266 The Management and Diseases of the Dog, 



to be mad, can only be averted by the death of the animal. 

 This is an egregious mistake. A dog must be infected 

 with rabies before it can produce " Hydrophobia." Again 

 if a dog after biting a person is at once destroyed before 

 being examined by a qualified canine veterinary surgeon, 

 the mind of the wounded individual may be in a state of 

 continual disquietude, from the oft-recurring thought that 

 the dog may have been mad, and this painful and haunting 

 uncertainty acting upon a highly nervous temperament is 

 not unfrequently productive of a fatal issue from Hysteria 

 and nervous exhaustion, so often wrongly reported as 

 " Hydrophobia." My advice has always been to let a dog 

 which has been guilty of biting, be fully secured until 

 the maximum period of incubation has passed — then if he 

 is in perfect health, or free from rabid symptoms, the 

 mind of the injured person will be relieved, and the 

 animal, if still desired, can then be destroyed — not with 

 the policeman's truncheon, but with chlorofonn. In a few 

 instances when I have appeared in court to plead this 

 arrangement, and even volunteered to take personal 

 charge of the dog, I have met with opposition, and 

 unnecessary terror and anxiety to the bitten individual 

 has been the consequence, but a sensible magistrate will 

 always see the wisdom and humanity of granting such an 

 application, and even advocating it to the injured person. 

 There is no such disorder as " epileptic rabies," which 

 was alleged, during the recent London scare, to exist. Such 

 an allegation is not only misleading, but purely imaginary 

 on the part of the originator. Canine rabies is a specific 

 disease and has no concomitant malady. 



EPILEPSY. 



Dogs of all breeds are very liable to fits, and the epileptic • 



is the form most frequently met with. To say that epilepsy 



has been confounded over and over again with rabies, would 



be stating what is correct. A mistake, unfortunately, for 



