SECTION VIII. 
DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 
CHAPTER I. 
RABIES. 
EstTimaTING fairly the real importance of rabies, all the subject deserves 
would scarcely occupy a single page; but unfortunately the average reader would 
not be satisfied with a distinction in this instance, and what must seem an indif- 
ferent and incomplete discussion, especially of the symptoms, which are many 
and varied, also difficult to describe understandingly if any attempt to abbre- 
viate is made. It will therefore be treated exhaustively, in keeping with the 
tule observed throughout this work. 
Many able physicians have stoutly insisted that hydrophobia, which is sup- 
posed to be contracted from rabies in the dog, is purely a disease of imagination, 
and the result of fear and education, for which the newspapers and their hair- 
raising descriptions of the sufferings of supposititious victims of that so-called 
disease are accountable. In other words, these physicians insist, and endeavor 
to fortify their assertion with statistics, that hydrophobia never occurs in the 
human family, and that all alleged cases of it are utterly increditable and wholly 
spurious. 
Be they right or wrong, the fact stands out, in such bold relief it cannot be 
mistaken, that if members of our family ever do suffer from hydrophobia, it is 
one of the rarest of all diseases. Another fact of equal prominence is, that 
rabies is one of the rarest diseases of the canine race. : 
For a long time a most obstinate unbeliever, the writer now holds that there 
is such a specific malady as rabies, and that dogs are sometimes victims of it; 
but that it is so extremely rare, the most extensive breeder and zealous investi- 
gator is never likely to see a case of it. 
As to the fear of hydrophobia, it cannot with justice be said that the people 
among whom it is prevalent are the most superstitious, credulous and imagina- 
tive, and that, being utterly groundless, it is scarcely possible to disassociate the 
delusion from mental feebleness and over-excitability ; for while deploring such 
needless agitation over the subject of hydrophobia, that it has attracted so much 
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