286 
ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
them has been, that the saliva of the swine and the human being 
will also communicate the malady to those who are inoculated 
with it. There can be no dispute here. 
The Power of Herbivorous Animals to communicate Rabies ,— 
There are, however, some surgeons of eminence, both human and 
veterinary, who maintain that rabies cannot be communicated by 
herbivorous animals. A circumstance that happened to a veteri¬ 
nary pupil and friend gave me a deep and painful interest in as¬ 
certaining the truth of this assertion. He had incautiously— 
foolhardily I will call it—endeavoured to ball a horse evidently 
rabid. The animal seized his hand, and lifted him from the 
ground, and shook him as a terrier would shake a rat; and quitted 
him not until he had torn the flesh almost completely away from 
the upper and low'er part of the hand. He went, in great trepida¬ 
tion, to the head of his own profession. That gentleman cer¬ 
tainly was not aware of the extent of the injury, or he would not 
have treated the matter quite so lightly, for he laughed at the idea 
of danger from inoculation, and said that, barring the pain, he 
would exchange situations with him for a pound. 
From him the young pupil went to the first surgeon whom, 
perhaps, this or any othercountry ever produced,—to whom I owe 
obligation for the kind exertion of his skill with regard to my¬ 
self, but whose off-hand and careless opinion given on this occa¬ 
sion I never could reconcile to my own feelings. “ Oh, there is 
no fear of hydrophobia,’’ said he, ‘"for rabies cannot be |)ropa- 
gated by the bite of an herbivorous animal. Carnivorous ani¬ 
mals, and animals that use their teeth as weapons of offence, 
alone have this power; ^et I would advise you to apply some 
nitric acid to the partT This circumstance, I say, gave me a 
deep interest in the inquiry respecting the communication of 
rabies by herbivorous animals. 
I find in all of them, so far as the experiment has been tried, 
the susceptibility of disease. On what principle is the communi¬ 
cation of it withheld ? Is there a similar fact in the whole 
compass of medical and surgical practice ?— the power of infec¬ 
tion shared with others, the power of communication denied^ 
But I must not pursue this line of argument, for I have at the 
beginning of the lecture entered my protest against it. 
One thing, however, I must observe,—that it is sometimes 
exceedingly difficult successfully to inoculate the dog, or any 
other animal, with the rabid virus. Into the probable cause of 
this we will hereafter inquire. A gentleman, who was exceed¬ 
ingly anxious to test a former experiment which he had made, 
took a great deal of pains to inoculate a dog at my hospital from 
one that was undeniably rabid, but without success. The bro- 
