218 RABIES CANINA, 



in the petted kinds : this, however, will greatly depend on the ge- 

 neral character of the dog at all times. Costiveness is not un- 

 common in the incipient stage ; in the latter it is still more fre- 

 quent. An early sickness and vomiting often appear, but although 

 ineffectual retchings may continue, actual vomition does not often 

 accompany the complaint through its progress ; the peculiarity 

 of the inflammation in the stomach rather tends to retain the 

 ingesta within it. Indeed, this circumstance forms one of the 

 strongest criteria of the existence of the disease, as will be here- 

 after noticed. 



A continual licking or violent scratching of some particular 

 part of the body is by no means an uncommon symptom ; and a 

 close examination of the part will frequently detect a scar, or the 

 remains of the wound by which the poison was received ; and 

 when the former wound cannot be ascertained in this way, if a true 

 history of the case can be gained, it will always be found that the 

 inoculation was received on the part so scratched or licked ; for 

 I have reason to believe that this morbid sympathy in the bitten 

 part exists more or less in every case. The appetite is by no 

 means always affected in either early or continued rabies ; on the 

 contrary, food is not only eaten, but digested also, during the first 

 stages ; and some will eat almost to the last, but with such the 

 food is seldom digested. That no disinclination to liquids exists 

 will be readily acknowledged by all who observe the disease with 

 only common attention : from the first to the last, no aversion to 

 water is observed. We state this as a general fact : one or two 

 instances in as many hundreds may occur of constitutional idiosyn- 

 crasy where liquids have been refused ; but of the many hundreds 

 of rabid dogs we have seen, not one has shewn any marked aver- 

 sion to water. In the early stages, liquids of all kinds are taken 

 as usual, and some continue to take them throughout the complaint ; 

 others cannot, from a swelling and paralysis of the parts of deglu- 

 tition, readily swallow them in the advanced stages ; but, in such, 

 no spasm is occasioned by the attempt, nor does it cause pain or 

 dread : on the contrary, from the thirst brought on by the symp- 



