47.2 Rabies. 



or instead of normal food products, it contains indigestible 

 substances such as straw, hay, pieces of wood or bones, sand, 

 stones, hair, feathers, pieces of leather, etc., the mucous mem- 

 brane being injected and swollen, and the summits of the 

 rugae studded with hemorrhages ( Johne) and shallow erosions. 

 Foreign bodies are occasionally found in the esophagus (Franke) 

 or in the intestinal canal in which case the mucous membrane 

 of the latter is likewise inflamed. In other species of animals, 

 the stomach is as a rule empty or contains little food. The 

 bladder is nearly empty, the urine as a rule containing sugar, 

 and the blood being varnish-colored and fluid. 



Wortley Axe found foreign bodies in 90% of 200 rabid dogs on which he 

 performed post-mortem examinations during twenty years, while Galtier in the 

 course of thirteen years found foreign bodies in only 657 cases out of 1,434 rabid 

 animals autopsied (1,304 of which were dogs). 



The post-mortem examination may also show an acute 

 catarrh of the mucous membranes of the respiratory and diges- 

 tive organs, hyperemia of the salivary glands and serous in- 

 filtration of their connective tissues, hyperemia of liver, spleen, 

 and kidneys and finally inflammation or edema of the cerebral 

 and spinal meninges as well of as the gray matter of the brain. 



The changes in the central nervous system were the subject of investigation 

 some time ago by Cantani, Zagari, Babes, Csokor, Dexler, and others, and recently 

 Sehaffer studied ithe subject thoroughly in connection with six cases of hydrophobia 

 in man. In the segment of the spinal cord where the nerves coming from the 

 place of infection enter, in the perivascular lymph spaces, as well as in the walls 

 of the vessels of the gray matter of the anterior cornu, in the vicinity of the 

 central canal, and also along the connective tissue trabeculae of the white substance, 

 Sehaffer found cell infiltration, with either capillary or larger hemorrhages. These 

 changes became less and less marked anteriorly and posteriorly; in the nerves 

 passing from the point of infection toward the cord there was also an infiltration 

 of small cells. In the nerve cells he found fibrillation, hyaline and vacuolar degenera- 

 tion, granular disintegration, and pigmentation atrophy of the cellular bodies; the 

 white substance contained numerous amyloid granules. In the medulla oblongata, 

 immediately below the floor of the fourth ventricle, and especially around the 

 origin of the 12th, 10th, and 7th pairs of nerves, there were noted pronounced 

 hyperemia, perivascular cell infiltration, and small hemorrhages, while the nerve 

 cells showed signs of degeneration. In the brain no changes of importance were 

 found, as a rule, excepting hyperemia, slight cellular infiltration, and rarely capil- 

 lary hemorrhages. 



Csokor and Dexler ascribe great diagnostic importance to the small scattered 

 foci of inflammation in the brain, and to the small cellular leucocytic infiltration 

 of the perivascular lymph spaces as constant lesions of rallies. Trolldenier, how- 

 ever, concluded after the examination of 52 cases, that these lesions are absent 

 in the brain and still more in the medulla oblongata (in the latter in 60% of 

 the cases), and that, on the other hand, they may be found in the nervous system 

 of dogs suffering from distemper and cancer. 



Van Gehuchten and Nelis found in the cerebro-spinal ganglia and those of 

 the sympathetic nerve, Init especially in the plexus nodosus vagi as well as in 

 the upper cervical ganglia of the sympathicus, a cellular infiltration of the interstices, 

 which later causes the ^^ensitive nerve cells themselves to degenerate and atrophy, and 

 in their place, inside of the inspisated endothelial capsule, there appear endothelial 

 and small round cells (Fig. 74). In many cases the ganglion consists exclusively 

 of dense connective tissue infiltrated Avith small cells, only once in a while atrophied 

 nerve cells being observed. These changes are most marked in the ganglia of rabid 

 dogs, and less so in those of rabbits and of human beings. 



In the salivary glands Elsenberg and Kossjcikow have demonstrated cellular 

 infiltration of the interacinous connective tissue, and partly also of the acini, as 

 well as granular fatty degeneration of tlie glandular cells. 



