144 RABIES. 



the bite and the disease. If the virus may lurk so long as this in the con- 

 stitution, it is a most lamentable affair. According to one account more 

 than thirty years intervened. The usual time extends from three weeks 

 to six or seven months. 



In the dog I have never seen a case in which plain and palpable rabies 

 occurred in less than fourteen days after the bite. The average time I 

 should calculate at five or six weeks. In three months I should consider 

 the animal as tolerably safe. I am, however, relating my own experience, 

 and have known but two instances in which the period much exceeded 

 three months. In one of these five months elapsed, and the other did not 

 become affected until after the expiration of the seventh month. 



The quality and the quantity of the virus may have something to do 

 with this, and so may the predisposition in the bitten animal to be affected 

 by the poison. If it is connected with oestrum, the bitch will probably 

 become a disgusting, as well as dangerous animal ; if with parturition, 

 there is a strange perversion of maternal affection she is incessantly and 

 violently licking her young, continually shifting them from place to place ; 

 and, in less than four-and-twenty hours, they will be destroyed by the 

 reckless manner in which they are treated. In both cases the development 

 of the disease seems to wait on the completion of her time of pregnancy. 

 It appears in the space of two months after the bite, if her parturition is 

 near at hand, or it is delayed for double that time, if the period of labour 

 is so far distant. 



The duration of the disease is different in different animals. In man it 

 has run its course in twenty-four hours, and rarely exceeds seventy-two. 

 In the horse from three to four days ; in the sheep and ox from five to 

 seven ; and in the dog from four to six. 



Of the real nature of the rabid virus, we know but little. It has never 

 been analysed, and it would be a difficult process to analyse it. It is not 

 diffused by the air, nor communicated by the breath, nor even by actual 

 contact, if the skin is sound. It must be received into a wound. It must 

 come in contact with some tissue or nervous fibre, and lie dormant there 

 for a considerable, but uncertain period. The absorbents remove every- 

 thing around ; whatever else is useless, or would be injurious, is taken 

 away, but this strange substance is unchanged. It does not enter into the 

 circulation, for there it would undergo some modification and change, or 

 would be rejected. It lies for a time absolutely dormant, and far longer 

 than any other known poison; but, at length, the tissue on which it has 

 lain begins to render it somewhat sensible, and assimilates to itself certain 

 elements. The cicatrix begins to be painful, and inflammation spreads 

 around. The absorbents are called into more powerful action ; they begin 

 to attack the virus itself, and a portion of it is taken up, and carried into 

 the circulation, and acquires the property of assimilating other secretions 

 to its own nature, or it is determined to one of the secretions only ; it 

 alters the character of that secretion, envenoms it, and gives it the power 

 of propagating the disease. 



Something like this is the history of many animal poisons. In variola and 

 the vaccine disease the poison is determined to the skin, in glanders to the 

 Schneiderian membrane, and in farcy to the superficial absorbents. Each 

 in its turn becomes the depot of the poison. So it is with the salivary glands 

 of the rabid animal ; in them it is formed, or to them it is determined, and 

 from them, and them alone, it is communicated to other animals. 



