APPENDIX D 
311 
“ What other canine diseases may by possibility be confounded 
with rabies ?■—The importance of the subject makes such an in¬ 
quiry necessary ; but it must be prosecuted in a note below. # 
We now come to what are especially worthy of remark, as 
being capable of being rendered in the highest degree useful, 
for the decision whether any preventive means, and, if any, 
what, are requisite, after the death of the animal which may 
have inflicted a wound on any individual. 
POST-MORTEM APPEARANCES. 
“ The morbid anatomy of the rabid dog forms a most impor 
tant feature in a portrait of the malady, but is one that was 
* “ Thousands of innocent dogs have been sacrificed to mistaking some other 
disease for this ; and thousands of persons have been rendered miserable in their 
minds by needless fears from the same errors. I know not the number of epi 
leptic dogs which have been killed under a supposition of their being rabid ; and, 
on the other hand, not unfrequently, dogs really rabid have been fondled, and 
had remedies administered to them at great personal risk, from a supposition that 
they labored under some other complaint. Epileptic jits, whether occasional, 
or the consequence of distemper, are often mistaken for rabies: but it should be 
remembered, that there is no rabid symptom whatever that at all resembles 
such a fit, whether in the irritable or in the dumb variety. An epileptic fit is 
sudden ; it completely bewilders the dog, and after a determinate period leaves 
him perfectly sensible, and not at all irritable, but exactly as he was before : in 
rabies there is no jit, i. e., no loss of recollection, no tumbling about wildly in 
convulsion ; neither is there any marked break in the natural irritability attend¬ 
ant on rabies. If a dog in an epileptic fit should be so convulsed as to attempt 
to bite, it is evidently done without design; his attack is spasmodic, and pain 
may make him seize anything, and it is quite as likely to be himself as any 
thing beside The irritability and mischievous attempts of the rabid dog have 
always method with them, and they evidently result from a mental purpose to 
do evil. The mad dog has usually a disposition to rove, the distempered one 
never. A puppy in distemper, particularly if he have worms, may pick up 
stones, or eat coals, or he may in a trifling degree take unusual matters as food; 
yet no dog but a rabid one will take in hay, or wood, or rag, or will distend his 
stomach almost to bursting. The discharge from the npse and eyes which some- 
