DISEASES TO WHICH HOUI^DS AKE LIABLE. 143 



If liydropliolbia was not tlic rarest disease known 

 among hounds and dogs, — the hydrophobia bite 

 being, if the virus is communicated, ever fatal, 

 and dogs and all animals transmitting the infection 

 to each other, — half the world w^ould by this time 

 have been depopulated, whereas, in ninety -nine 

 cases out of a hundred, the frightful term of ^^mad 

 dog" applies in no ivay ivhatever to '^hydrophobia." 

 To casual observers and timid people it holes like it, 

 the test — the visible, plain, undoubted test — being, 

 that the dog insane from distemper will lap water ^ 

 while the hydrophobic dog goes into convulsions 

 at the toucJij the sight, or even the sound of it, and 

 will not drink j^au^ of any kind. 



A common distemper bite from an insane dog 

 will never give '^ hydrophobia to man," but the 

 tooth of a hydrophobic dog never fails to do so to 

 any living thing that he lays sufficient hold of, and 

 to man he inculcates the irrevocable hatred and 

 horror of ivater. In my youth and through life I 

 have often been told that the tooth of a really 

 hydrophobic dog, if passing through elastic or 

 thick clothes, would be cleared of its venom, and 

 might prove innocuous. Those who made these 

 assertions no doubt had been aware of persons 



