MINUTES OF EVIDENCE ON CANINE MADNESS. 
23 
your knowledge ?—Many of them did; of the majority, however, 
I cannot speak. 
What operation did they generally undergo ?—To those whom 
I knew, and who had sufficient confidence in me to permit me 
to operate upon them, I applied the lunar caustic. 
Did those persons to whom you applied the lunar caustic 
afterwards sicken ?—No: they are all living- and well. There 
is one thing- 1 would beg- leave to state, as a fact which I 
believe will bear upon the object you have in view: I was telling 
the surgeon to whom I just now referred, that I had operated on 
nearly 400 persons, and had been invariably in the habit of using 
the lunar caustic, and not one had died: his reply was, “ What 
is your 400 compared to the number I have seen since I became 
connected with St.Georges Hospital? Myself and colleagues 
have operated on more than four thousand ; and to our 
knowledge not one has been lost. 1 ’ This I conceive to be a most 
important as w ell as consolatory fact. 
Have those operations taken place very shortly after the bite ? 
—I have operated as late as a fortnight after the bite. 
In that case did the patient sicken ?—No. 
It was a severe operation, was it not?—The part was nearly 
healed : it was necessary to re-open it. 
From your experience, have you faith in the beneficial effects 
of the operation by lunar caustic?—I have faith in the destruc¬ 
tion of the part; and it is not very material whether it is destroyed 
with the caustic or the knife. 
Have you known cases in which, after the application of the 
lunar caustic or the knife, the patient has sickened or died ?— 
Not personally. 
Do you consider the disease in the dog perfectly incurable if 
taken in its earlier stage ?—As far as my experience or reading 
goes, there is no authenticated case of cure. 
Have you tried the effect of lunar caustic or excision on a dog ? 
—Of both, in I should suppose about thirty cases. 
In those cases have the dogs generally gone mad or continued 
well ?—Some have become rabid; one, I should say, in three 
upon whom the operation has been performed has become rabid. 
I should trace that to the point on which I was examined 
before, the difficulty of discovering the bite, ow ing to the animal 
being covered with hair. 
Has it ever occurred to you, that by any legislative mea¬ 
sure the spreading of this disease of canine madness might be 
checked ?—The only, measure of which I can be aware, is the 
lessening the number of those breeds, the cur and the terrier, 
by which the disease is usually propagated; and particularly, 
