THE DOG. 139 



nine pets, such as sharing bits of cake, bread, or other articles of 

 food, drinking from a common glass, allowing them to lap one's 

 face, or those of children. 



Kabies of the Dog. 



It wonld be fortunate indeed for the human race were this para- 

 sitic disease the only one to which they were liable from their canine 

 friends. 



Of all the diseases, however, to which our poor humanity is lia- 

 ble, there is not one which so calls upon our deepest sympathies as 

 that derived from the bite of a rabid dog, known as lyssa, rabies, 

 hydrophobia. (This last name should be dropped, as it is based 

 upon the misleading and erroneous opinion that rabid dogs are 

 afraid of and shun vjater. Numerous observations have been, how- 

 ever, recorded, by competent observers, of rabid dogs crossing streams 

 of water, and attaching animals upon an opposite shore.) 



The disease in man has been known since the early days of the 

 Christian era. It does not seem to have been known to Aristotle, 

 for he says : " Dogs are subject to rabies ; it makes them mad ; all 

 animals that they bite also become mad, with the exception of 

 man." The validity of this last passage has been questioned. The 

 disease in man can be said to have been unknown, at least unde- 

 scribed, before Aristotle. It is doubtful if Hippocrates described it 

 in the dog. Up to the time of Celsus, a. d. 200, we still find no 

 description of it : it is in his writings that we find the word " hy- 

 drophobia " first appearing. The views of the writers of the third 

 and fourth centuries (Plutarch, Pliny, Crelius Aurelius, and others) 

 were adhered to, and but little enlarged upon, by medical authors as 

 late as the sixteenth century. 



As nearly every one knows, and as every one should know, rabies 

 of man is a disease which owes its genesis solely to the bite of a rabid 

 animal, more especially the dog, and is an acute infectious disease, 

 having an invariably fatal termination. The disease in man has 

 been artificially communicated to animals by inoculation, but trans- 

 mission from man to man has never yet unquestionably taken place. 



As said, mankind in general owes its infection to being bitten 

 by a rabid dog : it has been statistically estimated that 90 per cent 

 of the cases of human rabies are due to this source, while from other 

 animals it has been estimated that 4 per cent have been due to bites 

 from rabid cats, 4 per cent from wolves, and 2 per cent from foxes. 



" Of 796 human beings that died from rabies in France, "Wiir- 

 temberg, and Milan, 716 owed their infection to the bite of rabid 



