Rabies and Hydrophobia. Lesions, Treatment, Prevention. 285 



chloral, curare (3 alleged recoveries), eserine (1 recovery), pilo- 

 carpi (1 recover}'), morphia, datura, atropia, and bromide of 

 potassium. Others have recovered without any medicinal treat- 

 ment, so that the mildness of the attack must be duly considered 

 in every case. 



Prophylaxis. The most effective way of preventing rabies is 

 to eradicate the virus from the country. All immunizing 

 measures resorted to after the infecting bite has been sustained, 

 are of little value as compared with this, they may save the bitten 

 individual, but they do nothing to prevent others from being 

 bitten in the future, and indirectly they contribute to the mainte- 

 nance of the disease b)' drawing attention from such radical 

 measures as would rid the country forever of the scourge. In 

 his great work on Diseases of the Nervous System, Gowers puts 

 this not a whit too strongly when he says : " The enforced muz- 

 zling of dogs for a period of one year would almost certainly 

 stamp out the disease. That such a measure is not adopted is a 

 national disgrace, which is accentuated by the fact that the 

 Government derives part of its revenue from a tax upon dogs. 

 The opposition to the use of the muzzle is one of the strangest 

 developments of morbid sentiment. There are apparently 

 thousands of well-meaning people who would prefer that hundreds 

 of dogs should perish every year of a painful disease, that many 

 human lives should be annually lost, and scores of persons 

 should be subjected for months to acute mental agony — rather 

 than that dogs should be made to wear an apparatus which causes 

 them a trifling annoyance. This perverted sentiment ought to 

 be met with universal abhorrence as a disgrace to humanity." 

 Such a statute, backed by a penalty in some degree commensurate 

 to the homicidal criminalit} 7 of the person who would leave his 

 dog free to inflict this horrible disease on humanity would doubt- 

 less be effectual, but some nations have such laws on their statute 

 books, and yet allow them to become dead letters. Others have 

 enforced them to good purpose. Berlin in 1853 had many cases 

 of rabies and muzzling was enforced. In three years the disease 

 was completely eradicated and the city enjoyed nine years of im- 

 munity or so long as the law was enforced. Similar successes 

 were met with in Holland, new cases occurring only on the 

 borders or in imported dogs. L,ondon in 18S9 had 123 cases and 



