RABIES. 129 



wards symptoms of rabies appeared in the dog, the malady ran its course, 

 and the animal died. A few days afterwards the child sickened undoubted 

 characteristics of rabies were observed they ran their course and the infant 

 was lost. 



There are other cases fortunately not numerous in the records of 

 human surgery, resembling this. A person has been bitten by a dog, he 

 has paid little or no attention to it, and no application of the caustic has 

 been made. Some weeks, or even months, have passed, he has nearly or 

 quite forgotten the affair, when he becomes languid and feverish, and full 

 of fearful apprehensions, and this appearing perhaps during several days, 

 or more than a week. The empoisonment has then ceased to be a local 

 affair, the virus has entered into the circulation, and its impression is made 

 on the constitution generally. Fortunately the disposition to bite rarely 

 develops itself until the full establishment of the disease, otherwise we 

 might sometimes inquire whether it were not our duty to exterminate the 

 whole race of dogs. 



The following case deserves to be recorded : on the 21st of October, 

 1813, a dog was brought to me for examination. He had vomited a con- 

 siderable quantity of coagulated blood. I happened to be particularly 

 busy at the moment, and not observing anything peculiar in his counte-. 

 nance or manner, I ordered some astringent sedative medicine and said 

 that I would see him again in the afternoon. 



In the course of the afternoon he was again brought. The vomiting 

 had quite ceased. His mouth seemed to be swollen, and, on examining 

 him, I found that some of his incisor teeth both in the upper and lower 

 jaw had been torn out. This somewhat alarmed me, and, on inquiring of 

 the servant, I was told that he suspected that they had had thieves about 

 the house on the preceding night ; for the dog had torn away the side of 

 his kennel in attempting to get at them. I scolded him for not having 

 told me of this in the morning : and then, talking of various things in 

 order to prolong the time and to be able closely to watch my patient, I 

 saw, or thought I saw, but in a very slight degree, that the animal was 

 tracing the fancied path of some imaginary object. I was then truly 

 alarmed, and more especially since I had discovered that in the giving of 

 the physic in the morning the man's hand had been scratched ; a youth had 

 suffered the dog to lick his sore finger, and the animal had also been 

 observed to lick the sore ear of an infant. He was a remarkably affec- 

 tionate dog, and was accustomed to this abominable and inexcusable 

 nonsense. 



I insisted on detaining the dog, and gave the man a letter to the sur- 

 geon, telling him all my fears. He promptly acted on the hint, and before 

 evening, the proper means were taken with regard to all three. 



I watched this dog day after day. He would not eat, but he drank a 

 great deal more water than I liked. The surgeon was evidently beginning 

 to doubt whether I was not wrong, but he could not dispute the occasional 

 wandering of the eye, and the frequent spume upon the water. On the 

 26th of October, however, the sixth day after his arrival, we both of us 

 heard the rabid howl burst from him ; he did not, however, die until the 

 30th. I mention this as another instance of the great difficulty there is 

 to determine the real nature of the case in an early stage of the disease. 



M. Perquin relates an interesting case. A lady had a greyhound, nine 

 years old, that was accustomed to lie upon her bed at night, and cover 



K 



