180 COMPTE-RENDU OF THE ALFORT SCHOOL 
effect on the pig, omnivorous like the human being; and although 
it is beyond dispute that inoculation is always effected when at¬ 
tempted on the horse, and whether the virus is taken from another 
horse, or from the human being? 
However, notwithstanding these considerations, the importance 
of which cannot for a moment be denied, MM. Renault and Bouley 
will not consider the question as finally settled, but will put it to 
the test of other experiments. 
Rabies. —Some facts observed in our hospital during the course 
of the last session have confirmed the opinion stated by M. Renault 
more than two years ago, that rabies loses a portion of its contagious 
property after several inoculations. Animals that become sponta¬ 
neously rabid infallibly communicate the disease to the animals 
which they bite, and these can also, by inoculation with their sa¬ 
liva, transmit it to other animals; but the bites of the latter are slower 
in producing their effect, and are not infallibly virulent. We will 
cite, among other examples, that of a large butcher’s dog, which, when 
the disease was at its height, bit another dog and a horse. Two 
other dogs were inoculated with the saliva of the second dog, and 
others were bitten by him, without either of the bitten or inoculated 
animals exhibiting the slightest symptom of madness, although 
it is nearly four months since the experiment was made. 
M. Renault had already stated, from the result of many observa¬ 
tions and experiments, that the saliva of herbivorous animals when 
rabid did not appear to have any rabific (ragiftres) qualities: A 
new example of the innocuous property of this fluid exists at the 
present in styes belonging to the school, where there have been sent, 
to be kept under our care and observation, a boar and a sow bitten 
on the 2d of last July by a sow that had become rabid forty days 
after the bite of a mad dog. These two animals have not, for a 
moment, exhibited the slightest appearance of disease. 
It is also an erroneous opinion, although generally prevalent—its 
existence and occasional dangerous and fatal results depending on 
the common use of the word hydrophobia, and against which the 
public should be put on their guard—that rabid animals have any 
fear of water or of bright objects. We have had many opportu¬ 
nities, during the past year, of shewing the fallacy of this opinion. 
In fact, not only have the animals no dread of water, but they 
search for it, and attempt to drink it as often as they have op¬ 
portunity. Water placed immediately before them, and violently 
agitated, produces in them no alarm, as we have a thousand times 
experienced; and the rays of the sun reflected on them by any 
smooth or polished body do not, for a moment, interrupt the 
calm which intervenes between the exacerbations of the disease. 
The Jugular Vein.—A great many new and important ope¬ 
rations and different modes of treating disease have been attempted 
