ON SPONTANEOUS RABIES. 
507 
how much more may be expected by making numerous crucial 
incisions through the skin with the actual cautery, occupying a 
surface of integuments by these lesions, somewhat more extensive 
than the disease is supposed to occupy within the joint, thereby 
creating artificially a counter disease, truly formidable, but yet 
controllable. 
If had recourse to in the earliest stage of the disease, I enter¬ 
tain an idea that the patient would experience instant relief by 
the bold and free incisions releasing the •capsular ligament from 
the pressure of the integuments , the bare circumstance of putting 
the patient out of pain by removing tension during the period of 
the acute stage, might ward off the chronic form of the complaint, 
in more suddenly arresting its progress, than the operations of 
leeching, purging, fomenting, &c. 
I will not presume any further on the subject; but as I am 
reasoning from analogy only, I must beg to add, that 1 have also 
practised these cautery lesions upon hounds, for a disease which 
huntsmen call the stifle joint lameness, usually w 7 ith success, and 
never with the supervention of any disastrous circumstances. 
Horse Infirmary, 
311, Regent Street, Aug. 14, 1830. 
ON SPONTANEOUS RABIES. 
By Mr. You att. 
1 do not think that Mr. Dewhursthas fairly met my challenge 
as to the spontaneous origin of rabies in the dog. I had put the 
matter on this ground,—that, in man, the horse, cattle, sheep, and 
swine rabies was acknowledged to arise from inoculation alone: 
and I asked “if its spontaneous origin be denied in so many 
animals, where is the proof that it arises in any animal without 
the contact of the rabid virus V y and I called for one authenticated 
instance in which it had been produced by any cause except 
inoculation. 
Of course I expected three things connected with any case of 
supposed spontaneous rabies which might be adduced. A detail 
of symptoms during the life of the animal, sufficiently characteristic 
of the disease to satisfy an impartial enquirer; a history of the 
post-mortem appearances, corroborating the conclusion which 
would be drawn from the symptoms; and such an account of the 
habitance of the animal as would preclude the possibility of his 
having been inoculated. These three things I should require ; 
and I might, perhaps, be justified in demanding a fourth— a 
manifest cause ol the disease separate from inoculation. 
