved, but, what is of incomparably 

 greater importance, the mind of the bitten per- 

 son will be freed from a harassing sense of dread, 

 with which it might otherwise be haunted for 

 years to come. 



The most important question of all in rela- 

 tion to my present purpose, is whether rabies can 

 be excited by any other cause than inoculation 

 of the specific virus ; in other words, whether it 

 has any other source than contagion. 



Many persons believe that the disease may, 

 and does often, arise de novo ; and causes have 

 been assigned which certainly are not true causes. 

 Thus it has been ascribed to extreme heat of the 

 weather. It is thought by many to be especially 

 likely to occur during the dog-days ; and to be in 

 itself a sort of dog-lunacy, having the same rela- 

 tionship to Sirius that human insanity has to the 

 moon — which in one sense is probable enough. 

 But abundant statistical evidence has been col- 

 lected in this and in other countries, that the 

 disease occurs at all seasons of the year indiffer- 

 ently. The cautions, therefore, which are annu- 

 ally put forth in hot weather, as to muzzling dogs, 

 etc., whatever may be their value, would be as 

 opportune at any other time. The disorder has 

 been attributed to want of water in hot weather, 

 and sometimes to want of food, but MM. Dupuy- 

 tren, Breschet, and Magendie, in France, caused 

 both dogs and cats to die of hunger and thirst, 

 without producing the smallest approach to a 

 state of rabies. At the Veterinary School at 

 Alfort three dogs were subjected to some very 



