OR CANINE MADNESS. 205 



The quality and quantity of the food has been assigned as a 

 cause of rabies ; but in dogs which have been accidentally sub- 

 jected to a deprivation of food, bordering upon starvation, it never 

 yet took place^*^. Neither has repletion ever occasioned it, although 

 it has proved the parent of manyother inflammatory affections. 

 Putrid food has been fully proved to have no title to generating 

 it : neither would it, a priori^ be likely to produce it in predatory 

 animals, whose stomachs must, by nature, be formed to subsist on 

 matter in various stages of decomposition. In Lisbon, in Con- 

 stantinople, and other eastern cities, dogs are the only scavengers ; 

 and, at the Cape of Good Hope, Barrow informs us, the Gaffrees 

 feed their dogs wholly on putrid flesh, and no such disease is seen 

 among them. Abstinence from water is an old and popular sup- 

 posed cause of madness ; but, in India, where, from the drying of 

 the water- tanks, many brutes perish ; and in northern latitudes, 

 where the supplies are frozen, yet madness is not observed to be 

 the consequence of either. In fact, in the rage for experiment, 

 dogs have been purposely subjected to all these supposed causes, 

 but without having once produced the disease. It is unnecessary 

 to combat the opinion of Dr. Mead and others, that an acrid state 

 of blood, from the want of perspiration in the dog, is a remote 

 cause of madness. Neither have we more reason to suppose that 

 any state or peculiarity of atmosphere can give rise to it, although 

 it may favour the extension and activity of the contagion. 



greatest number of rabid wolves : but this prevalence is undoubtedly veiy much 

 under the influence of circumstances. M. Andry, in his Recherches sur la Rage, 

 Paris, 1780, observes that January the coldest, and August the hotest months, 

 furnished the fewest instances. II n'est point vrai que cette maladie soit plus 

 commune pendant les froids rigoureux de I'hiver, ou les chaleurs excessives 

 de I'ete, qu'au printemps et en automne. — TroillieL 



'° Among innumerable experiments which have been made, I will only notice 

 the cruel but striking one at the Veterinary School of Alfort. Three dogs 

 were chained, fully exposed to the heat of the sun. Nothing but salted meat 

 was given to one ; water alone to the second ; and neither food nor drink to the 

 third. As might be expected, every one perished ; but neither of them exhi- 

 bited the slightest symptoms of rabies. See Dissertation sur la Rage, by M. 

 Bleynier, Paris. 



