92 



has failed, and long continued feeding experiments with polished 

 rice or with hominy (corn with the outer shell removed) caused 

 no inconvenience or symptoms of nervous derangement, and the 

 total absence of a specific micro organism, even an ultra micros- 

 copic one, makes it of course impossible to attempt the now so 

 universally used serum therapy. 



Since the above was written it has become necessary to destroy 

 three additional mules similarly affected, making the total loss in 

 one week 10 mules and 2 horses. 



RABIES. 



This disease continues unabate.i in the Pacific Coast States, 

 various epidemics having been reported from such localities, es- 

 pecially where single cases were reported from three to six 

 months ago. When, therefore, this board's quarantine regulation 

 pertaining to rabies has again come in for criticism by Coast 

 tourists through the columns of the local press, it may not be 

 amiss to state that the reappearance of the disease in one of the 

 above-mentioned localities in California has, so to speak, "struck 

 home," a lovely little girl related to a Honolulu family having 

 recently died after being bitten in the face by a mad dog. The 

 child saw through a screen door a strange dog on the porch and 

 opened the door to pet it, when the animal flew at her and lacerat- 

 ed her face. Almost immediately afterward the dog died and an 

 examination by the Berkeley experts pronounced it affected with 

 rabies. The child was immediately sent to the Pasteur Institute 

 for treatment but, the wounds being so close to the brain, she suc- 

 cumbed on the twenty-first day — the last day of the treatment. 

 As no time was lost in getting the patient under treatment — in fact 

 less than twenty-four hours — it can easily be understood what the 

 result might be if the disease should gain an entrance here where 

 at least seven days would elapse before a bitten person could be 

 cither sent to the nearest Pasteur institute, in San Francisco, or 

 the material for preventive inoculation could be cabled for and 

 reach the patient here. This case is however an unusual one, the 

 time of incubation as a rule being a great deal longer than 21 

 days, the a]j])earance of the disease in the bitten person depending 

 to a great extent upon the distance of the wound from the l)rain. 

 The virus must first find its way into the central nerve canals at 

 the place of injury and from there slowly work its way to the 

 brain. Consequently the further from the brain the wound is in- 

 flicted the longer it takes for the poison to reach the brain and, as 

 fortunately 75 per cent of all bitten wounds occur on the haufls 

 and legs, there is generally sufficient time to get the patient under 

 treatment and to get the treatment, which requires 21 days, com- 

 pleted before the disease sets in. With the appearance of the first 

 symptom, however, the patient is doomed, nothing remaining to 



