514 
ON RABIES. 
2. 'Non-contagion. —It results from experiments made by Dr. 
Betti, surgeon to the principal hospital at Florence, 1st, That 
sheep, and other animals of the same species, cannot communi¬ 
cate the rabies which they have derived from a dog, even al¬ 
though this dog died rabid. 2d, That the rabid virus loses its 
contagious property in passing through these animals ; and, 3d, 
That neither the saliva of these animals, nor any other fluid, nor 
any solid belonging to them, can produce rabies by inoculation, 
or in any other manner. 
It is recorded in le compte rendu of the veterinary school at 
Lyons, in 1810, that a rabid ass was made to bite several animals, 
and that others were inoculated with his saliva, but without any 
morbid result. 
In July 1728, MM. Girard and Vatel inoculated with the 
saliva of two rabid sheep, and at different stages of the disease, 
a horse, two dogs, and three sheep. The epidermis was slightly 
excised, and the saliva applied to the wounds in three different 
places, viz. about the nostrils in the horse, and the forehead and 
the back in the dogs and sheep. Four months after the experi¬ 
ment, neither of these animals had exhibited the slightest symp¬ 
tom of rabies. 
M. Huzard, sen., in a memoir which he presented to the Insti¬ 
tute of France, declares it to be his opinion that herbivorous quad¬ 
rupeds having rabies, cannot transmit it. M. Dupuy says, that he 
had attempted, without success, to inoculate other animals with the 
saliva from herbivorous rabid ones, and that he had known rabid 
sheep biting other sheep, without communicating the disease. 
It results from these facts, reported on one side of the ques¬ 
tion and the other, that the contagiousness or non-contagiousness 
of rabies in the herbivora, whether as it respects the human 
being or the different domesticated animals, has not yet been 
decided. We have related some facts which tend to prove the 
virulence of the saliva in herbivorous animals. With some per¬ 
sons these proofs will probably be considered as doubtful. We 
confess that, even at the present day, a doubt, a painful doubt, 
exists on our minds with regard to this question; a doubt that 
we would fain see dissipated as soon as possible, and which in¬ 
duces us to urge that every measure of sanitary police should 
be adopted capable of preventing all possible accident in so fear¬ 
ful a case*. 
* The regulations of the French police as it regards the keeping and ma¬ 
nagement of dogs are most excellent; but they are of too great length to be 
now inserted. They shall appear in some early number of this Journal. 
Those which most concern the veterinary surgeon may, however, be given 
now.—Y. 
