582 
D. E. SALMON. 
and attacked particularly dogs. It lived six days, complete par¬ 
alysis of the posterior limbs occurring before death.* 
A lamb was inoculated from the last of the series, which 
did not contract rabies ; so that out of eight inoculations of 
sheep by biting or lancet puncture the disease was transmitted 
seven times. 
These successful experiments made during the first half of 
the century by competent men are absolutely conclusive as to 
the existence of a disease of the dog communicable to dogs and 
to other animals by biting and by inoculation with the saliva. 
If this disease is not rabies, what is it ? And if you give it 
some other name, do not the facts stand the same under one 
name as under another? 
It is not correct to say that the disease alleged to be rabies 
has not been defined with sufficient clearness for its identifica¬ 
tion. Let us see. A disease affecting principally the nervous 
system, shown by restlessness, irritability, fury, convulsions, 
paralysis, death; caused by the bite of an animal, similarly 
affected ; communicable by inoculation with the saliva; hav¬ 
ing a long period of incubation (three to six weeks) ; compar¬ 
atively short course of disease (two to ten days) ; invariably 
fatal. Is not that picture clear enough for identification ? With 
what other disease can it possibly be confused ? Let those who 
make these allegations in general terms descend for a moment 
to details and answer these questions. 
Further, it is hardly conceivable that an intelligent person, 
least of all a physician or a veterinarian, would hold at the 
present day that a dog affected with simple indigestion, convul¬ 
sions, cerebritis or paralysis would develop virulent saliva capa¬ 
ble of causing by inoculation a fatal disease of the nervous sys¬ 
tem in other animals and with the transmitted peculiarity of 
virulent saliva. If this fanciful idea were established as a fact, 
the dog would be about the most dangerous animal in existence, 
and very few of us would care to come in frequent contact with 
* Rey. “ Experiences sur la Rage.” Journal de medecine de Lyon, Dec., 1842, p. 
461. 
