HYDROPHOBIA AND RABIES. 



229 



diseases. It is interesting, however, to compare 

 this tropical experience with what has been ob- 

 served in the opposite climate of the arctic regions. 



Dr. John Rae, who has been good enough to 

 write to me on these subjects, was for twenty 

 years in the Hudson's Bay Company's Territory, 

 ten of which years were spent at Moose Factory, 

 on the. shore of Hudson's Bay, and a year or two 

 each at various other stations as far north as the 

 arctic circle, at all of which dogs in greater or 

 less number are kept for sledging purposes, yet 

 he cannot remember to have seen or heard of a 

 single case of the diseases in question, either in 

 dog or in man. " My knowledge," Dr. Rae says, 

 "of the Esquimaux is much more limited, for, al- 

 though I have seen these interesting people at 

 various parts of the arctic coast, I have win- 

 tered only twice among them, on both occasions 

 at Repulse Bay. But I never saw or heard of 

 any disease resembling hydrophobia." 



My distinguished friend, Admiral Sir George 

 Back, who is cognizant of Dr. Rae's testimony 

 in this matter, fully confirms it by his own expe- 

 rience gathered in five expeditions of discovery 

 to the arctic regions during a period of eleven 

 years' service. 



A portion of Dr. Rae's information, although 

 it has no direct bearing upon my main purpose, 

 may prove as interesting to my readers as it has 

 been to myself: 



" The food of the dogs in Hudson's Bay consists 

 wholly of meat or fish, or of a mixture of both ; 

 meat being the chief diet in the prairies, while fish 

 are almost universally given (except when on a 

 journey) in other parts of the country. In the 

 summer, when not required for sledging, the dogs 

 are sent in charge of a man or two to a fishery, 

 where they can be well and cheaply fed. The 

 usual ration is a fish weighing three or four pounds, 

 eaten raw. The best and lightest food for the dogs 

 when at work is dry buffalo or deer meat, about 

 two or two and a half pounds of which is a day's 

 allowance." l 



Colonel Home, C. B., an engineer officer living 

 last year for some months at Constantinople, in- 

 forms a friend of mine that, having a horror of 

 hydrophobia, he made repeated and special in- 

 quiries there, and was assured that no instance 

 of the disease was ever known in that city. He 

 describes the scavenger-dog " as being in temper 



1 All those who have heen personally conversant 

 with the arctic sledge-dogs agree in stating that they 

 are subject to a fatal kind of insanity quite distinct 

 from true rabies, and accordingly not productive of 

 hydrophobia. 



and feeling a dog, but his appearance is that of 

 a wolf — a dog in wolf's clothes. He has short 

 pricked ears, and a bushy tail which looks as if it 

 had lost a couple of joints. Usually he is of a 

 foxy hue, but occasionally dark and almost black 

 on the back, where a sore is often to be seen. 

 His fur is very thick and shaggy, and he is of the 

 same size as a wolf." There are in the Zoologi- 

 cal Gardens two Syrian wolves which present an 

 exact fac-simile of the Constantinople scavenger- 

 dog. These dogs, as is well known, form an im- 

 portant institution in Constantinople, clearing the 

 streets and eating all the offal there to be found. 

 Colonel Home speaks of them as friendly and fa- 

 miliar, and in no way a nuisance, unless some 

 tribe of " civilized " dogs quarrel and fight at 

 night with them or with each other, when the 

 noise they make is fearful. These civilized dogs 

 — country or shepherds' dogs — seem to be badly 

 named, for they are fierce and dangerous, and 

 Colonel Home had to shoot one of two which had 

 pursued and attacked him. 



In the Times newspaper for the 23d of Octo- 

 ber, Mr. Ch. Kroll Laporte, of Birkdale Place, 

 Southport, writes that he never heard of a single 

 case of hydrophobia in Africa during travels 

 there extending over two years. 



With more time and opportunity at my dis- 

 posal I might doubtless find further examples of 

 the entire absence of rabies, and therefore of hy- 

 drophobia, from certain places ; but of this I have 

 surely said enough ; and should it be alleged tha.t 

 in other places, where these diseases had pre- 

 viously been unknown, they have at length ap- 

 peared, my argument will be only strengthened if 

 I can account for this by special circumstances. 

 To take a single instance by way of sample : I 

 have been assured upon unquestionable authority 

 that Demerara had not within the memory of 

 man been afflicted by the presence of hydropho- 

 bia till the year 1872, when rabies was imported 

 by the influx of a large number of dogs from Bar- 

 badoes, in avoidance of a tax which had there 

 been imposed upon those animals. 



If it be admitted that hydrophobia never oc- 

 curs except from the reception of the specific 

 poison from a rabid animal, it follows that, rabies 

 being expunged, hydrophobia would necessarily 

 disappear. For this end it would seem to be re- 

 quired that all dogs in the kingdom should be sub- 

 jected to a rigid quarantine of several months, 

 as recommended by Mr.Youatt and by Sir James 

 Bardsley. In order to the effectual enforcement 

 of such quarantine, some legislative measures, 

 and the planning and strict observance of certain 



