RABIES, OR MADNESS. 1 45 



his halter. He made immediately towards the medical attendant, and the 

 spectators who were standing by. They fortunately succeeded in getting out of 

 his way, and he turned into the next stall, and dropped and died. 



A young veterinary friend of mine very incautiously and fool-hardily 

 attempted to ball a rabid horse. The animal had previously shown himself to 

 be dangerous, and had slightly bitten a person who gave him a ball on the 

 preceding evening : he now seized the young student's hand, and lifted him 

 from the ground, and shook him, as a terrier would shake a rat. It was with 

 the greatest difficulty, and not until the grooms had attacked the ferocious 

 animal with their pitchforks, that they could compel him to relinquish his 

 hold; and, even then, not before he had bitten his victim to the bone, and nearly 

 torn away the whole of the flesh from the upper and lower surfaces of the 

 hand*. 



There is also in the horse, whose attachment to his owner is often compara- 

 tively small, a degree of treachery which we rarely meet with in the nobler and 

 more intellectual dog. A horse that had shown symptoms of great ferocity was 

 standing in the corner of his box, with a heaving flank, and every muscle 

 quivering from the degree of excitement under which he laboured. A 

 groom, presuming on the former obedience of the animal, ventured in, and 

 endeavoured to put a headstall upon him. Neither the master nor myself 

 could persuade him to forbear. I was sure of mischief, for I had observed the 

 ear lying flat upon the neck, and I could see the backward glance of the eye ; 

 I therefore armed myself with a heavy twitch stick that was at hand, and 

 climbed into the manger of the next box. The man had not advanced two 

 steps into the box before I could see the shifting position of the fore feet, and 

 the preparation to spring upon his victim ; and he would have sprung upon him, 

 but my weapon fell with all the force I could urge upon his head, and he 

 dropped. The man escaped, but the brute was up again in an instant, and we 

 trembled lest the partition of the box should yield to his violence, and he would 

 realise the graphic description of Mr. Blaine, when he speaks of the rabid horse 

 as " levelling everything before him, himself sweating, and snorting, and foaming 

 amidst the ruins." 



I have had occasion more than once to witness the evident pain of the 

 bitten part, and the manner in which the horse in the intervals of his 

 paroxysms emplo3's himself in licking or gnawing the cicatrix. One animal 

 had been bitten in the chest, and he, not in the intervals between the exacer- 

 bation, but when the paroxysm was most violent, would bite and tear himself 

 until his breast was shockingly mangled, and the blood flowed from it in a 

 stream. 



The most interesting and satisfactory symptom is the evident dread of water 

 wliich exists in the decided majority of cases, and the impossibility of swallowing 

 any considerable quantity. Professor Dupuy gives an account of this circum- 

 stance : — " A rabid horse was confined in one of the sick boxes. His food 

 was given to him through an opening over the door, and a bucket was suspended 

 from the door, and supplied with water by means of a copper tube. As soon 

 as he heard the water falling into the pail, he fell into violent convulsions, 

 seized the tube, and crushed it to pieces. When the water in his bucket was 

 agitated, the convulsions were renewed. He would occasionally approach the 

 bucket as if he wished to drink, and then, after agitating the water for an 

 instant, he would fall on his litter, uttering a hoaTse cry ; but he would rise 

 again almost immediately. These symptoms were dreadfully increased if water 

 was thrown upon his head. He would then endeavour to seize it as it fell, and 



* In the Museum of the Veterinary School at Alfort, is the lower jaw of a rabid horse, 

 which was fractured in the violent efforts of the animal to do mischief. 



