OR CANINE MADNESS. 215 



all the subjects of it : in the majority of instances, the effects ap- 

 pear in the dog between the third and seventh week. Cases, how- 

 ever, do now and then occur, where they have been protracted to 

 three, four, or even a greater number of months. Although, 

 therefore, caution should not be lost sight of, even after eight 

 weeks have elapsed, yet the danger may be considered as incon- 

 siderable after that time. A week is the shortest period I have 

 met with between the bite and rabid appearances. Mr. Youatt 

 never saw a case with less than seventeen intervening days. In 

 the horSe, as far as my own experience goes, the average time is 

 the same with the dog : Mr. Youatt, however, hints at one after 

 four months. In cattle, the probatory period seems much the 

 same as in horses and dogs. In the human, it may appear in a 

 month, or be protracted to three or four ; and the late Mr. Henry 

 Earle authenticates a case within his own knowledge, in which the 

 hydrophobic symptoms were delayed until a twelvemonth after the 

 bite. Of the extraordinary instances we read of, which have been 

 protracted to five, twelve, and even nineteen years, I do not be- 

 lieve one. 



Symptoms of Rabies. 



I SHALL now proceed to describe the pathognomonic and occa- 

 sional indications of the rabid malady, premising that the varieties 

 in both, but particularly in the latter, are so numerous, that hardly 

 any two cases present themselves under a directly similar aspect^. 



^ I have great reason to think that much of the discrepancy we meet with 

 in the various accounts that appear relative to rabies, arises from the confined 

 field of observation from whence they are drawn. One describes it as he has 

 once seen it, and he expects all future cases exactly to coincide with his own 

 statement, or that they should fully bear him out in his own views of the sub- 

 ject. In the larger breeds of dogs, and particularly in kennelled ones, as 

 hoimds, &c., where close domestication has not wholly reclaimed their native 

 ferocity, rabies may, and indeed does, shew itself with much of that wildness 

 and mischievous character that has gained it the name of madness. The rabies 



