236 RABIES CANINA, 



period, a secondary and lymphatic inflammation arises within the 

 part, a new morbid compound is formed, and all the symptomatic 

 appearances which follow are derived from the absorption of this 

 newly generated poison. The most popular opinion, however, of 

 the day is that which considers the virus received as remaining 

 stationary within the wounded part^^ until it is excited into action 

 by some irritation in such part ; from whence it is carried along 



'^ " It remains perfectly undecomposed. The absorbents are actively at work 

 in removing every thing around. The capillary vessels are depositing fresh 

 matter ; but it seems to remain the same. Whatever else is useless, or would 

 be injurious, is taken up, and the tissue or the fibril on which the virus rests 

 is modified or changed ; but this extraneous and fatal body bids defiance to 

 all the powers of nature. It enters not into the circulation, or it would ne- 

 cessarily undergo some modification in its passage through the innumerable 

 minute vessels and glandular bodies which are scattered through the frame. 

 It would excite some morbid action ; or if it were not thus employed, or in 

 the purposes of renovation or nutrition, it would be speedily ejected. It lies 

 for an uncertain period dormant ; but at length, from its constant presence as 

 a foreign body, it may have rendered the tissue or nervous fibril more irritable 

 and susceptible of impression ; or it may have attracted and assimilated to 

 itself elements from the fluids that circulated around it." — Pamphlet on Rabies, 

 p. 25. Whatever are the principles of its action, the surrounding parts evince 

 the presence of a stimulus, which usually first shews itself in the general tex- 

 ture by slight inflammation, attended often with intolerable itching in the dog, 

 which is betokened by that constant licking and even gnawing of the bitten 

 part, which has been noticed as a common symptom of rabies in that animal. 

 In the human, this first acknowledgment of the incipient action' is also, I 

 believe, invariably present : in Mrs. Duff''s case, a pimple first appeared on 

 her nose, being the spot which a favourite Newfoundland dog had scratched 

 and then licked, in the commencement of his rabid attack. This pimple 

 troubled her by its smarting, itching, and throbbing, three days before the 

 more active symptoms appeared. In Metcalf's case, shooting pains, directed 

 from the hand towards the head, preceded the more active symptoms ; and 

 something of this kind, I believe, would be found to accompany every one, 

 in some degree or other, were the circumstance particularly attended to. In 

 horses, cattle, and swine, this secondary inflammation is equally common and 

 even more striking : they will rub, bite, and tear their bitten parts with violence, 

 and in them the local irritation is long kept up after the disease is fully 

 formed. 



