274 MORBID BODILY CONDITIONS 



under the same kinds of circumstances there can be little 

 doubt. Daniell, for instance, shows how a mere passing 

 fancy for a glimpse at some dog, on the part of a pointer 

 bitch, so impressed her memory and imagination that she 

 transmitted this impress in a physical form to her progeny. 



Among other singular maternal impressions and their 

 results may here be noted that masculine bodily attributes 

 have been acquired by female animals from shock to maternal 

 love for instance, in the hen. 



There are, again, numerous ordinary bodily ailments 

 including a variety of specific diseases that are among other 

 causes producible by purely mental states, purely emotional, 

 or purely nervous, influences, though such states or influences 

 seldom act per se. Thus Miss Buist tells us that ' terror, 

 neglect, and cold are the causes of half the bird complaints 

 known.' 



Of all these specific diseases none is so formidable as 

 rabies. In the dog inconsolable grief sometimes produces 

 ( sickening ' and c dumb madness,' or other forms of rabies 

 ( c Animal World ') ; and the same terrible disease appears 

 also to be the fruit of emotions of an opposite kind such as 

 anger, however aroused, especially if either sudden, and in- 

 tense or protracted. It is producible also by terror. 



Thus Fleming tells us that a very small toy-terrier of his 

 own, which was travelling with him by railway, was suddenly 

 terrified by an engine whistle. Rabies, that proved fatal in 

 a few days, was at once developed. In all such cases every 

 effort is made to connect the rabies with the bite of some 

 other dog that may be presumed, if it cannot be proved, to 

 have been rabid : an effort that is frequently futile, and that 

 owes its being made at all to the popular conviction that 

 rabies never arises spontaneously. There is sufficient evi- 

 dence, however, to show that it is developed spontaneously 

 in the dog, just as hydrophobia sometimes is in man under 

 the influence of powerful emotion in the dog's case grief, 

 terror, anger ; in man's, fear and imagination. 



Physical exhaustion is of importance, moreover, as a pre- 

 disposing cause of serious results from emotion. Thus the 

 shock of joy, which might not prove fatal to the healthy dog, 



