284 
ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
removing every thing around it. The tissue or the fibril on 
which it rests is modified or changed; but this extraneous and 
fatal body bids defiance to every vital power. It enters not into 
the circulation, for it would undergo some modification in its 
passage through the frame. It would excite some morbid action, 
or be employed for the purposes of renovation or nutrition; or it 
would be speedily ejected. It lies for an uncertain period dor¬ 
mant—but, at length, from its constant presence as a foreign 
body, it may have rendered the tissue or nervous fibril more irri¬ 
table and susceptible of impression—or it may have attracted and 
assimilated to itself elements from the fluids that circulated 
around it; and thus, increased in quantity, and, according to a 
powerful chemical law, having supplied in quantity that which it 
wanted in power, the constitution becomes affected—the symptoms 
of rabies gradually appear, and, having appeared, rapidly and 
almost invariably run their course. 
Can all Animals communicate the Diseased —At or soon after 
the time, when the erroneous distinction was first drawn as to the 
spontaneous production of this disease in some animals, and the 
liability of all to infection by means of the virus taken from carni¬ 
vorous ones, arose the question as to the power in each of com¬ 
municating the disease; and it was maintained by some medical 
men, and extensively believed, that the power of communicating 
rabies was confined to those in whom it had been spontaneously 
produced. Carnivorous animals could generate and propagate 
it; herbivorous animals could receive the infection, but could not 
communicate the malady. This is a most important division of 
our subject, and we should give it very serious consideration. 
The Carnivora, —With regard to the carnivora there is no ques¬ 
tion. There is no species of dog that cannot communicate as 
well as receive infection. The wolf 'll a dangerous animal in the 
countries in which he is found ; and in almost every part of the 
continent the yearly list of those who have been bitten by him, 
and become hydrophobous, is a long and fearful one. 
In the Philosophical Transactions, No. 169, is a melancholy 
account of a fatal case of hydrophobia from the bite of ?ifox. 
Of the power which the cat possesses of communicating the 
disease there are too many cases on record. There were admitted 
into the hospital at Zurich, between the years 1783 and 1824, 
fifty persons that were bitten either by cats or foxes, and eight 
by martens or polecats^, 
Hufeland’s Journal contains an account of its being fatally 
communicated by a badger. Two boys, eight years of age, were 
bitten by one of these animals in the neighbourhood of Posen 
* Edinburgh Med. and Surgical Journal, 1826. 
