ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
10 
its bright red colour will have changed to a darker red, or violet 
or brownish hue. For a few hours the stomach may remain 
sound, but a process of erosion soon commences, and the mucous 
membrane is softened, and becomes thinner, and appears as if it 
were partly eaten through. This is particularly the case in the 
larger curvature of the stomach. If a longer delay has taken 
place, there may be absolute perforation of the stomach. You 
must bear this in mind, and be cautious that you do not attribute 
that to disease which is the natural process of the cessation of life. 
In examining, however, a supposed case of rabies, you are not 
so liable to be misled as under many other circumstances. 
I'he Contents of the Stomach ,—You will first direct your atten¬ 
tion to the contents of the stomach. If you find that it contains 
a strangely mingled mass of hair, and hay, and straw, and horse- 
dung, and earth—if it contains portions of the rug or woollen 
bed on which the dog had lain, you would never err if you said at 
once that he died rabid ; for it is only under the influence of 
the depraved appetite of rabies that such substances are devoured. 
I would beg to repeat a caution which I gave you in a former lecture. 
It is not the presence of every kind of extraneous body that will 
indicate the depravation of appetite connected with rabies. 
Pieces of stick, or coal, or small stones, are frequently swallowed 
by puppies labouring under distemper or during the period of 
dentition. I have found pebbles, bits of wood, coins of various 
sizes, from a four-penny piece to a half-crown, in the stomachs of 
dogs that had not betrayed a symptom of rabies. You must not 
hastily condemn a dog in whose stomach you even find some 
disgusting matters. I have said, that that beautiful spoiled, 
ladies’ dog, the .smaller spaniel, is sometimes one of the beast¬ 
liest brutes that can be imagined, and will leave every delicacy 
to gorge on human ordure. It is that mingled mass of straw, and 
hay, and hair, and filth of various kinds—not human ordure now, for 
the propensity to devour it seems to have ceased—that must be 
regarded as proof positive of rabies. 
When there are no solid indigesta, there is often found in the 
stomach of the rabid dog a dark fluid, resembling the deepest 
chocolate colour mixed with olive, and giving to the mucous 
coat a yellow brown hue, or a still blacker fluid—as black as 
the strongest coffee, and occasionally thick and grumous— 
which stains less, or not at all—the first, probably, being com¬ 
posed principally of vitiated bile, and the second of extravasated 
blood. I will not say that, without other connecting symptoms 
or lesions, you would be justified in pronouncing that dog to be 
rabid, and yet you would not be frequently wrong in so doing. 
1 will say of these, that they are very suspicious circumstances, 
and require but trifling corroborative proof. 
