120 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



151 sheep. A number of people have been bitten by rabid dogs, 

 some by the same dogs that bit oilier animals that died of rabies, 

 and there arc records of several probable deaths of rabies among 

 people. 



Outbreaks of rabies are reported more promptly to the State Live- 

 stock Sanitary Board, and the services of the State Livestock 

 Sanitary Board are more frequently asked for with relation to the 

 repression of rabies than has been the case in former years. Pre- 

 viously, upon the occurrence of a rabid dog in a borough it was the 

 custom to ignore the matter or to require the muzzling of dogs in 

 that borough for a limited period, generally of about thirty days. 

 The rabid dog that caused the alarm may have come from outside 

 of the borough or from another county, and it may have bitten dogs 

 in surrounding districts before or after having made its appearance 

 in the borough. Under such conditions, a muzzling order applied to 

 dogs in the borough could not be effective, because there is in such 

 cases a probability that the disease has been implanted in animals 

 in the surrounding country. In these cases the State Livestock Sani- 

 tary Board is being called upon by borough authorities, first, to 

 assist the borough in establishing and maintaining a quarantine of 

 dogs and, secondly, to do what the borough connot do directly, in 

 establishing a quarantine of dogs in the surrounding districts. This 

 recognition of the value of the co-operation of the State Livestock 

 Sanitary Board, and the enactment of the law (P. L. No. 56) requir 

 ing reports of rabies to be made promptly to the State Livestock 

 Sanitary Board, have both led to reports of more cases and to 

 what is an apparent and not a real increase of the prevalence of 

 rabies throughout the State. 



The enactment of a law by the Legislature of 1903 to amend the 

 act under which it was provided that sheep killed by dogs should 

 be paid for from the dog tax fund of the county, in such a manner 

 as to permit payments to be made for other domestic animals bitten 

 by a rabid dog and destroyed or necessary to be destroyed by reason 

 thereof, has been productive of much benefit. In particular, this 

 act had the effect of bringing more definitely to the attention of 

 dog owners the necessity for taking such precautions as are recom- 

 mended for the control of rabies. 



The practice of the State Livestock Sanitary Board with regard 

 to the control of rabies is to quarantine the dogs that are known 

 to have been exposed or that may have been exposed to contact 

 with the rabid dog, or if these animals cannot be located then to 

 quarantine all of the dogs in the district known or believed to have 

 been traversed by the rabid dog. This quarantine is usually placed 

 for a period of 100 days. It requires that during its operation, all 

 dogs within the quarantined district shall be muzzled with a close 

 muzzle that will effectively prevent biting, or that they shall be 

 confined. When the quarantine notice is violated, and when dogs 

 are permitted to run at large within the quarantined area without 

 muzzles, such dogs may be shot or otherwise destroyed and their 

 owners have no claim against the person so doing. This provision 

 is necessary because ownerless dogs are of course unmuzzled and 

 unconfined whether they originate within the quarantined district 

 or whether they stray from without. Furthermore, dogs are not 

 always under the control of their owners, and as it is not customary 



