282 
ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
alone, and I do once more demand the proof of this disease 
arising in any animal without the contact of the rabid virus. 
We have nothing to do with the origin of the disease. I can 
no more account for that than I can for the origin of some other 
maladies, and particularly that discreditable one to which I have 
already alluded. It sprung from some unknown morbid action, 
and, having once spontaneously arisen, is now propagated in its 
own way. 
It is not connected with any degree or variation of temperature, 
or any particular state of the atmosphere. It is, generally 
speaking, more frequent in the summer or the beginning of 
autumn than in the winter or spring, because it is a highly 
nervous and febrile disease; and the degree of fever and irrita¬ 
bility, and ferociousness and consequent mischief, are increased 
by increase of temperature. 
In the great majority of cases, the inoculation can be dis¬ 
tinctly proved; in very few can the possibility be denied. 
The injury is inflicted in an instant. It is a mere snap. There 
is no contest; and before the injured party can prepare to re¬ 
taliate, the rabid dog is far away. He had acted from irresis¬ 
tible impulse, and, the mischief being effected, he pursues his 
course. 
It can be easily credited that when a favourite dog has, but 
for a moment, lagged behind, he may be bitten without the 
owner’s knowledge or suspicion ; or even if the rencontre was 
observed, the trifling, every-hour occurrence of two dogs snap¬ 
ping at each other would be soon forgotten. When the animal 
is under the care of a servant, the probability of this taking place 
is much increased. A spaniel belonging to a titled lady became 
rabid. The dog was her companion in her grounds at her 
country residence, and in her walks in the garden of the square 
in which she resided in the metropolis. It was rarely out of her 
sight, except for a few minutes in the morning, when the 
servant took it out. She was not conscious of its having been 
bitten, and the servant stoutly denied it. The animal died. A 
few weeks afterwards the footman was taken ill. He was hydro- 
phobous. In one of his intervals of comparative quietude, he 
confessed that, one morning, his charge had been attacked and 
rolled over by another dog—that there was no appearance of its 
having been bitten, but it had been made sadly dirty, and he 
had washed it before he suffered it again to go into the drawing¬ 
room. The dog that attacked it must have been rabid, and 
some of his saliva must have remained about the coat of 
the spaniel, and by which the servant had become fatally inocu¬ 
lated. 
