VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 659 
Mr. J. Turner thought that there were two circumstances 
which threw considerable doubt on Mr. Dewhurst’s hypothesis. 
An immense number of mares, kept in high condition, are never 
allowed to have sexual intercourse, and stallions are frequently 
worked through life with the same privation, yet spontaneous 
rabies is unknown in the horse. 
Mr. Dewhurst .—But these animals are kept at w*ork, and the 
labour required from them, and the subjection in which they are 
held, does not afford the passions their natural scope and range; 
or although some may be kept almost in a state of idleness, 
they are yet under the governance of man. 
Mr. Youatt observed, that he had refrained from joining in the 
debate until the time for adjournment was nearly arrived, be¬ 
cause he felt that he w as here on his trial before a jury of his 
confreres, and he wished to hear all they might say respecting 
certain notions of this dreadful disease, wnieh he had lately ven¬ 
tured to lay before the public. He must, however, acknow ledge, 
that his opinions were unchanged by the debate which had taken 
place. Neither Mr. Dewhurst nor Mr. Slocombe had produced 
a case of manifest spontaneous rabies. Mr. Dewhurst had not 
proved the impossibility of infection: he had not given a detail 
of symptoms undeniably characteristic of rabies; and he had 
given an account of post-mortem appearances not consistent with 
rabies. He (Mr. Y.) had never seen this painted appearance of 
the intestines in genuine rabies, and rarely any patches of 
inflammation. 
Mr. Slocombe’s first case was clearly one of phrenitis. It was 
the necessary consequence of the bitch having been confined for 
a tw r elvemonth, and then suffered to gallop after a horse in a 
sultry summer’s day. We only hear of her that she bit several 
dogs, as in the ungovernable paroxysm of inflammation of the 
brain she was likely to do. We have no detail of other symp¬ 
toms, or of post-mortem appearances, nor an account of any of 
the dogs that were bitten becoming rabid. One disappeared ten 
days afterw ards, an earlier period for the appearance of the dis¬ 
ease than any recorded; and the rascality and thievery of some 
human being would much more rationally account for the disap¬ 
pearance of the dog than the occurrence of rabies. The dis¬ 
charge from the nose, and the beating of the head against the 
wall, would clearly point out distemper as the cause of the 
death of the puppy, to say nothing of the unprecedented short¬ 
ness of the period of the supposed appearance of rabies. The 
case of the third dog was that of intestinal irritation, which the 
two drachms of aloes relieved. 
As to the want of sexual intercourse on the power of maternal 
affection, he imagined that Mr. Dewhurst had confounded that 
