1901] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 133 
If proper measures are taken to protect animals from 
the bacilli of anthrax, of glanders, of pleuropneumonia, 
they do not contract these diseases. Investigation of cat- 
tle plague in central Europe indicated that the disease 
always came from the Hast. Investigations on the step- 
pes of Russia showed that it did not originate there, but 
came from the plains of Asia. Investigations in Asia in- 
dicate that even there the disease is always the result of 
contagion from some other affected animal. Inthe same 
manner, investigations of rabies failed to bring out any 
evidence to indicate that the disease might originate in 
any way except by contagion, that is by inoculation from 
an affected animal. It may, therefore, be accepted as 
practically certain that rabies does not develop sponta- 
neously in any animal, but that it is always the result of 
inoculation from some other affected animal. 
If the doctrine of spontaneous generation, or abiogen- 
esis, has been abandoned by scientific men, it has by no 
means lost caste with many persons who consider them- 
selves philosophers ; and these persons hesitate to accept 
or indeed bitterly contest the conclusion of science,which 
bas been outlined above. If, they ask, every dog with 
rabies contracted the disease from some other dog affect- 
ed with it, how did the first dog get it? Thisisa ques- 
tion as to the origin of things, which we may with equal 
reason ask in regard to all living organisms. If every dog 
is brought into the world by the sexual union of the two 
other dogs, where did the first dog come from? This 
question is just as difficult, but no more difficult than the 
other. Because we have in our question implied the phil- 
osophical absurdity of a series of dogs without a begin- 
ning, we have net convinced anyone that dogs can origi- 
nate in any manner except by ancestors of their own spe- 
cies, nor is the similar question as to the origin of the 
first case of rabies any better reason for accepting the 
theory of the spontaneous origin of this disease. 
