228 INVESTIGATIONS ON HYDROPHOBIA IN EUROPE. 
immense majority of cases rabies is propagated by the bite of 
the mad animal, although sometimes it appears to have been 
transmitted by licking the skin, when more or less excoriated. 
3. The perusal of the innumerable documents which have 
been published on the subject does not reveal a single fact 
capable of furnishing serious scientific proof of the occurrence 
of spontaneous rabies canina. 4. Even if this spontaneous 
occurrence ever did take place, it would do so with such 
rarity, that it would scarcely be necessary to take it into 
consideration in framing measures of sanitary police. 5. 
The old hypothesis, recently revived, which attributes rabies 
to unsatisfied genetic instinct, does not bear the slightest 
examination. 6. The influence attributed to the temperature 
andhumidity of the aironthefrequency ofrabies is contradicted 
by facts. 7. The pretended rabid epizootics described by 
authors are only multiple instances of communicated rabies; 
and the term epizootic, in this case, should be excluded from the 
language of science. 8. We are in the possession of no 
positive data as to the extreme limits of the period of incu¬ 
bation of rabies in man. In the dog it would seem to last 
seven months (Youatt), and in the horse fourteen months 
and a half. 9. No true pathognomonic sign of rabies exists in 
the dog, hydrophobia, properly so called, seeming to be here 
quite at fault. The peculiar howling bark is of great value 
in the diagnosis. 10. Science is in possession of nothing 
certain regarding the alimentary nocuity or innocuity of the 
flesh of mad animals, or of the milk of cows and goats bitten 
by mad animals. 11. With respect to the measures of 
public hygiene and administrative police— (a) The tax on 
dogs has had the effect of diminishing their number, and so 
far the chances of the occurrence of rabies and hydrophobia. 
(b) As rabies may manifest itself throughout the year, the 
surveillance of dogs should never be suspended, and they 
should always be kept muzzled. (<?) As bites have been 
often inflicted by muzzled dogs (20 times in 156) the proper 
application of the muzzle should be strictly seen to by the 
police. ( d) Dogs which have been bitten by dogs that are 
either mad or suspected of being so, when not immediately 
killed, should be sequestered for a period at least equal to 
the known maximum of duration of the period of incubation.— 
Union Meclicale , No. 136. [M. Fauvel, the French sani¬ 
tary officer at Constantinople, stated at one of the French 
medical societies ( Gaz . Hebdom ., No. 45) that hydro¬ 
phobia, although a very rare disease in the East, is yet occa¬ 
sionally met with in Constantinople, some seven or eight 
cases having occurred there of late years. According to the 
