HORSES BITTEN BY A IIABID DOG. 
733 
The farrier sergeant saw the animals about ten minutes 
after the attack of the dog^ and had applied nitrate of silver 
pretty freely to the wounds. I had both horses thrown down, 
and then by passing a tenaculum through the lips of each 
wound, and raising it a little, I excised a circular piece of 
skin with its subjacent areolar tissue, each piece having the 
bite for its centre, with a margin of about a quarter of an 
inch of sound skin surrounding it. After allowing the 
wounds thus made to bleed a little, I had them sponged, and 
applied the nitrate of silver freely a second time. The horses 
' were then tied up and placed under observation, the sores 
being treated as ordinary ones. 
It is now upwards of three months since the above took 
place. The wounds have healed, and I sent the animals to 
their work a month ago. They have shown no symptom of 
illness of any kind at any time since the accident. As the 
average time of incubation in the human subject is about a 
month, I imagine we may now look upon these horses as not 
likely to be attacked with hydrophobia. There is a possihilifj/ 
of its making its appearance, still only a very slight one. 
Should anything occur of the kind I will let you know, for 
you may presume I take no ordinary interest in the cases. 
I saw the dog that had bitten the horses. It had been 
pursued and beaten to death with latties (long sticks), by a 
number of S 3 "ces after biting the horses. It had not been 
bullied or chased previously. Its attack on the horses was 
quite an unprovoked one. The dog was a wild pariah. From 
its appearance, and from the description given to me of its 
conduct when alive, I have little doubt, in fact none, about 
its having been rabid. It had run at a rapid pace right 
through the middle of the troop stables (which in India are 
open ones), never stopping until it came into collision with 
these two horses. Two rabid dogs of the same kind had been 
killed in the barrack square a week before. 
I ought to have mentioned, that three quarters of an hour 
had elapsed between the time the horses were bitten, and that 
of my cutting out the pieces of skin. 
There is nothing extraordinary about these two cases; but 
as horses are not bitten by rabid dogs, the few cases 
of it that do occur are worthy of being placed uj:)on record, I 
think, and particularly wlien the means resorted to to prevent 
hydrophobia appear to have been successful. 
