When it is symptomatic of a weak state of the constitution, or connected with the after stages of distemper, the emeto-purgative must be succeeded by an anodyne, or, at least, by that which will strengthen, but not irritate the patient.

A seton is an admirable auxiliary in epilepsy connected with distemper; it is a counter-irritant and a derivative, and its effects are a salutary discharge, under the influence of which inflammation elsewhere will gradually abate.

I should, however, be cautious of bleeding in distemper fits. I should be fearful of it even in an early stage, because I well know that the acute form of that general mucous inflammation soon passes over, and is succeeded by a debility, from the depression of which I cannot always rouse my patient. When the fits proceed from dentition, I lance the jaws, and give an emetic, and follow it up with cooling purgative medicine. When they are caused by irregular and excessive exercise, I open the bowels and make my exercise more regular and equable. When they arise from excitation, I expose my patient more cautiously to the influence of those things which make so much impression on his little but susceptible mind.

If the fit has resisted other means, bleeding should be resorted to. A fit in other animals is generally connected with dangerous determination of blood to the head, and bleeding is imperative. A fit in the dog may be the consequence of sudden surprise and irritation. If I had the means I should see whether I could not break the charm; whether I could not get rid of the disturbance, by suddenly affecting the nervous system, and the system generally, in another way. I would seize him by the nape of the neck, and, with all my force, dash a little cold water in his face. The shock of this has often dispersed the epileptic agency, as it were by magic. I would give an emeto-purgative; a grain or a grain and a half of calomel and the same quantity of tartar emetic: I would soothe and coax the poor animal. Then,—and if I saw it at the beginning, I would do it early,—if the fit was more dependent upon, or was beginning to be connected with, determination of blood to the head, and not on any temporary cause of excitation or irritation, I would bleed freely from the jugular.

The following singular case of epilepsy is narrated by M.W. Leblanc:

A dog of small size, three years old, was very subject to those epileptic fits that are so frequent among dogs. After a considerable period, the fits would cease, and the animal recover the appearance of perfect health; but the more he advanced in age the more frequent were the fits, which is contrary to that which usually happens.

The last fit was a very strong one, and was followed by peculiar symptoms. The animal became dispirited. The eyes lost their usual lively appearance, and the eyelids were often closed. The dog was very drowsy, and, during sleep, there were observed, from time to time, spasmodic movements, principally of the head and chest. 'He always lay down on the left side'. When he walked, he had a marked propensity to turn to the left.

M. Leblanc employed purgatives, a seton to the back part of the neck, and the application of the cautery to the left side of the forehead; but nothing would stop the progress of the disease, and he died in the course of two months after the last fit. The nearer he approached his end the smaller were the circles that he took; and, in the latter part of his existence, he did little more than turn as if he were on a pivot, and, when the time arrived that he could walk no more, he used to lay himself down on the right side.

On the 'post-mortem' examination, a remarkable thickness of the meninges was found on almost the whole of the left lobe of the brain. The dura mater, the two leaves of the arachnoid membrane, and the pia mater did not constitute more than one membrane of the usual thickness, and presented a somewhat yellow colouring. The cerebral substance of the left lobe appeared to be a little firmer than that of the right lobe. The fissures of the cerebral devolutions were much less deep than those of the other side The red vessels which ran in the fissures were of smaller size, and in some places could scarcely be discovered.

[Confinement, over-feeding, blows on the head or spine, drying up of old ulcers, repelling of cutaneous affections, or, in fact, anything that is liable to derange the general health of the animal, will produce epileptic fits.

We formerly had a beagle hound of very active temperament, which we were necessarily obliged to keep much confined while in the city; and to restrain her from running too wildly when taken into the streets, we were in the habit of coupling her with a greyhound of much milder disposition. Not being willing to submit lamely to this unpleasant check upon her liberty, she was ever making fruitless attempts to escape, either by thrusting herself forwards, or obstinately pulling backwards. These efforts resulted on several occasions in fits, produced by congestion of the brain, owing to the pressure of the collar on the neck, thereby interrupting the circulation, and inducing an influx of blood to those parts. We were ultimately obliged to abandon this method of restraint, which nearly proved fatal to our much-admired beagle: she being suddenly seized with one of these fits on a hot summer's day in one of our principal thoroughfares, the crowd of ignorant bystanders concluded it to be a case of rabies, and nothing but my taking her up in my arms, and carrying her from the scene of action, saved her from falling a victim to their ignorance.

