DISTEMPER RESEMBLING MADNESS. 153 



through the ring so that I could prevent his reaching 

 me in any wish to bite. The instant he heard the 

 water and saw it coming, ahnost before it touched 

 him, he was convulsed, crying in an angry or con- 

 vulsive manner, and biting at his chain. On the 

 removal of the water he relapsed into a sullen de- 

 jected state, and, unless approached by water, in that 

 sort of lethargy he remained, occasionally moaning, 

 till he died, which I think happened about the fourth 

 or fifth day after my first perceiving that he was 

 dull. Had this hound been let loose, I have no doubt 

 but that exercise, increasing the circulation, would 

 have incited to violence, and that he would have run 

 through the country biting all he came near ; I do 

 not think that had I sat within reach of his chain 

 throughout the malady, that he would have bitten 

 me, unless under delirious spasm produced by the 

 touch of water. I have seen it asserted that doo^s 

 in a rabid state of hydrophobia have been known to 

 lap water ; this assertion is erroneous : if they have 

 no hatred to, nor dread of water, their disease is not 

 hydrophobia, but they are rabid from some other 

 cause. In different phases of distemper that disease 

 will make a dog rabid, and induce him to snap at 

 and bite everything that is in motion near him, from 

 a stick in a man's hand to any living animal. The 

 eyes of dogs so suffering resemble those of a dog 

 under hydrophobia, and they are subject to similar 

 paroxysms, to dulness and stupor, and when not 

 thirsty, if water, or indeed if anything was thrown at 

 them, they would be violent and bite, but not from 

 any repugnance to the element. Dogs in this state, 

 a state of fever and internal inflammation, will lap 

 water ravenously, and for a quarter of an hour at a 



