ON RABIES CANINA. 
285 
In the dog; I have never seen a case in which the disease occurred 
in less than seventeen days after the bite. The average time I 
should calculate at five or six weeks. At three months I should 
consider the animal tolerably safe; but I have met with two in¬ 
stances, in one of which it occurred so late as the fifth, and in the 
other after the expiration of the seventh month, and where re¬ 
inoculation was not suspected, and was scarcely possible. 
There are strange kennel stories of the virus lurking in the con¬ 
stitution of the dog for twelve or eighteen months. I have never 
met with an instance of this, and I attach to it as much faith as I do 
to the histories of the very walls of some kennels imbibing the poison¬ 
ous effluvia of-rabies, and to so great a degree that no white-washing 
could disinfect the building. The quarrelsomeness of hounds, and 
especially at feeding time, is well known. The dangers to which 
they are exposed when going to cover, or returning straggling late 
in the evening, cannot be denied. One village cur may commence 
the mischief, and it will soon spread through the pack. 
The average time of the appearance of rabies in the horse is 
from one to two months after the bite. I know but one case in 
which it exceeded four months. 
I have seen but one rabid ox; the disease appeared on the 
twenty-second day after the inoculation. A veterinary surgeon 
tells me, that, in a case which he attended, the intervening time 
was five weeks. 
In the sheep the shortest period I know was twenty days; the 
longest, seventy. 
Of the swine I cannot speak. 
The duration of the disease is different in different animals. In 
man it has run its course in twenty-four hours, and has rarely ex¬ 
ceeded seventy-two. A case is related in the Lancet of July 12th, 
in which, by repeated bleedings, it was protracted to the fourteenth 
day. 
In the horse it varies from three to four days; in the dog from 
four to six; and in the sheep and ox from five to seven days. 
(To be coutinued.) 
