DOG-POISON' IN MAN. 



345 



pied, rather than the extremes toward either pole. 

 This seems to depend not upon the temperature, 

 but upon comparative isolation of the northern 

 and southern countries, such as Greenland, where 

 there are many dogs and no rabies, and such as 

 New Zealand, Australia, notwithstanding their 

 communication with England, and the islands 

 generally of the great oceans. But this matter 

 requires more precise elucidation. Experiments 

 at Alfort seem to show that neither thirst nor 

 heat will originate it, and go far to prove that it 

 is a simple case of communicable virus. Great 

 pains have been taken in France to collect a 

 record of all known cases of persons bitten by 

 mad dogs. M. Bouley, the learned veterinarian 

 of France, has given in the Co?nptes Rendus for 

 1 870 a careful and instructive abstract of reports 

 on the subject. It will well repay perusal. In 

 forty-nine departments where rabies existed, 320 

 persons had been bitten by mad dogs in six years. 

 Only 129 had hydrophobia, and 123 were known 

 to have died. No one of these 129 had the dis- 

 ease latent for more than six months. Most of 

 them died on the second or third day after the 

 symptoms appeared. Of 134 persons 92 re- 

 covered whose wounds were cauterized, and of 

 66 not cauterized 56 died, only 10 recovering. 

 These statements prove the almost complete im- 

 munity through the use of actual cautery. 



In the case of 785 dogs that were bitten, 527 

 were killed ; and of 25 not killed but observed, 

 13 became mad. But let this be noted: of 785 

 thus bitten, 552 were accounted for. The author- 

 ities let 233 escape. And if these went mad in 

 the proportion of those who were observed, there 

 would remain 116 dogs left at large mad. 



Statistics of this kind have been unattainable 

 for England. But we have enough through the 

 splendid tables of mortality, monuments alike of 

 English civilization and of official zeal, prepared 

 by Major Graham and Dr. Farr at Somerset House, 

 to show that the present panic in this country 

 depends on the horror of the complaint, not on 



its frequency, and upon the just conviction that 

 it is high time to prevent its increase. 



There are 22,000 cases of snake-bite annually 

 in India, or 1 to every 10,000 of the population. 

 In England there were in the years 1S50 to 1876, 

 538 deaths from hydrophobia out of 12,457,265 

 total deaths. These occurred in 27 years, at the 

 rate of 20 annually in a mean population of 20,- 

 781,799 persons. The annual deaths to a million 

 persons living were 22,201, one being from hy- 

 drophobia. The cholera in Oxford, in 1S54, de- 

 stroyed in a few weeks 1 15 persons out of 26,000, 

 which, if expressed in the proportions of the 

 people in India, would amount to 973,077 deaths- 

 The maximum of deaths from hydrophobia in 

 one year, in England, from 1850 till 1876, was in 

 1874, viz., 61 in a population of 23,648,609 ; and 

 the minimum in 1862, 1 out of 436,566 deaths 

 among 20,371,013 persons. In the year 1876 the 

 deaths from hydrophobia were 53, out of 510,303 

 deaths; or 1 in 9,628 deaths occurring among 

 24,244,010 persons: in other words, one death in 

 a year ' from hydrophobia among 457,432 living. 

 These figures, together with the fact of the im- 

 munity after cautery, and the thorough attention 

 now paid to the subject, should reduce the alarm 

 to its natural proportions and place. 



Thus I have endeavored to present a rough 

 sketch of a disorder which has caused too much 

 anxiety to many. Nothing can divest the subject 

 of its wide and weird interest. Yet nothing can 

 be more reassuring than the knowledge of how 

 nearly it is under our own control. The marvel 

 is that we are and have been so careless. Often 

 we may prevent where we cannot cure. This has 

 been the message of Medicine, in the present age, 

 to man, in more things than the poison of rabies. 



1 Meanwhile there was, during the eight years 

 18G9-"76, an annual average of 212 deaths among the 

 3,333,345 persons estimated to constitute the average 

 population of London in the same period, by being run 

 over or knocked down in the streets. 



— Contemporary Review. 