If the disease appears dependent upon plethora the result of confinement and gross living, the animal must be reduced by bleeding and purging, low diet, and exercise. If, however, the malady proceeds from weakness, as is sometimes the case in bitches while suckling a large litter, it will be necessary to relieve her of some of the pups, and supply her with the most nutritious diet, as also administer tonic balls; the following will answer.

[Symbol: Rx]: Extract of Gentian, Quassia, aa (each) grs. V, made into two pills, and one or two given morning and evening;

or,

[Symbol: Rx]: Powdered Columbo. Carbonate of Iron, aa, grs. V, made into two pills, and one given morning and evening, or more frequently if desirable.

A seton placed in the poll will often prevent these attacks, particularly when depending upon slight cerebral irritation, accompanying distemper and mange. Blisters and frictions to the spine are also serviceable.—L.]

CHOREA.

This is an irregular reception or distribution of nervous power—a convulsive involuntary twitching of some muscle or set of muscles. It is an occasional consequence of distemper that has been unusually severe or imperfectly treated, and sometimes it is seen even after that disease has existed in its mildest form.

[This nervous affection, more commonly known as St. Vitus' dance, is not a rare disease, and we doubt not that examples of it have been seen by most of our readers, more particularly in young dogs affected with distemper.

This malady is characterized by sudden involuntary twitchings of the different muscles of the body, the disease being sometimes confined to one limb, sometimes to two, and frequently pervades the whole system, giving the dog a distressing and painful appearance. These involuntary motions, it is very true, are generally restricted during sleep, although in old chronic cases of long standing they often continue in full activity without any remission whatever. The disease is not attended with fever, and all the functions generally remain for a considerable time unimpaired.—L.]

It first appears in one leg or shoulder, and is long, or perhaps entirely, confined to that limb. There is a singular spasmodic jerking action of the limb. It looks like a series of pulsations, and averages from forty to sixty in a minute. Oftener, perhaps, than otherwise, both legs are similarly affected. When the animal is lying down, the legs are convulsed in the way that I have described, and when he stands there is a pulsating depressing or sinking of the head and neck. In some cases, the muscles of the neck are the principal seat of the disease, or some muscle of the face; the temporal muscle beating like an artery; the masseter opening and closing the mouth, the muscles of the eyelid, and, in a few cases, those of the eye itself being affected. These convulsive movements generally, yet not uniformly, cease during sleep, but that sleep is often very much disturbed. If the case is neglected, and the dog is in a debilitated state, this spasmodic action steals over the whole frame, and he lies extended with every limb in constant and spasmodic action.

In the majority of cases, such an expenditure of nervous and muscular power slowly destroys the strength of the animal, and he dies a mere skeleton; or the disease assumes the character of epilepsy, or it quiets down into true palsy.

In the most favourable cases, no curative means having been used, the dog regains his flesh and general strength; but the chorea continues, the spasmodic action, however, being much lessened. At other times, it seems to have disappeared; but it is ready to return when the animal is excited or attacked by other disease. In a variety of instances, there is the irritable temper which accompanies chorea in the human being, and most certainly when the disease has been extensive and confirmed.

Chorea, neglected or improperly treated, or too frequently pursuing its natural course, degenerates into paralysis agitans. There is a tremulous or violent motion of almost every limb. The spasms are not relaxed, but are even increased during sleep, and when the animal awakes, he rises with agitation and alarm. There is not a limb under the perfect control of the will; there is not a moment's respite; the constitution soon sinks, and the animal dies. No person should be induced to undertake the cure of such a case: the owner should be persuaded to permit a speedy termination to a life which no skill can render comfortable.

Chorea is oftenest observed in young dogs, and especially after distemper; and it seems to depend on a certain degree of primary or sympathetic inflammatory affection of the brain.

