RABIES AND HYDROPHOBIA. 
579 
_ 
still repeated on every hand by those who oppose measures for 
the prevention of the disease. It may be freely admitted, there¬ 
fore, that there have probably been many in all ages who have 
doubted the existence of the disease both in mankind and in 
animals, that numerous articles and books have been written to 
prove that the disease called rabies was not contagious and that 
the supposed rabies of man was lyssophobia, a nervous affection 
brought on by fear and excitement. 
The medical profession as a whole has, however, always 
recognized the existence of such a disease as rabies in man. 
The veterinary profession has from its foundation recognized 
the existence and contagiousness of the disease ; its schools 
from the earliest to the latest have consistently taught this doc¬ 
trine, and its text-books are all but unanimous on the subject. 
Would it not be wonderful, amazing, incredible, if at this late 
day it could be proved that the thousands and hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of observations recorded from the birth of history to the 
present day were misconceptions, that the authors were deceived 
and the disease a myth ? Where can you find a parallel to such 
a complete overthrow of an ancient, and almost universally ac¬ 
cepted conclusion concerning a phenomenon so accessible to 
observation and investigation ? 
The doubts raised from time to time concerning rabies and 
its characteristics were, however, early met by scientific experi¬ 
ments. Zinke* in 1804 announced that he had inoculated a 
dog, a rabbit and a cock with saliva from a rabid dog, taking 
the saliva with a brush from the animal soon after its death and 
spreading it over superficial wounds of the inoculated animals. 
The dog was inoculated in an anterior limb, and showed pro¬ 
dromic symptoms on the eighth day and was rabid on the ninth 
day. The rabbit was rabid on the eleventh and the cock on the 
fourteenth day. 
This experiment made so early in the century proved that 
the disease of the dog called rabies was communicable by inoc- 
* Zinke, Gottfried: Neue Ansichten der Hundswuth, etc. Jena 1804. S. 180. 
Quoted by A. Hogyes : Lyssa, Wien 1897, p. 32. 
