202 RABIES CANINA, 



hundreds per year, is most decidedly in favour of the contagious 

 origin of the disease, and none other. Nevertheless I am con- 

 strained to admit that some respectable authorities favour an 

 opinion to the contrary. While I was thus in the midst of it, I 

 never met with one instance where it occurred in a dog wholly se- 

 cluded from the access of others. I have met with cases where 

 the utter seclusion has been peremptorily stated ; but not only 

 have such statements, on examination, invariably been found un- 

 tenable, but they have served, in most instances, in a remarkable 

 manner, to confirm the opinion here advocated^. Great as my 



* With how much apparent confidence persons may assure themselves of 

 the impossibility of the inoculation of some dogs which have become rabid, 

 and yet how easily it is to be totally in error on the subject, the two following 

 cases, out of many, may serve to shew : — I was requested by a gentleman, re- 

 siding in Wimpole Street, to examine a dog, which I at once pronounced rabid ; 

 on which he promptly informed me, that if the dog was so, he certainly must 

 have become so without infection (which he knew was in direct opposition to 

 my opinion) ; for that this dog, which was a very great favourite, had never, 

 for many months, been out of doors alone, nor, indeed, at any time, out of the 

 sight of either himself or his valet, who was also attached to the dog, and had 

 the express care of him when his master was absent. As, therefore, neither 

 of them had ever seen him bitten, they were positive on the subject. Anxious 

 to arrive at the truth where so important a matter was concerned, I commenced 

 a close examination of the other servants ; and it was, at length, remembered 

 by the footman, that one morning, when the master's bell rang for the valet to 

 take this dog fi"om the bed -room, as he was accustomed to do, his absence oc- 

 casioned the footman to answer it ; and this man distinctly recollected the dog 

 accompanying him to the street door, and also that, while engaged in receiving a 

 message brought, he as distinctly remembered that the dog went a little way into 

 the street, and was suddenly attacked by another that passed, seemingly with- 

 out an owner. Here was an explanation of the apparent difficulty : this passing 

 dog, there is little reason to doubt, was rabid, and, pursuing the usual march 

 of mischief, he bit the favourite. — Another case, even more confirmatory of the 

 possibility of becoming mistaken on this subject, is that of a Newfoundland 

 dog, which was constantly chained to his kennel during the day, and suffered 

 to be at large only during the night within an inclosed yard. This dog became 

 rabid, and, as no dog was known to have had access to the yard, it seemed to 

 be an established certainty in the mind of his owner that he generated the 

 disease spontaneously. This case I also sifted with great perseverance, to elicit 