Chorea is often very plainly a consequence of debility: either the distribution of nervous power is irregular, or the muscles have lost their power of being readily acted upon, or have acquired a state of morbid irritability. The latter is the most frequent state. Their action is irregular and spasmodic, and it resembles the struggles of expiring nature far more than the great and uniform action of health. It is not the chorea that used to be described, in which there was an irresistible impulse to excessive action, and which was best combated by complete muscular exhaustion; but the foundation of this disease is palpable debility.

[Rickets, bad feeding, cold and damp housing, worms in the alimentary canal, mange, and other chronic affections, are all forerunners of this malady.—L.]

In the treatment of chorea there must be no bleeding, no excessive purgation, but aperients or alteratives, merely sufficient to keep the faeces in a pultaceous state, so as to carry off any source of irritation to the intestinal canal, and particularly some species of worms, too frequent sources of irritation there. To these should be added nutritious food, gentle exercise, tonic medicines, and general comforts. Counter-irritants may be applied—such as blisters over the head, and setons, extending from poll to poll—the application of turpentine, or the tincture of cantharides; but all of these will frequently be of no effect, and occasionally a rapid and fearful increase of irritability will ensue: antispasmodics are in this case of no use, and narcotics are altogether powerless. As for tonics, iron and gentian have been serviceable to a certain extent, but they have never cured the complaint. The nitrate of silver will be the sheet-anchor of the practitioner, and if early used will seldom deceive him. It should be combined with ginger, and given morning and night, in doses varying from one-sixth to one-third of a grain, according to the size of the dog.

The condition and strength of the dog, and the season of the year, will be our best guides. If the patient has not lost much flesh, and is not losing it at the time that we have to do with him, and has few symptoms of general debility, and spring or summer are approaching we may with tolerable confidence predict a cure; but, if he has been rapidly losing ground, and is doing so still, and staggers about and falls, there is no medicine that will restore him.

5th October, 1840.—A pointer, eighteen months old, had had the distemper, but not severely, and was apparently recovering when he suddenly lost all voluntary power over his limbs. He was unable to get up, and his legs were in constant, rapid, and violent motion. This continued three days, during which he had refused all food, when, the dog being in the country, my advice was asked. I ordered a strong emetic to be given to him, and after that a dose of Epsom salts, the insertion of a seton, and, in addition to this, our usual tonic was to be given twice every day. His food to consist chiefly of good strong soup, which was to be forced upon him in a sufficient quantity.

In two days he was able to get up and stagger about, although frequently falling. His appetite returned. He continued to improve, and most rapidly gained strength and especially flesh. A very peculiar, high-lifting, clambering, and uncertain motion of the legs remained, with an apparent defect of sight, for he ran against almost everything.

In six weeks the seton was removed, and the dog remained in the same state until the 7th of December. The uncertain clambering motion was now increasing, and likewise the defect of sight. He ran against almost every person and every thing. The cornea was transparent, the iris contracted, there was no opacity of the lens, or pink tint of the retina, but a peculiar glassy appearance, as unconscious of everything around it. An emetic was given, and, after that, an ounce of sulphate of magnesia.

8th. He was dreadfully ill after taking the salts; perhaps they were not genuine. For two days he panted sadly, refused his food, and vomited that which was forced upon him. His muzzle was hot; he could scarcely stand; he lost flesh very rapidly. An emetic was given immediately, and a distemper-ball daily.

16th. He soon began rapidly to recover, until he was in nearly the same state as before, except that the sight was apparently more deficient. The sulphate of magnesia was given every fourth day, and another seton inserted.

21st. He continued the medicine, and evidently improved, the sight returning, and the spasms being considerably less. The distemper-ball was continued.

4th January, 1841.—The spasms were better; but the vision did not improve. In the afternoon he fell into a momentary fit. He almost immediately rose again, and proceeded as if nothing had happened. An ounce of Epson salts was given, and then the tonic balls as before.

22d. The spasms were lessened, the clambering gait nearly ceased, but the vision was not improved. The seton was removed, and only an additional dose of salts given.

