THE DOG. 147 



which exists between the number of male and female dogs. The 

 same is true with reference to the supposed favorable influences of 

 castration. 



Schraeder gives the proportion of 267 cases of canine rabies at 

 Hamburg, in the years 1852-53, as 256 males, 10 females, and 1 

 castrated dog. 



"When we take into consideration the exceedingly high stage of 

 development which is enjoyed by the nervous system of the canine 

 race, and the great want of scientific knowledge with reference to the 

 psychical diseases of the same, it does not appear strange that many 

 diseases, the true cause of which must be sought in disturbances of 

 nervous centres, have been, and still are, mistaken for rabies. Nearly 

 every uneducated and casual observer would be excused, considering 

 the want of knowledge on these points, if he mistook a series of epi- 

 leptic attacks, or the phenomena caused by inflammatory processes 

 in the brain or its meninges (the membranes inclosing the brain), 

 for rabies. In the last case, the phenomena displayed would be 

 sufficient to warrant the educated veterinarian to isolate and secure- 

 ly confine a dog in which they were present, so little is our knowledge 

 upon this subject. 



We will again repeat that rabies, like all other known contagious 

 diseases, never generates spontaneously, but through infection ; that 

 is, the inoculation or transmission of an infectious element from a 

 diseased organism to a healthy one is absolutely necessary to the pro- 

 duction of the disease. 



All theories with regard to the influences exerted by the seasons 

 fall to the ground in the' face of the facts collected by exact obser- 

 vation. Epizootics of rabies are recorded from the icy fields of 

 Greenland as well as from the sunburned sands and arid tracts border- 

 ing on the Mediterranean Sea. Scarcely a land seems exempt from 

 its devastations ; but it does not appear, as yet, to have extended to 

 Australia, New Zealand, and some portions of Africa, Germany, 

 France, Holland, Northern Italy, and of late England especially. 



Bollinger gives some interesting statistics with reference to sev- 

 eral eruptions of canine rabies on the Continent : 



'•'An epizootic reigned at Hamburg, from 1851 to 1856 ; during 

 this period 600 cases of rabid dogs were reported, while for twenty- 

 three years previous not a single case had been reported. In Saxony, 

 from 1853 to 1867, 807 cases have been recorded ; an average of 160 

 per year. In a total of 275,000 dogs in Bavaria, for a period of five 

 years (1863-'67), an average of 800 cases of suspected and genuine 

 rabies were reported. For 1873, the total number of dogs reported 



