RABIES IN THE DOG. 655 



We may mention, however, but we do so reservedly, that while the poison is only latent in 

 the dog, and the animal still apparently in his usual state of health, we do not think it very 

 likely to be communicable to another dog. Our theory is that any specific poison, no matter 

 what, received into the body, may, during the period of its latency, be compared to a 

 seedling in the earth the seedling is not the plant, the virus is not the disease, both 

 must grow, both must ripen. In the matter of rabies, however, theories are nasty tools to 

 handle. 



The virulence of the contagium of rabies is indeed very great, and it can be communicated 

 in many different ways, even from dried saliva though this to a medical man seems nothing 

 remarkable, although it may account for the way rabies has been known to break out 

 periodically in some kennels where the former hounds had been all destroyed and the boards 

 apparently properly washed and disinfected. One cannot be too cautious in handling a mad 

 dog. Although, as a matter of duty, we have sucked a snake bite in another, we would be 

 chary in doing the same office were the bite that of a mad dog. Two cases just occur to 

 us, both proving how easily the contagium is transmitted. Both were related to us by 

 Professor Pirrie, of Aberdeen, but whether they actually occurred in his own practice we are 

 unable to say for certain. A lady was mending a rent in her dress caused by the teeth of 

 her pet dog, not suspected of being rabid. She merely bit off the end of the thread, with 

 hydrophobia as the result. In the other case, a gentleman was reclining on the sofa, when 

 his dog affectionately licked his cheek. He, too, succumbed. In both cases there must have 

 been slight cuticular abrasion. 



Having, however, always the interests of our canine friends at heart, we cannot leave 

 this part of our subject without informing the reader that, as regards bites from animals 

 unmistakably rabid, it is believed by most authorities that not more than forty per cent, of 

 the bitten succumb to hydrophobia, and nothing like so large a proportion if the wounds have 

 been speedily and properly attended to facts which ought to go far to allay excitement and 

 panic. We are drifting into the subject of hydrophobia, however, which is not our present 

 intention. But we may just add that in no case ought a suspected dog who has bitten 

 any one to be destroyed at once ; he should be kept under supervision until the question of rabies 

 or not rabies be placed beyond a doubt. 



Sixthly. The symptoms. That the grossest ignorance with regard to the symptoms of canine 

 rabies prevails, both among the police and the general public, is proved by the accounts we read 

 almost every other week of so-called rabid dogs. The individual members of our excellent police 

 force are not over-intelligent, the public are naturally easily alarmed, and it is just possible that, 

 at the very moment some poor harmless though excited animal is being hounded and beaten 

 to death, a really mad, albeit all unsuspected, dog may be trotting along on the other side of the 

 way. We are well acquainted with a gentleman who was, partially at least, to blame for a recent 

 Berkshire panic. The dog was his own, and was followed and destroyed by him. Now, we do not 

 say that this dog may not have been rabid, but his master could not tell us, on inquiry, one 

 solitary reliable symptom of canine rabies. And we could, if space permitted, give many more 

 instances quite as instructive. The symptoms which are given us by the older writers on this 

 subject of rabies are, in many respects, so different from those we see now-a-days, that either the 

 writers themselves must have been careless in their annotations, or the disease must, in the lapse 

 of time, have become altered in type ; and this last supposition is by no means improbable. 



We have more than once advocated the plan, first proposed, we believe, by Mr. Fleming, of 

 having the usual symptoms of canine rabies printed on the back of every license, along with the 



