22S 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



" It consists " (he wrote) " merely in establish- 

 ing a universal quarantine for dogs within the king- 

 dom, and a total prohibition of the importation of 

 those animals during the existence of this quaran- 

 tine. The efficacy of this preventive scheme rests 

 upon the validity of the following propositions : 

 First, that the disease always originates in the ca- 

 nine species ; secondly, that it never arises in them 

 spontaneously ; thirdly, that the contagion, when 

 received by them, never remains latent more than 

 a few months. If these propositions have been 

 established, it clearly follows that by destroying 

 every dog in which the disease should break out 

 during strict quarantine, not only would the propa- 

 gation of the malady be prevented, but the absolute 

 source of the poison would be entirely suppressed." 



It is much to be wondered at that these wise 

 suggestions should have remained so long neglect- 

 ed by our sanitary authorities. 



No reference has been made either by Mr. 

 Youatt or by Sir James Bardsley to the possi- 

 ble perpetuation of the disease by rabid cats. 

 Mad cats, however, are far less common than 

 mad dogs. A cat is not an aggressively fight- 

 ing animal. At any time, it would rather fly 

 from than resist an attacking dog ; and, if there 

 were no dogs to receive and to impart the dis- 

 ease, rabies would soon, so far as the cat is con- 

 cerned, die out of its own accord. 



I have now set forth to the best of my abili- 

 ty — and, perhaps, too much in detail — the amount 

 of our knowledge upon a subject which is at 

 present painfully engrossing the attention of the 

 public. I have shown that we possess no valid 

 evidence of the spontaneous origin, nowadays, 

 of rabies in the dog or in any other animal ; 

 and that hydrophobia owes its parentage exclu- 

 sively to the poison furnished in the first instance 

 by the rabid dog, or by rabid animals of the same 

 species with the dog. 



I propose next to fortify my position by 

 pointing out that large portions of the habitable 

 world, abounding in dogs, are now, and have 

 always been, entirely free from those dreadful 

 twin pests, rabies and hydrophobia. 



It is my good fortune to have found among 

 my own friends and acquaintances several per- 

 sons able to give me authentic and valuable in- 

 formation on this subject. 



Thus the Bishop of Lichfield, who lived more 

 than twenty-five years in New Zealand, tells me 

 that he never heard of a mad dog in those isl- 

 ands, and that Bishop Abraham's experience, 

 who was for seventeen years resident there, 

 agrees with his own. 



Bishop Macdougall writes me word that there 

 is in Borneo a native dog, like a small jackal, 

 but with a curly rather than a bushy tail, kept 

 in numbers by the Dyaks for hunting deer and 

 pigs. These dogs never bark, but when on the 

 scent for game howl with a very musical note. 

 The Chinese settlers also have brought in a dog, 

 resembling the Pomeranian breed. These bark 

 abundantly, and among the settlers, who eat the 

 puppies as a delicacy, they are so numerous as 

 to have become a general nuisance ; yet, during 

 the twenty years in which the bishop resided at 

 Sarawak, he never heard of a single instance of 

 rabies. 



I was told a few years since, by Sir Henry 

 Young, that in Tasmania, of which he was for 

 seven years the governor, although there were 

 plenty of dogs, there had been no mad dogs, and 

 therefore no hydrophobia. Evidence to precisely 

 the same effect has been furnished to a friend 

 of mine by Sir Valentine Fleming, who left Tas- 

 mania in 1874, after a residence there of about 

 thirty-two years. He testifies to the great num- 

 ber of dogs in that colony, and to the total ab- 

 sence of hydrophobia. Again, I have it under 

 the hand of Sir George Macleay, who, with Cap- 

 tain Sturt, diligently explored, for other pur- 

 poses, all the settlements of what has been well 

 called the " insular continent " of Australia, that 

 the dogs there are troublesomely plentiful, that 

 hydrophobia is utterly unknown, and that rabies 

 has never been witnessed in the dingo, or wild- 

 dog of those parts. 



It had been stated by Dr. Heineken that curs 

 of the most wretched condition abound in Madei- 

 ra ; that they are afflicted with almost every dis- 

 ease, tormented with flies and heat, and thirst 

 and famine, yet no rabid dog was ever seen there ; 

 and I have quite recently been assured by Dr. 

 Grabham, whose personal knowledge of Madeira 

 covers sixteen years, and who states that he is 

 well acquainted with the local traditions, and 

 the writings of medical men there, that rabies 

 and hydrophobia are, and always have been, un- 

 known in that island. 



Mr. Thomas Bigg-Wither spent three or four 

 years in South Brazil, within the tropics. He 

 and his party hunted there the wild-dog and the 

 jaguar (a species of tiger) with a pack of fifty 

 smooth-haired dogs of various breeds, which gave 

 tongue during their hunting. Mr. Bigg-Wither 

 has assured me that hydrophobia and rabies are 

 quite unheard of in that part of the world. 



We have seen that conditions of temperature 

 have nothing to do with the prevalence of these 



