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CHARLES F. DAWSON. 
A NEW METHOD FOR APPL YING THE RABIES TEST.* 
By Charles F. Dawson, M. D., D.V.S., Baltimore, Md. 
A recent endemic of canine rabies afforded me a good 
opportunity for testing a new method of diagnosticating it by 
the inoculation of rabbits. 
The method upon which diagnoses have in the past been 
based and which has been employed in this experiment as a 
check upon the new method here described, consists, as you all 
know, in the injection beneath the dura-mater of two or more 
healthy full-grown rabbits of a few drops of brain emulsion pre¬ 
pared from the brain of the suspected animal. The consequent 
and necessary trephining of the rabbits is attended occasionally 
with deaths from cerebral haemorrhage, septic infection and 
often permanent injuries to the brain, which frequently cause 
symptoms resembling those of rabies. Added to this, there is 
a still more important consideration, which is the ever-present 
possibility of inoculating one’s self with the virus of rabies, 
owing to the necessity of sewing up and otherwise manipulat¬ 
ing an infected wound, it being almost impossible to inject the 
virus subdurally and not have some of the virus well up 
through the perforated dura-mater upon the withdrawal of the 
syringe needle. All operations upon the brain are, of necessity, 
attended with the risks of injury to that organ ; therefore, the 
less complicated the operation, all else being equal, the fewer 
are the chances of injury. It seemed to the writer that some 
other method, to which most of the above mentioned objections 
would not hold, could be devised, and he therefore determined 
to put into practice one which had occurred to him some time 
previous to its adoption, but which had not been tried for lack 
of material. This method, which will be designated infra-cere¬ 
bral, in contradistinction to the original, or sub-dural, which, 
for the sake of anatomical consistency, will be known in this 
article as the supra-cerebral method, is as follows : A pea-sized 
* Abstract read before American Society of Bacteriologists, in December, 1900, 
Baltimore meeting. 
