-156 
ON RABIES CANINA. 
municable only by the contact of the virus with an abraded 
or mucous surface. The small-pox, and distemper, and malig¬ 
nant fevers, by the halitus, or through the medium of effluvia, 
or by the slightest contact, as well as by inoculation. Psora, 
glanders, distemper may be communicated, or bred. Syphilis, 
the measles, the small-pox, the scarlet fever, arc never generated. 
Each has its own mode of action, and is governed by its own 
laws ; and experience alone can determine what those laws are. 
That which is known of one disease, cannot with certainty be 
predicated of any other. Reasoning from analogy is here dan¬ 
gerous and inadmissible. We appeal to facts, and to facts alone 
we bow. 
There is no disease of which earlier mention is made than of 
•rabies. In the records of three thousand years agro we read of 
the rabid or mad dog. The malady, however, is yet confined 
to certain parts of the globe. It has spread where it could be 
conveyed by inoculation. Where there were no means, or diffi¬ 
cult means of communication it was not diffused. It has not 
yet found its way to the West-Indian islands, or the Indian 
-Archipelago, or Sj^ria, or Egypt, or the south of Africa, or any 
part of the continent of South America*. The unfortunate 
dogs are tortured with heat, and thirst, and starvation. They 
are exposed to every probable, and every possible cause of rabies, 
yet the disease is unknown. 
Dr. Heineken tells us, that curs of the most wretched 
description abound in the island of Madeira: that they are 
afflicted wdth almost every disease; tormented by flies, and heat, 
and thirst, and famine, yet no rabid dog was ever seen there. 
No one will affirm that rabies is caused by a particular state of 
the atmosphere. It occurs at all times of the year, and in all 
variations of moisture and temperature. In many countries it 
has long committed its destructive ravages; but in others, placed 
in the same latitude, with a similar temperature and climate, 
and where every predisposing or exciting cause has been, so far 
as we can judge, the same, it has never appeared. 
* M. Unaneu gives a strange account of the siipposcfl ravages of hydro¬ 
phobia, on which, even if the facts were to be depended upon, no comment 
need be made. Hydrophobia appeared foiMhe first time in the summer of 
1804, in the north of Peru, during an excessive heat, during wdiich Fahren¬ 
heit’s thermometer was sometimes at 99^°. Nearly all the animals were 
seized with madness, especially dogs. It was only in 1807 that it appeared 
in the capital. In the town of Jea, 42 persons died of the bites ol rabid 
dogs. On the north coast the disease developed itself spontaneously in 
several individuals. In 1808 the disease disappeared. Tn some dogs the disease 
made its appearance tunce; but a bite from the animal with the second attack 
Mvas not followed by any serious consequences.” . Zeits von Henke. 
