194 HYDROPHOBIA • 



"Unfortunately no cures are yet known; such things as the Birling 

 and the Webb's cures, and other pretended family secrets may be swept 

 aside. Medical men have tried every conceivable drug, and a few years 

 ago it was thought that a specific had been found in curari, but it proved 

 delusive. Hot and vapor baths have their votaries, just as half drowning in 

 Crib, a pool in the Severn, was at one time believed in. 



"Preventive measures are alone to be relied on, and the very old one 

 of the Greeks, sucking the part, is excellent, and a small instrument has 

 been invented which can be easily used; it is like an old-fashioned breast 

 exhauster, with the bell-shaped head and long tube, but with a round bell 

 half way up the tube as well, which of course receives all that the operator 

 sucks out of the wound and renders him quite free from danger. It is 

 made by a chemist in York, and can be bought through Maw, Son & Com- 

 pany, Aldergate street, London." 



Here is a sensible article on hydrophobia, published in Man's Best 

 Friend, being an interview with 'John P. Haines, of New York City, the 

 President of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani- 

 mals, a man who has had considerable experience: 



"Hydrophobia is one of the rarest of diseases, and it is the height of 

 folly to imagine that every dog that happens to suffer intensely from the 

 heat is either mad or in danger of going mad. A mad policeman is every 

 bit as dangerous as a mad dog, and probably in the past quite as many of 

 the former as of the latter have been mad." 



"Mr. Haines quotes from high authorities when he says that in ninety- 

 nine cases out of a hundred the poor brute which is destroyed while sup- 

 posedly in the throes of rabies is merely suffering from excitement which 

 will cur? itself, and that a person bitten by an animal under such circum- 

 stances is absolutely in no danger of serious results unless he permits him- 

 self to become a victim of his own disordered imagination. Mr. Haines is 

 himself authority for the statement that the cases of death from hydropho- 

 bia reported from time to time are wrongly diagnosed, and that, as a rule, 

 they result simply from worry. The weather has nothing to do with the 

 case, although no doubt dogs are less liable to sickness in cold weather than 

 during the hot spell, a state of affairs due perhaps almost as much to the 

 thoughtlessness or ignorance of their owners as to the weather conditions. 



"A dog that has been properly fed and is being so fed, will suffer 

 much less discomfort than another which has been stuffed with food calcu- 

 lated to heat the blood, and such a dog is, and especially when not over- 

 weight, far more liabel to escape illness than the fat, badly-conditioned 

 animal that is quite 'above himself,' and ready to go wrong at any time. 



"What are the dog days? They are the heated term in July and Au- 

 gust, during which dogs are supposed to be peculiarly liable to rabies, or 

 canine madness. That is one answer, but there is a better. There are no 

 dog days, because there is no time of the year when dogs are especially 

 liable to rabies. There are no more cases of rabies in July and August 

 than in December and January. Moreover, rabies is one of the rarest of 

 canine diseases. When you hear a cry of 'Mad Dog!' the chances are 

 many thousands to one that the dog is not mad. When you read in the 

 papers of someone being bitten by a mad dog the chances are thousands 

 to one it is not true. A person bitten by a mad dog is not doomed to 

 die a fearful death by hydrophobia. Not at all, for hydrophobia in a hu- 

 man being is much more rare than rabies in a dog. Expert physicians 

 who have given special attention to the subject are convinced that hydro- 

 phobia is never caused by the bite of a dog, but is simply a hysterical 

 nervous disease caused by an unfounded dread. Don't take this for grant- 

 ed; but remember these facts: 



"First, That there are more than a million chances to one that any 

 dog which is supposed to be mad is not mad at all; second, that, in all 

 probability, any dog by which a person may happen to be bitten is not 

 mad; and third, that even if a person is bitten by a dog that is really 

 mad, the danger of hydrophobia is very slight indeed. 



"If you will note the following facts you will probably find them to 



