172 EVERYTHING ABOUT DOGS. 



your sober senses about you, don't believe or pay any attention to what your 

 supposed friends say, when they tell you "how sorry they are," and bestow on 

 you a look of pity, but go about your business as usual; forget the affair, and 

 you wiU never go mad. If you believe all you read and hear as to going mad, lose 

 your nerve and senses arid get scared, it's the easiest thing in the world to "go 

 mad" and die. 



If this is not logic, why have I not gone mad years ago? I was bitten a 

 couple of years ago by a Yorkshire terrier brought to me that was suffering from 

 what a very good veterinary surgeon in Cincinnati had diagnosed as dumb rabies 

 in this dog. I could not take the dog to treat, as I was just starting on a trip, so 

 gent the animal to a veterinary surgeon, who took him to treat. This dog, after 

 biting me, also bit him, and the dog died in twenty-four hours. The doctor held a 

 post-mortem examination and told me it was a case of dumb rabies; but the 

 doctor and I are both living. 



Find me a doctor who can cure hydrophobia, and then I will be glad to have 

 him explain to rne what the disease is. If he can do this, then I'll try to believe 

 there is such a thing as hydrophobia. If he can't cure it, he doesn't know what 

 it is, for there is in this enlightened age a cure for every disease; but you must 

 first know what you are trying to cure, or you won't cure it. 



Every summer the papers are full of mad dog victims; but our best authori- 

 ties who do believe in hydrophobia will tell you that summer, or in hot weather, 

 is not the season of the year that dogs go mad. You read of the person dying in 

 great agony; that he bites and barks, etc., et. So he apparently does, I will admit, 

 as I know of some authenticated cases like this, but the "barking and biting" 

 could easily be explained if the attendants and friends who saw it were not 

 themselves all scared and off their base and had let imagination make them so 

 all due to the scare that comes to so many from the awful word "hydrophobia" 

 and the many vivid and overdrawn accounts they have read in the papers gotten 

 up by a very bright reporter who had to furnish something sensational for his 

 paper. It's just like the cry of "fire" to so many people, who often lose their 

 lives by not retaining their senses about them and in most cases of this kind 

 taking their time and getting safely out of the burning building, instead of either 

 jumping out of a high window to be dashed to pieces on the pavement below or 

 getting crushed to death in the mad rush of the others. 



In case you are bitten by a dog, see to it that the dog is not killed, but that 

 he is confined and well taken care of for a few weeks, at least until you can see 

 and know for yourself that he was not mad, and then you can drop the matter. 

 What an insane idea it is to kill the dog after he has bitten you, for then you will 

 never know whether he was mad or not, and the constant dread and fear will 

 always be with you, and probably if you are of a nervous disposition may yet 

 cause you to "go mad" and die. I have often been called in to put a poor dog 

 out of the way that was supposed to be mad (and I chloroformed it according to 

 orders from its owner), thinking to myself at the time that it was better for 

 the dog than to live and be cared for by an idiot who did not know near as much 

 as the poor dog, who was in serious trouble, of course, but due to some natural 

 cause and 'not to so-called hydrophobia. Sometimes, however, out of pity for the 

 dog, when I saw he had a chance to live if properly treated, I have asked to be 

 allowed to take the dog to my kennels, and I went to work and saved the poor 

 fellow. I am deeply in earnest in my views on this much-mooted subject, and I 

 believe that thousands of people would be alive to-day that have died from 

 hydrophobia if they would look at the majtter as I do and act accordingly. Many 



