28 
ON RABIES IN THE DOG. * 
hunger — to which dogs are so cruelly exposed — the liquids must 
for a considerable time undergo the actions of the containing 
vessels, and frequently perform the course of the circulation 
without any new supplies of food ; by which the fluids becoming 
more and more acrid, the creature is apt to fall into feverish and 
putrid diseases, often ending in madness, but which diseases sel- 
dom or never are contracted by those that live on vegetable food. 
Hence I considered the danger of keeping dogs in places exposed 
to the sun, without a proper supply of fresh water, and also of 
allowing them to eat bones, and other offensive offal found in the 
streets of large towns, for which purpose, by the by, we are told 
that in some countries they have been, and are, especially kept. 
Hence I was induced, some three years back, on seeing thirty- two 
useless curs all at one time in the market place of Calais, on a 
hot day in August, to write a letter on the subject to the autho- 
rities, through the medium of a newspaper, warning them of danger 
from those two-and-thirty curs. Then, on the other hand, I had 
read, that these supposed causes, and indeed all the causes com- 
monly assigned for rabies, are insufficient to produce it in dogs 
and other animals of that genus, and this on authority of no small 
worth. That heat is insufficient, has, it seems, been proved by the 
fact of the disease being totally unknown in South America, at 
periods in which it was very prevalent in the northern parts of 
Europe ; and that, so far from putrid aliment being injurious to the 
health of the dog, it is found in this state to be most agreeable to 
him. Then, as to want of water, the disease has, we know, in 
thousands of instances, occurred among dogs that are plentifully 
supplied with that element in its most pure state, whilst others 
long deprived of it, have remained perfectly free. In fact, I have 
now and then met with an accredited writer, Doctor Heysham, 
for example, who not only denies the efficacy of the causes com- 
monly assigned for the rabies canina , but the nature of the 
distemper itself; and conjectures that the cause of it is not a 
putrescency , but an acidity of the fluid. 
To come, however, to the main point, prevention (at present, 
perhaps, the only real ground of hope), all that Sir Francis Burdett 
or any other man can do, until a remedy for the disease called hydro- 
phobia shall be discovered, is to endeavour to prevail on the legis- 
lature to lay such a tax — a parochial* one — on really useless dogs, 
as will greatly diminish the number of them. Among these must 
be classed what is called the cur, the most numerous of any, and 
I have good reason to believe, the most useless. Whatever a 
cur bitch may do as a protection to property, a cur dog is none, 
* I lay stress on the word “ parochial,” because in that case each man 
would see that his neighbour either paid the tax or kept no dog. 
