Diseases of the Nervous System. 245 
Anger and pain are alike uninfluential in the origin of 
rabies.* 
Pain may produce frenzy, but not rabies. A dog may 
be driven frantic with torture or furious with rage, but his 
bite is harmless, so far as production of rabies is concerned. 
* In reply to this theory, advanced by Dr. Verity in the Manchester 
Courier, 1876, and his assertion of possessing a cure for the malady, 
I wrote the following :— 
“That the bite ofa dog or cat is rendered poisonous from anger at 
the time of its infliction is as absurd as it is false. 
“That rabtes is a specific disease usually produced by inoculation, 
but that it may, as I stated in ‘Land and Water, some four years since, 
and unquestionably does, arise spontaneously. Certain peculiar changes 
in the system, possibly due to atmospherical influence, or some cause 
not fully understood, act in producingit. I have always had a strong 
opinion that breeding im-and-in tends to do so. 
“That if once the virus enters the system through inoculation, no 
amount of treatment, however scientific, will in my opinion prevent the 
awful result that must sooner or later take place. 
“ That when such result is established, there are as yet no positive 
means of preventing death. 
“ That the only means of preventing %s introduction into the system 
are in immediate excision or suction, if possible, of the part, and the 
application of nitric acid or lunar caustic. 
“That many diseases have been mistaken by persons having a smat- 
tering of adog knowledge for hydophobia (vadzes canzna), particularly 
epilepsy. 
“That I have no doubt a person whose nervous system is highly 
sensitive may, from the excitement consequent on the bite of a dog 
- (especially a ferocious one), exhibit symptoms resembling hydrophobia, 
and that it is probably from such cases as these that Dr. Verity has de- 
rived his imagination of a cure. 
“ That individuals ever have true hydrophobia, from pure fright, I 
do not for a moment believe. 
“That in all supposed cases of hydrophobia, the public may rest 
assured that either the inoculation was not hydrophobic, or that the 
saliva was wiped off when the teeth passed through the yarments. 
“That in all instances where the animal which has inflicted the 
wound is suspected of rabies, he should be confined, and not slaughtered 
“until a sufficiently long period has elapsed to prove the suspicion 
correct or otherwise. This, if it were adopted, would soon test the 
truth of enumerated cures and the value of marvellous specifics.” 
