THE yETIOLOGtY OF RABIES. 
165 
potent enough to dispel it. It has been almost a universal belief 
since the earliest times that the canine species are more suscept¬ 
ible and liable to an attack of this malady during the hot weather 
than at other seasons of the year, and for certain periods during 
the summer and autumn months many precautions have been 
taken to protect man against the possible dangers arising from 
tins cause. During this period we find that in many cities there are 
municipal ordinances requiring that all dogs at large in the streets 
shall be provided with muzzles, while during the remainder of 
the year they are left free. The danger from the possible 
development of the disease has been supposed to be proportionate 
to the intensity of the heat. This supposition has been maintain¬ 
ed in spite of the fact that it has been shown in the most un¬ 
mistakable manner, by large masses of statistics collected with 
the greatest care in France and Germany, that the disease is not 
more prevalent in the summer months than at other seasons of 
the year, and that, if there is any preponderance of cases in any 
season, it is rather in the winter and spring than the summer. 
Indeed, Dr. Roll, of the Vienna Veterinary Institute, asserts that 
the disease is more frequent in mild than in hot summers, and 
that the only exceptions have been when the seasons were ir¬ 
regular or variable. 
It has also been a popular superstition that the bite of an 
angry dog, or of one in rut, or of some other enraged animal, was 
likely to be followed by rabies. Fleming reports two cases 
mentioned by the Abbe Rozier, where hydrophobia was supposed 
to have followed bites of this kind. In the first case a man had 
bitten himself in a fit of rage, and in a second a soldier was bitten 
by his comrade. Dr. Camille Gros, as quoted by Fleming, 
records a case that occurred in the clinic of M. Tardieu which has 
been cited as proving the same fact. “An individual was bitten 
by an angry but not rabid dog. The wound healed in ten days. 
Afterward the subject became ill, symptoms of hydrophobia mani¬ 
fested themselves, he was brought to the hospital, and died in 
four days; at the autopsy the lesions present in hydrophobic 
patients were found. The premonitory symptoms and the progress 
and duration of the malady were the same as with them. From 
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