242 The Management and Diseases of the Dog. 



render, or may be reasonably supposed to render the mind 

 susceptible to morbid impressions. 



Again, individual idiosyncrasies are present in the canine, 

 as they are in the human race ; and this fact should not be 

 lost sight of when investigating the cause of nervous dis- 

 orders. 



It is a well-recognised fact that, since the improvement 

 (query) of breeds, the fashion of dog breeding, and the 

 growth of canine exhibitions, rabies, or what has been 

 alleged to be rabies, has correspondingly increased. 



It is true, advance in scientific knowledge and research 

 may have made more acute diagnostic talent, but it must 

 not be forgotten that nature abused will result in abnor- 

 mality of some kind. Of this we have palpable evidence 

 in those specimens of the Toy breed, with prominent fore- 

 heads, protruding vacant eyes, and hairless skulls, which 

 creatures, to use a common expression, have been " bred to 

 death." 



Probably, as a veterinarian, and having made canine 

 pathology a specialism, I have had as wide an experience 

 in rabies as any member of my profession now living ; and 

 I can say, without the least hesitation, that in those dogs 

 proved to have been inbred, rabies and other nervous dis- 

 orders have been more prevalent than in natural breeds. 



That dogs, especially of the female sex, are subject to 

 hysteria, 'there is no doubt, whilst the tendency to such a 

 condition amongst the female portion of our own species is 

 beyond all question. 



■And we have it on the authority of one of the greatest, 

 physiologists of our time, that " many forms of that protean 

 malady, hysteria, are attended with a similar irritability of 

 the nervous centres " as occurs in hydrophobia ; further, 

 that the latter disease " is nearly allied to that of traumatic 

 tetanus." 



This evidently is an hysterical age, and persons of highly 

 nervous temperament and excitable dispositions are prone 



