DISEASES OP THE BLOOD. 45 



through dangerous stages of the disease, working mischief 

 unobserved, to be lessened by painless slaughter after a 

 definite detention in a Dogs' Home whereby the owners of 

 dogs may have a fair chance of reclaiming favourites or 

 useful animals which have strayed or been lost. Dogs' 

 homes require to be most carefully supervised and worked 

 on sound principles, lest they become centres for diffusion 

 of disease. Quarantine is rendered unsatisfactory by the 

 indefiniteness of the period of incubation of the disease, 

 although a period of six months' strict quarantine would 

 give most cases full opportunity for development, we have 

 no guarantee that all inoculated animals would thereby be 

 detected. Australia is at present endeavouring to secure 

 quarantine of imported dogs, and so to ensure continued 

 freedom from rabies which would, doubtless, spread with 

 terrible rapidity among the dingoes or wild dogs, but 

 quarantine, to be effectual, will require to be supplemented 

 by other methods. Perhaps, in the future, Pasteur's 

 system will ensure immunity ; Gibier has found that birds 

 which have once recovered from rabies resist future attacks. 

 Although neither " stamping out " nor quarantine can be 

 relied on as a means of extermination of this disease, they 

 are both valuable means of repression. There can be no 

 doubt that the measures adopted in many large cities for 

 the incarceration or destruction of ownerless dogs, dog 

 taxes, enforced wearing of collars with the owner's name on, 

 diffusion of popular information as to the detection of 

 rabies, and the combating of popular errors on the subject, 

 are of great value in limiting the range of this formidable 

 disorder, and they should be encouraged as much as pos- 

 sible and the Legislature advised to insist on them. 

 Statistics of prevalence of rabies should be carefully prer 

 pared, and the disease considered one of the most impor- 

 tant to be dealt with by the authorities. That it has not 

 been included in the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act is 

 a very extraordinary and serious omission, which ought at 

 once to be rectified. No breed of dog should be specially 

 subjected to supervision on account of rabies ; authorities 

 are by no means agreed as to the kind in which the dis- 



