A PLEA FOR VETERINARY SURGERY. 
161 
Hydrophobia—Canine Madness .—Everybody thinks he can 
recognize a mad dog, and many a poor brute, the victim of an 
epileptic fit, of a bone in the throat, or even a violent colic, has 
been hurried out of existence, under the conviction that lie is 
rabid. Even among the medical profession, we find the most in¬ 
jurious blunders on the subject. How often do we read accounts 
of hydrophobia in man as the result of a bite from a dog which 
is known to be still alive and well. Two weeks ago I was asked 
to visit a case of this kind, in a boy of eleven years, who was 
suffering from paroxysms recurring every half hour or three quar¬ 
ters, and of whom it had been decided by physicians that he could 
not live over twenty-four hours more. One of the paroxysms had 
just terminated on my arrival, but I found no febrile temperature, 
no visual irregularity, and no mental susceptibility, such as char¬ 
acterize hydrophobia. His pulse was natural as regards number, 
but irregular alike in force and frequency, and altogether it was 
evident that he was a very nervous excitable subject, and the vic¬ 
tim of one of those emotional forms of disease so well illustrated 
by the dancing mania, etc., of the middle ages. During the next 
three hours, in which the boy’s attention was engaged and kept 
from reverting to his infirmity, there was no return of the parox¬ 
ysms, and after this, (ten p. m.,) he went quietly to sleep. An 
enthusiastic student spent each day with the boy for a week, after 
which the little fellow returned to school happy and well. Many 
such cases might be described with a less favorable ending, and 
of which the brains and other structures have been subjected to 
microscopical examination, as illustrative of hydrophobia. Nor 
are mistakes on this subject confined to the rank and file of the 
medical profession. The learned Sir Thomas Watson, in his 
recent article on this malady, records his belief that “ hydropho¬ 
bia does not ever produce itself.” This is a time-honored fallacy, 
but now abundantly disproved by accidental inoculations of those 
that attend on the victims and washed their clothing, as well as by 
the inoculation of animals with the saliva of rabid men. The 
dangers of such blunders and fallacies are too obvious to require 
comment. 
Glanders .—Though known in solipeds as early as the times 
