254 THE MANAGEMENT AND DISEASES OF THE DOG. 



are sometimes attacked with hydropliobia. * Balthazar 

 Timaeus speaks of a peasant, with his wife and children, as 

 well as several other persons, becoming rabid through drink- 

 ing the milk of an affected cow. Eleven of these died ; but 

 the peasant and his eldest child were restored by medical 

 treatment — a circumstance which might tend to throw some 

 doubt on the occurrence. Faber mentions instances in which 

 the milk has proved injurious. An observation made by M. 

 Dussourt, and quoted by Roucher, oilers a very probable in- 

 stance of transmission by the milk of a hydrophobic patient. 

 This was the case of a negress in Algeria, whose child died 

 presenting symptoms similar to those of the mother before she 

 perished. In the same country, however, M. Hugo relates 

 th^ case of a rabid bitch, whose puppies were suckled by her, 

 and remained in good health. But, again, an instance is 

 given in ' Cassell's Magazine' for July, 187 1, in which the 

 puppies suckled by a mad bitch also became rabid." t 



Treatment. — After what I have already said, it is almost 

 needless to add that I believe treatment, according to past, 

 and so far as present experiments have gone, to be of no 

 earthly use ; and no man having any regard for his life, how- 

 ever valuable that of his dogs may be, would, I imagine, risk 



* Csel. Aurelianus, Op. cit., lib. iii. cap. 2. 



t " A friend of mine once owned a favorite terrier, which had recently 

 littered iive puppies, and as she was kept constantly in his garden, she 

 could not possibly have been bitten for some considerable time. But she 

 suddenly displayed unmistakable symptoms of madness, and ran up and 

 down the garden, with the saliva flying from her jaws, and her head twitch 

 ing from side to side, as the heads of all mad dogs do. . . . But, even ' 

 in her frenzy, her maternal instinct was too strong, and she ran back to her 

 kennel, and began suckling her puppies. . . . Here is the strangest 

 part of the story, and to me it seems very pathetic : all her little puppies 

 were raving mad too, and the foam hung in flakes about their mouths, and 

 their poor little heads twitched, just as the mother's had done. They had 

 sucked in madness with the milk, for she had not bitten any of them. 

 This was, in my experience at least, a new feature in the history of hydro- 

 phobia." 



