406 HYDKOPHOBIA. 



and animals, snapping at them as if urged by malice prepense. 

 This is erroneous; the truth being that a rabid dog rarely 

 goes out of his way to attack animals, and still more rarely 

 to attack mankind. The characteristics of rabies in dogs, 

 as popularly imputed, are very closely applicable to rabid 

 wolves. 



Of all rabid animals wolves are most to be dreaded. They 

 mingle a cunning, a deliberate wickedness with their rabies, 

 to which dogs are wholly strangers. A rabid wolf, losing the 

 natural cowardliness of disposition which keeps him from the 

 haunts of man, save when hungry or in a pack with fellow- 

 wolves, will lurk at the entrance of some village, and bite 

 and rend every living thing that chances to come in his way. 

 A rabid badger too is, as might have been inferred from his 

 nature, a very terrible creature. Hufeland records the par- 

 ticulars of one that bit two boys; that was killed whilst 

 fastened on to the thigh by his teeth and sucking the blood 

 of the second. This boy became hydrophobic and died ; but 

 the other boy escaped. 



Mr. Youatt, to whose acute power of observation patho- 

 logists are so much indebted for records of hydrophobia in 

 domestic animals, has left a most vivid history of his experi- 

 ence, limited to two cases, of hydrophobia in cats. If the two 

 feline cases noted by that gentleman are not of exceptionable 

 gravity, a mad cat is an animal far more to be dreaded 

 than a mad dog. The first stage of rabies in cats, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Youatt, seems to be one of sullenness ; a state that 

 would probably last to death, were the creature not interfered 

 with. A dreamily contemplative rabid dog may be generally 

 awakened to consciousness by the voice of one he knows, as 

 already stated; and he rather likes to be thus awakened. 

 Not so a rabid cat. With her dreamy musings it is perilous 

 to interfere. * Probably,' says Mr. Youatt, ( a rabid cat would 

 not, except in the paroxysm of rage, attack any one ; but 

 during that paroxysm it knows no fear, nor has its ferocity 



