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ON RABIES CANINA. 
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157 
In nineteen cases out of twenty the inoculation can be proved. 
In almost every case the possibility of it cannot be denied. 
Who, under circumstances of peculiar excitement, has not pos¬ 
sessed many times his usual strength ? The dog, labouring 
under the dreadful excitation of rabies, and bent on the work of 
destruction, will overcome obstacles which would at other times 
be insurmountable. 
During the life of the late Duchess of York, a mad dog wan¬ 
dered into Oatlands Park, and penetrated into divisions of the 
menagerie to which it would have been thought magic alone 
could have conveyed him. He was destroyed in one of the 
divisions into which, the gate being closed, I should have said 
that it was impracticable for man or beast to have entered. 
Some dogs, how^ever, are rarely out of their owner’s sight, ' 
Even in this case I can easily conceive the possibility of inocu¬ 
lation. There is no battle. It is, in the great majority of 
instances, one simple bite. The object of the animal is not to 
contend for victory, or to worry his antagonist. He acts from an 
irrepressible impulse, and, the mischief being effected, pursues 
his course. I can believe, that if a favourite deg has but for a 
moment lagged behind, the injury may be inflicted without the 
owmer’s observation; or, that the trifling, every-day occurrence 
of twm dogs snarling and snapping at each other, may be soon 
forgotten. Did the disease immediately follow the bite the short 
contention might be remembered : but weeks and months inter- 
vene, and he must have a retentive memory, or nothing else to ' 
think about, who will invariably, and long afterw^ards, recollect 
circumstances so trivial. 
lam purposely labouring this part of the subject, because it 
' must form the proper ground for the interference of the legisla¬ 
ture, at no distant period, to restrain the ravages of this dread¬ 
ful disease, which has most alarmingly increased and is yearly 
increasing. If the account here given of the origin of rabies be 
correct, the preventive measure is not difficult to imagine. 
The rabid virus must be received on some abraded, or wounded, 
or mucous surface. * On the sound integument it is harmless. 
There are a thousand proofs of this. Almost every author 
acknowledges it; and the wuater of this essay has, with perfect 
impunity, had his hands many times covered with the saliva of 
the mad do O’. 
I have said that the virus must be received on an abraded or 
mucous surface. The case, however, is not so clear with regard 
to the latter. A father, in the last stage of rabies, imprinted a 
parting kiss on the lips of his child; the infant died hydropho- 
bous. A maiden would not be parted from her lover, and 
