WORMING. 303 



search after truth displayed by the ingenious Baronet would sti- 

 mulate him or any other experimentalist to inoculate a number of 

 both wormed and unwormed dogs with rabid virus, and to shut up 

 with each inoculated dog a certain number of others not endan- 

 gered, the matter would soon be brought to an issue, and the truth 

 would be imperatively forced on the minds of those who thus err. 

 In the first place, the dumb variety or the raging variety would 

 either of them appear indiscriminately; and equally so in the 

 wormed and in the unwormed subject : no preference for either 

 state of the disease would be seen in the mutilated or the unmu- 

 tilated tongue. In the second place, it would be found, that of 

 those becoming dumb-mad, the whole, probably without an excep- 

 tion (if the experiment were made with others than lap-dogs, or 

 the meek and gentle breeds of close domestication) would be found 

 capable and inclined to inflict a fatal inoculation on the dogs 

 around them, in the early stage of the complaint. This, from the 

 evidence of innumerable facts, I am confident would be the result ; 

 and it is this evidence so drawn that emboldens me to assert, that 

 worming is altogether a fallacy^ and is no immunity whatever 

 against the propagation of the disease by biting. 



But this is not the whole of the error ; for further to establish 

 the complete efficacy of worming as a preventive of communicating 

 the disease in this way, it is necessary to maintain, that every 

 wormed dog, himself becoming rabid, must of necessity have the 

 dumb variety only ; otherwise it is self-evident the security is only 

 partial and contingent. To maintain this, the advocates must, 

 like the ancients, consider the under surface of the tongue as a 

 most enigmatical part indeed : but is this the case ? So far from 

 there being any connexion between this operation and the variety 

 of rabies which may occur, I am prepared to assert (and I believe 

 I may assert for Mr. Youatt also, whose opinions are on public 

 record), that out of the many hundreds, or rather thousands of 

 rabid dogs which we have seen, we never observed that there was 

 any priority of election for either variety in the wormed or un- 

 wormed. It was very often a matter of inquiry with myself, and 



