RABIES. 145 



Professor Dick, in his valuable Manual of Veterinary Science, states 

 some peculiar views, and those highly interesting, respecting the disease 

 of rabies. He holds it to be essentially an inflammatory affection, attack- 

 ing peculiarly the mucous membrane of the nose, and extending thence 

 through the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bones to the interior part of 

 the brain, and so giving rise to a derangement of the nervous system as a 

 necessary consequence. This train of symptoms constitutes mainly, if not 

 wholly, the essence of an occasional epidemic not unlike some forms of 

 influenza or epizootic disease, and the bite of a rabid animal is not always, 

 to an animal so bitten, the exciting cause of the disease, but merely an 

 accidental concomitant in the prevailing disorder. Also the disease hydro- 

 phobia, produced in man, is not always the result of any poison introduced 

 into his system, but merely the melancholy, and often fatal result of panic 

 fear, and of the disordered state of the imagination. Those who are ac- 

 quainted with the effects of sympathy, and imitation, and panic, in the 

 production of nervous disorders, will readily apprehend the meaning of the 

 Professor. 



Some of these diseases speedily run their course and exhaust themselves. 

 Cowpox and farcy, in many instances, have this character. Perhaps, to 

 a certain degree, this may be affirmed of all of them. I have seen cases, 

 which I could not mistake, in which the symptoms of rabies were one after 

 another developed. The dog was plainly and undeniably rabid, and I had 

 given him up as lost ; but, after a certain period, the symptoms began to 

 be less distinct ; they gradually disappeared, and the animal returned to 

 perfect health. This may have formed one ground of belief in the power 

 of certain medicines, and most assuredly it gives encouragement to per- 

 severance in the use of remedial measures. 



It has then been proved, and I hope demonstratively, that rabies is pro- 

 pagated by inoculation. It has also been established that although every 

 animal labouring under this disease is capable of communicating it, yet, 

 with very few exceptions, it can be traced to the bite of the dog. It has 

 still further been shown that the malady generally appears at some period 

 between the third and seventh month from the time of inoculation. At 

 the expiration of the eighth month, the animal may be considered to be 

 safe ; for there is only one acknowledged case on record, in which the 

 disease appeared in the dog after the seventh month from the bite had 



Then it would appear that if a species of quarantine could be established, 

 and every dog confined separately for eight months, the disease would be 

 annihilated in our country, or could only reappear in consequence of the 

 importation of some infected animal. Such a course of proceeding, how- 

 ever, could never be enforced either in the sporting- world or among the 

 peasantry. Other measures, however, might be resorted to in order to 

 lessen the devastations of this malady ; and that which first presents itself 

 to the mind as a powerful cause of rabies is the number of useless and 

 dangerous dogs that are kept in the country for the most nefarious and, 

 in the neighbourhood of considerable towns, the most brutal purposes ; 

 without the slightest hesitation, I will affirm that rabies is propagated 

 nineteen times out of twenty, by the cur and the lurcher in the country, 

 and the fighting-dog in towns. 



A tax should be laid on every useless dog, and doubly or trebly heavier 

 than on the sporting-dog. No dog except the shepherd's should be exempt 



