RABtaa, 117 



man, display great fondness, and show it by fawning and licking the 

 hands or face of those he knows. This is a habit in the dog which 

 should at aU times be discouraged; and to permit it even in the 

 earliest, the most incipient, stages of rabies may be fraught with 

 terrible consequences. These displays of exuberant affection are 

 often intermittent with the periods of gloomy retirement and active 

 excitement and irascibility. During these intervals of lucidity, 

 nothing seems to ail the dog, and this is apt to induce the owner to 

 permit the dog to Uck him ; but even then the saliva on the tongue 

 may be laden with virus, and it might easily be absorbed through 

 the thin skin of the lips, or where there was any slight cut or 

 abrasion. Soon after this display, the affected dog is again under 

 the baneful influence, showing itself in the morbid mental effect of 

 seeing or pursuing imaginary enemies, and the completely changed 

 and abnormal conduct already described. 



Dogs Leaving Some. — During this stage of the disease — this period 

 of unrest — the poor dog often wanders from home, and, when we 

 consider the irritable state of the brain then existing, it will be 

 evident that if hallooed, chevied, and stoned by strangers, the 

 cerebral disease will be more quickly developed, and the furious and 

 more dangerous stage of madness at once appear. It has been said 

 that the dog, knowing the dangerous impulses of the disease, leaves 

 home that he may not injure those he loves. It is a pretty fancy, 

 begotten of love for the dog ; but we must be thankful for the good 

 qualities he really does possess. The impulse to wander is but an 

 effect of the disease he cannot escape from. 



Gnawing, Tearing, and Swallowing Inedible Substances. — After 

 prowling about, as if ia search of some lost object, the afflicted dog 

 begins to gnaw and bite at everything. If he ia confined, he wiU 

 worry his chain, or tear the woodwork of his kennel ; when free, 

 furniture, carpets, rugs, and curtains, all get torn to shreds. In the 

 case I have referred to, the bitch, confined in my writing room, had 

 in one night torn into scraps a big pile of newspapers, littering the 

 floor with them. Pieces of stone, coal, cinders, wood, rag, and even 

 its own excrement as well as that of other animals are swallowed. 



Disposition to Bite. — With the symptoms just described, the dis- 

 position to attack and bite other animals, particularly those of its 

 own species, increases. 



Pawing at the Throat.— When a dog is seen to do this, as though 

 to remove a bone, or as is done in severe canker of the ear, it ia 

 evidence of the increasing inflanmiation at the back of the mouth 

 and throat, and it is easy to see that a bone is not the cause ; for in 

 that case the effort would be unceasing whilst the obstacle remained, 

 and the other symptoms described would not be present. 



