ON RABIES. 
199 
ourselves, our employers, and the animals on which we practise, 
demand of us the most perfect acquaintance with it that punctual 
observation and anxious research can obtain. 
In what an interesting; situation is the veterinary surgeon 
placed when called upon to decide as to whether an animal is 
rabid or not ; and if this disease in its commencement should, 
unsuspected by the owner of the animal, be presented for treat- 
ment, of what importance is the veterinarian’s well-grounded in- 
formation and accurate distinction of its early symptoms ? In such 
a case, how many valuable lives may owe their existence to his 
knowledge, or their deaths to his ignorance ? 
These are questions sufficiently important to prompt us to 
inquire into its causes and symptoms, and best mode of preven- 
tion. In regard to its cure, I scarcely know what to say : in all 
probability powder and shot will, in our patients, prove the best 
remedy for some years to come. 
The true origin or remote cause is evidently but little under- 
stood, if not entirely unknown. In what way the disease is gene- 
rated in the dog, is still, in my opinion, a very obscure subject. 
So far as the present knowledge of medical men extends, it is in 
favour of contagion. The disease is traced to contact of the 
rabid virus with an abraded surface, or the wounds inflicted by 
the biting of a rabid animal. Mr. Coleman, however, is of 
opinion, that it is occasionally spontaneous; and with him are 
Mr. Frankum, Dr. Elliotson, and many others. 
It is difficult to prove the spontaneous origin of the disease ; 
still it is possible. The question , How was the first case of rabies 
produced? renders it so. No one has described what other coun- 
tries possess to produce it, that our own does not. 
Some medical gentlemen are of opinion, that it is not only 
spontaneous, but that dogs bitten by a rabid dog do not become 
rabid. A disease takes place by which they are destroyed, but 
the rabid malady is not reproduced by the inoculation. This 
opinion is erroneous, without a doubt. If it were true, the disease 
could never take place otherwise than spontaneously. 
My own experience goes to prove, that the disease is com- 
municable by the bite from one dog to another; and that the 
power of the virus does not diminish by passing through the 
system of several animals that have bitten each other in suc- 
cession, the malady being as well marked in its symptoms in 
the last dog as in the first. 
Whether it is communicable through an unabraded healthy 
mucous membrane, is a very important question to be absolutely 
and positively proved. There are two cases on record in favour 
of the possibility of this : the first, in a child, frbrn kissing his 
