l)R CANINE MADNESS. 239 



account will combine both the human and brute treatment, that I 

 may render these pages more extensively useful, as well to the 

 public as to the practitioner in brute medicine, whose opinion will 

 be often sought for, where the owners of rabid animals have been 

 unfortunately wounded by them. Here, as I have often found, 

 the timely benefit of judicious advice, and even the application of 

 proper preventive means, have gained unbounded gratitude, and a 

 consciousness of being eminently useful. 



The most ancient remedy on record for the rabid malady, after 

 it had actually appeared, was cold bathing, which it was usual to 

 apply to the extent of a temporary drowning ; but although it is 

 handed down to us that it occasionally proved successful, these 

 accounts are not now relied on^. I tried it on two rabid doffs to 

 the extinction of life almost, and it certainly suspended the pro- 

 gress of the complaint for some hours ; which I attribute, not to 

 any specific virtue in the bathing itself, but to the shake given to 

 the constitution : for it is remarkable, that any great violence of- 

 fered from accidental causes- during the progress of the disease, 

 particularly in its early stages, in many instances appears to beget 

 a new- action, which, for a time, arrests the progress of the rabid 

 one, and suspends its more active symptoms for a longer or shorter 

 period, usually in proportion to the violence done. The morbid 

 poison, however, soon resumes its ascendancy, and the fatal issue 

 is only protracted, but never removed. 



Warm bathings have been also fully tried, both in ancient and 



' Celsus recommends it, and gives instances of its successful application. 

 Euripides is one who was said to have been ciu-ed by it 



^ During the ravings of a rabid dog, it is to be expected that he will meet 

 with severe beatings from other dogs, and, not unfrequently, he will be subject 

 to violent attacks from human persons, from whom he may, however, eventu- 

 ally escape, although severely handled. I have had many opportunities of 

 observing dogs after their return which have been so treated, and I have in- 

 variably found that an absence of the more active appearances of disease has 

 followed for two or three days ; and that, in some cases, to such a degree as to 

 deceive those around, and make them consider the recovery of the animal as 

 certain; but gradually the complaint has returned with all its violence. 



