rabies versus common sense. 
445 
rabies is concerned, we are little, if any wiser than the ancients, 
^withstanding the vast amount of literature devoted to the 
bject, it is little but repetitions, and the fallacious theories and 
potheses of twenty centuries gone by, still obtain in all force; 
no one subject or belief are the superstitions of remote antiquity 
rife or rampant! The ablest pathologists and physiologists of 
)dern ages have bent mind and energies to the elucidation of 
3 problems of rabies in vain. Bacteriology, which opened up 
ong vista of pathological probabilities, is here powerless. The 
ies laid down by the medical and veterinary professions are 
ide, conflicting, indefinite, affording nothing reliable or tangi- 
). Autopsies by the scores and hundreds, both of men and 
imals, result in no enlightenment; they have revealed many 
d varied pathological conditions, all of which, however, when 
bmitted to accurate scrutiny, are found lacking in one great 
sideratum —specificity ! What then is rabies f How shall it 
defined? And what are its dangers, real and assumed? 
1. As medical science progresses, and further insight is had 
:o the phenomena presented by multiple maladies having their 
igin in, or manifested through the nervous system, the conclu- 
•n is rapidly being forced upon all observant and thinking 
nds, that rabies is not a disease sui generis , but merely the man- 
stations developed by irritated nerve centres, and that may 
:se from numberless causes ! 
2. As rabies , whether in men or animals, possesses no symp- 
ns, or trains of symptoms peculiar to itself, not even fatality, 
d as it presents no phenomena that are not also manifested in 
ne three score and more of diseases, common to both, its pres- 
ce can never be so accurately determined as to preclude possi- 
ity of error! 
3. The dangers of rabies , as rabies true and simple , are 
)st remote, and almost wholly assumed; they arise from causes 
lich prevail in greater or less degree at times, in all countries 
d communities, and are to a great extent psychical! 
It is not within the province or scope of this paper to either 
irm or deny the existence of rabies as a disease sui generis ; it 
11 suffice to suppose its existence; neither to meddle with the 
I 
