DIFFICULTY OF DEALING WITJl PANICS. 841 



epidemic. Insanity more or less reigns when the 

 attack is very virulent. It is an insanity of 

 the brain from epidemical fever wliicli besets the 

 constitution. That insanity may come within tlie 

 term ^^ rabies," which can be applied to any animal 

 that is rabid, or that is violently insane ; but, 

 nevertheless, the patients so suffering have not the 

 hydropJwhia, nor a s/finjjtom of it, nor an approach 

 to it, save in the fact of a disordered l)rain ; and 

 the bite of any of those hounds and dogs so 

 sufferimj ivould carrij ivith it no contagion luJiat- 

 ever. 



It is a madness serioushj hurtful to notliiiuj but . 

 the poor suffering dog, that has been mistaken for 

 the very rare, but always fatal, disease of hydro- 

 phobia; and there is a means at hand to diminisli 

 tlie ill-founded and mischievous dread that preys 

 on the public mind for dispelling tlio disease that 

 occasions all discomfort.^ Distemper is to Ijc pre- 

 vented,_ by car(ful and successful vaccination. Jt' 

 distemper is lessened, causeless fears, originated 

 by fools or designing people, are in the same 

 dcOTce diminished : there is less madness amona* 

 hounds and dogs to 1)0 mistaken in; tlie enormous 

 cost in breeding many hounds, and the loss occa- 



