RABIES. 77 



control ; and there is no safety for him who had previously the 

 most complete mastery over the animal. 



I attended a rabid horse which the i.wner refused to have 

 destroyed, and to which attendance I only consented on condi- 

 tion of the animal being slung. He had been bitten in the near 

 hind-leg. When I approached him on that side, he did not 

 attempt to bite me, and he could not otherwise injure me ; but 

 he was agitated and trembled, and struggled as well as he 

 could ; and if I merely touched him with my finger, the pulsa- 

 tions were quickened fiill ten beats in a minute. When, how- 

 ever, I went round to the off side, he permitted me to pat him, 

 and I had to encounter his imploring gaze, and his head was 

 pressed against me — and then presently would come the par- 

 oxysm ; but it came on almost before I could touch him, when 

 I approached him on the other side. 



These mild cases, however, are exceptions to a general rule 



The sym^ptoms of the malady of Mr. Moneyment's pony 

 rapidly increased — ^he bit everything within his reach, even 

 different parts of his own body — ^he breathed laboriously — his 

 tail erect — screaming dreadfully at short intervals, striking the 

 ground with his fore-feet, and perspiring most profiisely. At 

 length he broke the top of his manger, and rushed out of the 

 stall with it hanging to 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 in the next stall, and dropped and died. 



A young veterinary Iriend of mine in fool-hardily attempting 

 to administer a ball to a rabid horse, was seized by the hand, 

 hfled from the ground, shaken as a terrier woiild shake a rat, and 

 the ferocious animal was only compelled to relinquish his hold 

 when attacked with pitchforks, and not before he had completely 

 torn the flesh from the hand. 



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 



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

 often comparatively small, a degree of treachery which we rarely 

 meet with in the nobler and more intellectual dog. 



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 in- 

 tervals of his paroxysms employs himself in licking or gnawing 

 the cicatrix. One animal had been bitten in the chest, and he, 

 not in the intervals between the exacerbation, but when the par- 

 oxysm was most violent, would bite and tear himself until his 

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

 a stream. 



