396 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



quarts of water). Care must be taken not to carry the disease from 

 the sick to the well by sponges, etc., which have come in contact with 

 the affected organs. These should be destroyed. To prevent the spread 

 of the disease the infected animals should be kept isolated until they 

 have recovered. 



BABIES OR HYDROPHOBIA. 



Babies is a disease which seems to originate in the canine race and 

 which may be transmitted to other species of animals and to man 

 through bites. There are some writers who maintain that it may arise 

 spontaneously in the dog without previous inoculation. The advances 

 made in our knowledge by the researches of Pasteur and others do not 

 favor this view, but lead directly to the inference that rabies is always 

 communicated from a preceding case, and that it never originates spon- 

 taneously. 



We must assume, therefore, that the disease is always transmitted 

 by the bite of the rabid animal. The saliva contains the virus which 

 is introduced into or under the skin on the tooth of the rabid animal. 



By no means are all bites followed by rabies. According to some 

 authorities only one-fourth of the inoculated cattle become diseased. 

 This low percentage may be due to the kind of wound inflicted. When 

 the bleeding is very profuse the virus may be washed out at once. As 

 to the nature of this virus nothing is definitely known, although Pas- 

 teur and his co-workers have made prolonged efforts in this direction. 



In general the virus behaves like bacterial poisons. It may be trans- 

 mitted from one animal to another by simple inoculation, just as we 

 may preserve the virus of other infectious diseases. 



From these facts it becomes evident that the virus of rabies can only 

 be transmitted directly from the sick to the healthy, and that for this 

 transmission a wound is necessary. Since the virus is contained in the 

 saliva, the disease may be artificially produced by inoculating an animal 

 with the saliva of some rabid animal. Healthy animals, from the nature 

 of the case, can not carry the virus. It is still a widely prevalent belief 

 that if persons or animals are bitten by a dog,' for instance, they are 

 liable to become rabid when such a dog contracts rabies at any time in 

 the future. There is no foundation for such belief, and it would be a 

 great comfort to many people who are now and then bitten by animals 

 if such belief were given up. There is no foundation for the theory 

 that rabies may be caused by the bite of an animal which has been 

 inoculated, but in which the disease has not yet appeared. All exper- 

 ience, both scientific and practical, goes to show that rabies is trans- 

 mitted only by animals actually diseased. 



Babies is not a very uncommon disease in cattle in those regions 

 where rabid dogs are occasionally found. Thus in the German Empire 

 carefully compiled statistics have shown that next to dogs cattle are 

 more frequently affected than any other of the domesticated animals. 



