OR MADNESS. 227 



account of the rabid malady does not exactly coincide with 

 future representations drawn from a wider field of observation, 

 it nevertheless characterises the disease with considerable pre- 

 cision, and, at the time it was written, was calculated to do 

 infinite good, by banishing some dangerous and erroneous 

 opinions relative to it. 



In 1806, rabies in dogs became very common in England, 

 and extended to the vicinity of London, in which, during the 

 next year, it increased to such a degree, that a day seldom 

 passed without my being consulted on one or more of these 

 cases: sometimes 1 have seen three, four, or five a day, for 

 several days in succession. In the two following years it 

 raged with nearly equal fury ; and it is remarkable, that from 

 that time to the present (1823), it has never disappeared in 

 London : within the last two years its frequency has been 

 rather increasing than diminishing. In the country, about 

 the same proportion of cases have occurred for the last seven 

 years. Towards the close of 1807, I gave to the public, in 

 A Domestic Treatise on Horses and Dogs, the substance of 

 the following remarks on the rabid malady ; and very soon 

 after, I presented a more condensed memoir on the subject, 

 which (with much other accredited* matter on the diseases 

 of dogs) was inserted in Rees's Cyclopedia ; and I believe 

 I may, without fear of contradiction, and 1 hope without the 

 reproach of improper vanity, assert, that, among the nume- 

 rous publications which the prevalence of rabies and hydro- 

 phobia afterwards occasioned, there is scarcely one which has 

 not borrowed something from one or other of these sources ; 

 indeed the plumes of some are principally gathered from 

 them. Of this number a few have had the candour to ac- 

 kno vvledge the obligation : others, less generous, have con- 



* I have said accredited, because the ingenious collator, Dr. Rees, not 

 content with what I had furnished, chose to add the vulgar errors and 

 traditionary nonsense of huntsmen and grooms, which could only be 

 accredited when error and prejudice held sovereign sway. 



