OR CANINE MADNESS. 221 



generally, these remarks will be found to apply. The change of 

 temper in its early stages consists rather of a pettish irritability 

 than one of a settled mischievous intention ; but, with few^ excep- 

 tions, a marked impatience of restraint is manifested. The first 

 oflFensive symptoms are often directed towards cats, while dogs re- 

 main unmolested : next, however, dogs, particularly strange ones, 

 are attacked, but those they are habituated to are still safe ; and 

 as the complaint gains ground even these are not spared. — We 

 will now further pursue the disease under its two leading varieties, 

 which distinctions are founded principally on the circumstance, of 

 whether it spends its violence on the respiratory or on the digestive 

 systems of organs ; previously, however, observing, that this dis- 

 tinction is rather made in obedience to popular and long received 

 opinion, which has recognized canine madness as of two kinds, one 

 raging, and the other dumb, than to any specific difference be- 

 tween them : on the contrary, when the attack is equally diffused 

 throughout the system, the symptoms of these two states are so 

 blended, as to afford little room for nosological distinction ; and the 

 less, as each variety begets either the one or the other indiscrimi- 

 nately. Nevertheless, as the attack on the organs is rather partial 

 than general, in the majority of cases, so it may not be inconvenient 

 to follow the popular distinctions. 



Acute or Raging Rabies. 



Acute Rabies, or Raging Madness^^, as it is called, is that state 

 of increased excitement and irritability which begins to shew itself 

 immediately after, and occasionally only with the early symptoms. 

 Sometimes these precursors are passed over unnoticed, and it is 

 therefore supposed that the animal is at once attacked with the 



^" It is a curious fact, but it is no less true than curious, that the rabies of 

 very young dogs, as I have seen it, has always been of this kind. I never saw 

 a rabid puppy that did not exhibit marks of considerable delirium and much 

 mischievous tendency towards every living being, indiscriminately. That af- 

 fection of the throat, and tumefaction of the parts of deglutition, producing 

 diwib madness, I never met with in any but an adult dog. 



