212 KENNEL DISEASES. 
fear, starvation, worms in the nasal cavity, disease of the kidneys, inflammation 
of the ear, brain trouble, and certain irritant poisons, which, when swallowed, 
cause intense inflammation of the throat, stomach, and bowels. 
Some will be reluctant to believe it possible to mistake rabies for affections 
so radically different in many respects; but the fact should be borne in mind 
that fear prejudices reason, dulls perception, and blunts judgment, and that 
even the mere thought of hydrophobia is terrorizing. In consequence grave 
symptoms are overlooked, while many that are nowise significant are given an 
exaggerated importance. 
Here the fact may well be emphasized that it is not possible, in a single in- 
stance, for the highest qualified expert to determine positively from his sym- 
toms whether or not a dog is rabid, not even if the patient be kept and closely 
watched from the appearance of the first sign of trouble up to his last breath, 
his death being allowed to come naturally. 
Of course, had a suspected dog bitten other dogs, and they eventually pre- 
sented symptoms of rabies, it would not be reasonable to doubt but that he, 
himself, had that malady. But in the absence of such straight history, and, 
considering each case alone, positive proof of rabies can only be found under a 
microscope, or secured by the inoculation of a well animal from the one sus- 
pected of being rabid. 
The cause of rabies is a virus or poison, which exists in various parts of the 
rabid animal, and especially his saliva, through which it is communicable in 
biting. Thus inoculation occurs, and but rarely, if ever, in any other way. 
The wound from the bite of a rabid animal heals very readily, and is rarely 
attended by inflammation — that is, of greater severity than would commonly 
occur in a wound differently made. 
The period of incubation or development of the disease is near one month 
in the majority of cases. It may, however, be two months, or possibly a little 
more. But the genuineness of reputed cases in which it is said to have been 
of much longer duration, — seven or eight months, for instance, — must be open 
to grave doubts. Shorter periods than one month have been quite frequently 
reported; and in one case it was said to be only one week; but cases in which 
it is so much shorter than the average should be classed as doubtful, with 
those in which the delay of the occurrence of the first symptom was so very 
unusually long. 
Rabies assumes two forms, the violent, and the sullen or dumb. They have 
but little in common; and their symptoms are so manifold and so greatly in- 
fluenced by such conditions as age, temperament, conditions of life, etc., an 
accurate description of them is not possible without wearisome detail. 
Sometimes the first signs of trouble in rabid dogs are “gagging,” hawking, 
and pawing at the neck — precisely such symptoms as would be produced by 
a bone or something of the sort stuck in the throat. But very generally 
