400 ILLUSTRATED STOCK DOCTOR. 



toms, from three to eight weeks. Some declare that a longer period than 

 even eight weeks sometimes intervenes between inoculation and positive 

 madness ; but such cases, if there are such, must be extremely rare. 

 Thev form the exception, and contradict the great mass of testimony on 

 this subject. 



The remote cause — that which produces it in animals of the dog and 

 cat kinds — we need not attempt to discuss, as it can have little if any 

 practical bearing on the subject in hand. It may be well to observe, 



however, that most of the lower animals 

 contract the disease when bitten by dogs 

 that are violently mad, whereas among 

 men it is widely different. Statistics 

 seem to show that less than fifty per 

 cent, of the latter take the disease. It 

 has been offered in explanation, that the 

 bite is generally through clothing, that 

 serves in many instances to cleanse the 

 teeth of the virus before the skin is 

 COUNTENANCE OF A HOBsiwiTrRABiKs. rcachcd. lu thc casc of horscs, the bite 



is generally on the lip — a sensitive and 

 vascular part, where the absorbents are readily reached. 



How to know it. — Blood on the lips, or elsewhere, with marks of 

 violence, are of course to be regarded as symptoms of dog bite, if any 

 known occasion for such a thing has existed ; ant* for a few days these 

 will be the only indications. If the horse is high tad and full of blood, 

 and the weather is hot, the poison may begin to produce outward effects 

 in from five to ten days by a swelling of the bitten parts, and by a diffi- 

 culty manifested in swallowing. In from twelve to fifteen days there is 

 perceptibly increased pulsation ; inflamed throat, with thickening of the 

 membrane that lines it ; from the fifteenth to the twentieth day the 

 stomach inflames, and perhaps rejects food, — but nothing certainly can 

 be stated as to this point, since here the symptoms vary greatly with 

 different animals : in some cases the appetite is voracious, and so morbid 

 that the sufferer will devour his own excrement and urine. Sometimes 

 he will exhibit burning thirst and drink freely, while again water will 

 cause spasmodic movements and be avoided with horror. But in general, 

 the appetite is destroyed, and that dread of water which characterizes 

 thc disease in man is present in the horse. 



In a very short time the indications increase, and usually (as we 

 have said, with full blooded, feverishly disposed horses, at a time of high 

 temperature) before the twentieth day, absolute madness sets in. He 



