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CHAPTER XVI. 

 ON RABIES AND HYDROPHOBIA. 



HOWEVER interesting the study of canine rabies and hydrophobia may be to the medical 

 practitioner and veterinary surgeon, it is nevertheless a subject on which one has but little 

 pleasure in writing, for the saddening fact is ever present to our mind that all human efforts to 

 cure the disease either in mankind or in the dog if once fairly established, have hitherto proved 

 futile. 



Two things, however, we have in our power to effect ; we can, by gaining a knowledge of the 

 earlier symptoms of the disorder in the dog, prevent its extension in our kennels, and, in the case 

 of wounds from the teeth of even a truly rabid animal, we can use means to be presently 

 stated, which will render the advent of the terrible disease all but impossible. 



Now, in attempting to give a short outline of the pathology of rabies in the dog, we are 

 met at the very outset by two difficulties. The first is that the earliest symptoms, which after 

 all are just those with which the public ought to be most familiar, are not by any means the 

 same in every dog ; and the second is that, professionally, we know well how hard it is for any 

 one, no matter how well educated, to learn to know the symptoms of a disease from mere printed 

 words a disease they may never have seen a case of. We can only try, therefore, to describe 

 rabies as well as words can do it. 



Firstly. Wliat is rabies? By rabies we mean that disorder in the lower animals com- 

 monly, but erroneously, called hydrophobia, the result of a specific poison, received traumatically 

 or otherwise, which produces a certain train of symptoms usually, if not invariably, ending 

 in death. The disease is most common in the dog, but is sometimes seen in the cat and others 

 of our domesticated animals. 



Secondly. Does rabies ever arise in the dog without the positive absorption of the poisonous 

 matter from another animal? It is our opinion, from all we have read and heard and seen, 

 that the possibility of the spontaneity of rabies is placed beyond a doubt, although without 

 question the grand majority of cases are the result of direct contagion. 



Thirdly. The duration of tlte stage of incubation or latency of the disorder. Rabies will 

 most likely appear in the dog within forty days after the reception of the contagium. But 

 the actual time, we should say, would depend on a variety of causes : as the state of health 

 and temperament of the wounded dog, the stage of rabidity in the dog that bit him, the 

 portion of the body injured, the amount of contagium inserted, and on the age puppyhood 

 seeming to favour an earlier development of the disease. 



Fourthly. The causes of rabies. It could serve no good purpose to enlarge on the 

 various alleged causes of rabies, most of which have been over and over again proved to be 

 merely hypothetical. Contagion is the only proved cause, and in cases where it arises 

 spontaneously rabies is doubtless the result of a combination of causes. 



Fifthly. The virus or contagium itself. With regard to this we have only to ask the 

 reader to bear in mind Us extreme, we were going to say its almost indestructible virulence, 



