Modern Cynolatry, 
[December, 
753 
having been bitten by dogs in the state commonly known as 
“ mad,” display the very same symptoms. Are we to ascribe 
this result also to the workings of a morbid imagination ? 
Many human sufferers, so far from being tormented with 
constant apprehensions, are recorded as having quite for- 
gotten the original bite till the approach of the deadly 
symptoms recalls it their memory. How, again, would 
dog-worshippers explain away the outbreak of rabies in ani- 
mals, e.g., rabbits, experimentally inoculated with the virus 
of the dog? Is here also imagination at work, or have we 
“ epileptic convulsions.” 
Another device of the dog’s advocate is to assert that rabies 
and, indeed, irritability and the tendency to attack passers- 
by, are produced by confinement, muzzles, and chains, and 
that were the curs allowed to roam about at their own 
sweet will and to obtrude themselves everywhere, these evils 
would vanish of themselves. This is, to say the least, a 
daring assumption. The wolves of the Continent and the 
jackals of India enjoy their full freedom. Yet rabies is far 
from rare among them. The dogs which invest every village 
on the frontiers of Poland know nothing of muzzles and 
chains. Yet this freedom does not sweeten their tempers or 
prevent them from attacking every stranger— especially if re- 
spectably dressed— who appears in the neighbourhood. Very 
similar is the behaviour of the large and powerful mastiffs 
who, in the Carpathians, are kept by the Slawack herdsmen 
as a defence against wolves. Probably not one of them 
has ever been tied up in his life. But woe to the unarmed 
stranger who happens to come within a quarter of a mile 
of these ferocious brutes. 
Even if we, forargument’s sake, admitthat some of thecases 
of supposed hydrophobia in man may be partially set down to 
the workings of a morbid imagination, and that some dogs 
destroyed as rabid may have been merely suffering from 
“distemper,” I do not see that this in the least alters 
the case. Had the persons affeCted never been bitten, 
the fatal symptoms, however explained, would never have 
arisen. Had there been no dogs straying about it is equally 
certain that the victims would never have been bitten. 
Surely the man who, owning a dog, allows it liberty when 
in a state capable of communicating rabies, incurs morally — 
though, unfortunately, not legally— a responsibility as great 
as if he were to discharge a rifle along a public thoroughfare. 
Indirectly, but not the less certainly, he trifles with the lives 
of his neighbours, not out of any necessity, but for a mere 
whim. And yet he can dare to talk about justice ! 
