HYDROPHOBIA. 519 
uf this book. The only plan which can safely be adopted, is to take the 
subject of megrims quietly home to his stable, and carefully examine into 
the condition of all his functions with a view to improve the action of 
any organ which appears to be out of order, whatever it may be. [If all 
seems to be going on well—if the appetite is good, and the heart acts 
with recularity and with due force, while the brain seems clear, and the 
eye is not either dull or suffused with blood—nothing should be attempted, 
but the horse being subject to a second attack, as proved by manifold 
experience, should be put to work in which no great danger can be 
apprehended from them. He is not safe in any kind of carriage, for it 
can never be known where the fall will take place ; and as a saddle-horse 
he is still more objectionable, and should therefore be put to some com- 
mercial purpose, in executing which, if he falls, the only injury he can 
effect is to property, and not to human life. 
RABIES, HYDROPHOBIA OR MADNESS. 
ONE REASON ONLY can be given for describing this disease, which is 
wholly beyond the reach of art; but as the horse attacked by it is most 
dangerous, the sooner he is destroyed the better; and for this reason, 
every. person who is likely to have any control over him, should be aware 
of the symptoms. As far as is known at present, Rabies is not idiopa- 
thically developed in the horse, but must follow the bite of a rabid 
individual belonging to one or other of the genera canis and felis. The 
dog, being constantly about our stables, is the usual cause of the develop- 
ment of the disease, and it may supervene upon the absorption of the 
salivary: virus without any malicious bite, as has happened according to 
more than one carefully recorded case. The lips of the horse are liable 
to be ulcerated from the action of the bit, and there is reason to believe 
that in the early stages of rabies these parts have been licked by a dog, 
the saliva has been absorbed, and the inoculation has taken place just as 
it would do from any other wound. It is difficult to prove that this is 
the true explanation of those cases where no bite has been known to have 
occurred, but as the mouth has in each instance been shown to have been 
abraded, there is some reason for accepting it as such. To proceed however 
to the symptoms, Mr. Youatt, who has had great opportunities for examining 
rabies, both in the dog and horse, describes the earliest as consisting in “a 
spasmodic movement of the upper lip, particularly of the angles of the 
lip. Close following on this, or contemporaneous with it, are the depressed 
and anxious countenance, and inquiring gaze, suddenly, however, lighted 
up, and becoming fierce and menacing from some unknown cause, or at 
the approach of a stranger. From time to time different parts of the 
frame, the eyes, the jaws, particular limbs, will be convulsed. The eye 
will occasicnally wander after some imaginary object, and the horse will 
snap again and again at that which has no real existence. Then will 
come the irrepressible desire to bite the attendants or the animals within 
its reach. To this will succeed the demolition of the rack, the manger, 
and the whole furniture of the stabl2, accompanied by the peculiar dread 
of water, which has already been described. Towards the close of the 
disease there is generally paralysis, usually confined to the loins ana the 
hinder extremities, or involving those organs which derive their nervous 
influence from this portion of the spinal cord; hence the distressing 
tenesmus which is occasionally seen.” How paralysis can produce tenes 
mus is not very clear, but of the very general existence of this symptom 
