640 MINUTES OF EVIDENCE ON CANINE MADNESS. 
Benjamin Collins Broclie, Esq. called in and examined. 
In your judgment, has there been an increase, within the last 
few years, in the disease of canine madness ? and in what propor¬ 
tion, if so, has that increase taken place?—I began to study my 
profession in 1801, and from that time to the year 1816, I never 
saw a case of canine madness, nor was there any one admitted 
into St. George’s Hospital. Since that period we have had 
several; I do not recollect how many: I have also seen some 
cases out of the hospital. 
In the first fifteen years you neither saw in the hospital, or 
knew in private practice, one case?—There were cases out of 
the hospital of which I heard, but which I did not see. I was 
not so much in the way of seeing them in private practice at that 
time as I have been since. 
The fact that there were none brought into St. George's 
Hospital is clearly within your recollection ?—It is. 
In the last fifteen years there have been several ?—Yes. 
To what cause do you attribute this increase ?—I do not know 
to what cause it is to be attributed, but it corresponds with that 
which we know to occur in other diseases, that they prevail more 
at certain periods than at others. I do not apprehend that there 
are more cases now than there may have been at some former 
period. 
Do you conceive that the temperature has any effect in pre¬ 
disposing either the animal to become rabid, or the human sub¬ 
ject to receive the disease ?—I believe the general opinion is, 
that very hot weather makes the disease more likely to be pro¬ 
duced, but I cannot say so from my own experience ; for I have 
known it occur at all seasons. 
Have you reason to believe that there are countries in the 
world in which the average temperature is considerably greater 
than that in England, in which the increase of dogs is conside¬ 
rably greater, and yet in wdiich the disease is almost unknown, 
the question referring' to Antigua, Constantinople, Alexandria, 
and other countries ?—1 do not know any thing as to those par¬ 
ticular countries ; but it stands on record that in the island of 
Jamaica the disease at one time had not been known for forty 
years. This was published by Dr. John Hunter, who had been 
a considerable part of his life in the West Indies; and nearly 
the same thing was communicated to me by a Jamaica gentle¬ 
man, a patient of mine some years ago. 
Did it after that period re-appear ?— Yes ; they attributed the 
re-appearance of it to its having been imported by some dog 
from the continent of America, or some other quarter. 
