92 DOGS 



regarded as a spontaneous outbreak. At first the animal 

 may go from side to side, deliberately attacking any dog it 

 sees, never stopping to fight, but bowling its victim over, 

 inflicting a savage bite, and then leaving him to seek a fresh 

 one. Later, it goes steadily forward at the well-known 

 trot, and only interferes with those opposing its progress, 

 and finally returns home, if it escapes destruction by the 

 way, in a semi-stupid, half-paralysed condition, to die. A 

 mad dog loses sensation and mental discrimination. Ac- 

 counting for this, Youatt states that the most severe thrashing 

 fails to extract a cry from a rabid dog, and records a case 

 of a hound which bit savagely at a red-hot poker presented 

 to it by a groom. The part on which the bite is inflicted, 

 which 'gives the malady to the animal, is, if within reach, 

 often gnawed, and the flesh torn away. The brightness of 

 the eye with the disease, in the popular mind, does not 

 last long, but the eye becomes cloudy yellow, and finally a 

 disorganised mass. A wonderful change takes place in 

 the bark. The howl of a rabid dog is a blood-curdling 

 sound, and at once claims the attention of the experienced. 

 There is a dumb form of the malady, and which is equally 

 as dangerous as the furious form. Here the eyes are dull 

 and heavy-looking, there is often a discharge of pus from 

 them and from the nostrils, the tongue dry and pendulous 

 and of a dark colour, while tlie throat is swollen and the 

 lower jaw dropped in a peculiar fashion, the whole appear- 

 ance of the animal being particularly distressing. In this 

 form paralysis occurs at an early stage. 



A very popular superstition is that a mad dog is afraid 

 of water, which is very erroneous, since not only have rabid 

 dogs no fear of water, but they will plunge their muzzle 

 into it, and except during the last stage, when spasms of 

 the glottis prevent deglutition, they will drink freely, and to 

 the last will try to do so. It is the inability to swallow, 

 not the lack of inclination, that prevents them. Another 

 and most mischievous notion is that if a person is bitten 

 by a dog when well, and it should at any subsequent 

 period become rabid, the person so bitten will also develop 



