COMMUNICATED RABIES NOT CONTAGIOUS. 
599 
knows nothing of these epochs, but developes itself at most irre- 
o-ular and uncertain times. Contagious affections, whether ot 
the system generally or affecting the integument alone, pro¬ 
duce invariably some eruption or efflorescence, by means of which 
we can determine the true character of the disease: rabies, on the 
other hand, is accompanied by no eruption or discolouration ot 
the skin. Thev assume characters more or less intense, by reason 
of certain meteorological changes: rabies, on the contraiy, pur¬ 
sues its undeviating course, whatever be the circumstances, the 
season, the climate, the weather. Contagious diseases gradually 
lose much of their intensity of character, and some of them have 
disappeared from the surface of the earth : rabies from the mo¬ 
ment it was first described to the present hour has uniformly 
retained the same character. They, however fearful may be then- 
character, spare a few of the individuals which they attack, but 
rabies, whether spontaneous or communicated, is always mortal. 
Finally, contagious diseases propagate themselves with so much 
the more facility in proportion as they are fatal, and are trans¬ 
mitted not only by immediate contact, but by very circuitous 
means: rabies, although uniformly fatal, is transmitted only 
through the medium of a solution of continuity. 
“ A”difference so marked,” adds the author, “ makes me more 
and more doubt the contagiousness of rabies. Rabies camna 
seems to me to form the intermediate link which unites the 
chain of contagions with that of poisons, properly so called. I 
made these reflections when, after more than forty days, out ot 
the numerous animals that had, in the month of March 1811, 
been bitten by the ox described in the first case, not one of them 
had become rabid. I thought of those persons who, without pre- 
sentino - us with any convincing reasons, affirmed that rabies could 
not be communicated by herbivorous animals, and I felt that 
the arguments furnished by analogy were utteily contrary to 
this assertion; for, besides the anthrax of the tongue, and other 
contagious maladies of herbivorous animals, we had happily dis¬ 
covered the pustule on the teat, which not only could be pro- 
paoated from the cow 7 , by inoculation, to every other species of 
animals, but was a preservative in the human being against that 
destructive scourge the small-pox. In the month of April, in the 
same year, I happened to seethe number for August 1810, of 
the Medico-Chirurgical Journal of Alexander Flajani, and the 
train of thought which had passed through my mind received 
much confirmation. There was an article m that journal m 
which, besides some cases related by Professor Rossi, of Turin, 
on this subject, I found the following case, related by Professor 
Bader. He had a rabid dog, which bit several others. They 