27th. The spasms suddenly and very considerably increased. The left side appeared now to be particularly affected. The left leg before and behind were most spasmed, the right scarcely at all so. The vision of the left eye was quite gone. The dog had been taken to Mr. Alexander's, the oculist, who attributed the affection of the eye and the general spasmodic disease to some pressure on the brain, and recommended the trial of copious and repeated bleeding.

28th. The dog was dull; the spasms appeared to have somewhat increased and decidedly to affect the left side. Fever-balls were ordered to be given.

29th. Considerable change took place. At three o'clock this morning I was disturbed by a noise in the hospital. The poor fellow was in a violent fit. Water was dashed in his face, and a strong emetic given; but it was not until seven o'clock that the fit had ceased; he lay until eleven o'clock, when the involuntary spasms were almost suspended. When he was placed on his feet, he immediately fell; he then gradually revived and staggered about. His master brought a physician to see him, who adopted Mr. Alexander's idea and urged bleeding. Ten ounces of blood were immediately taken; the dog refused to eat.

1st February.—The strength of the animal was not impaired, but the spasms were more violent, and he lay or wandered about stupid and almost unconscious. I subtracted eight ounces more of blood.

2d. The spasms were fully as violent, and no amendment in the vision. Eight ounces more of blood were subtracted without benefit. A fever-ball was ordered to be given.

3d. No amendment; but the bleeding having been carried to its full extent, I again resorted to the tonic balls, which were given morning and night. The dog was well fed and the seton replaced.

5th. A very considerable amendment is evident.

9th. The spasms rapidly subsided and almost disappeared. Vision was not perfectly restored; but the dog evidently saw with his left eye. He was taken away, and tonic balls sent with him and ordered to be continued.

6th March.—The dog had improved in strength and no spasmodic affection remained; he likewise evidently saw with his left eye. The tonic-balls had been discontinued for a week, and his master hoped that all would turn out well, when suddenly, while at home, he was seized with a fit that lasted ten minutes. A strong emetic was given, which brought up a vast quantity of undigested food. A strong purging-ball was given to him in the evening.

13th. The dog had lain slightly spasmed for two or three days, when they all at once ceased, and the animal appeared as well as before. Suddenly he was taken with another fit, and again a vast quantity of food was vomited. These spasms remained two days, but on the 21st the fit returned with the same discharge of food. Courses of purgatives were then determined on. A strong dose of sulphate of magnesia was given every third day. After four doses had been given, it was impossible to force any more upon him. The syrup of buckthorn was tried, but the fourth dose of that it was impossible to give. The dog was then sent into the country; no fit occurred, but there were occasional spasms.

23d September.—He was brought back to town, and I saw him. During the last month he had had many fits. His owner at length consented that the actual cautery should be applied to his head. The searing-iron for doctoring was used, and applied red-hot to the centre of the head. It was exceedingly difficult so to confine the dog as to make the application effectual, without destroying the skin.

Under the influence of the sudden violent pain, he wandered about for more than two hours, and then the spasms returned with greater force than usual. He refused all food.

We determined to try the cautery to its full extent. We chained him up in the morning, and penetrated through the skin with the budding-iron. The spasms were dreadfully violent, and he was scarcely able to walk or to stand. This gradually subsided, and then he began to run round and round, and that increased to an extraordinary velocity: he would then lie for a while with every limb in action. The owner then yielded to all our wishes, and he was destroyed with prussic acid. No morbid appearance presented itself in the brain; but, on the inner plate of the right parietal bone, near the sagittal suture, were two projections, one-sixth of an inch in length, and armed with numerous minute spicula. There was no peculiar inflammation or vascularity of any other part of the brain.

[We once cured a case quite accidentally, by throwing a pup into a cold stream of water, and making him swim ashore; we do not recommend the plan, although we should be willing to try it again with one of our own dogs. The animal should be forced to swim till nearly exhausted, and wrapped up in blankets on coming out of the water. The intense alarm created in the pup, together with the violent struggle and coldness of the water, all act as revulsives to the disease, which, if purely nervous, may be overcome by these powerful agents.

If the dog be weak, and the stomach deranged, the following tonic balls will answer a good purpose:

[Symbol: Rx]: Carbonate of Iron.

Ground Ginger, aa, grs. X, made into two pills, one given morning and evening, or more frequently according to the age or size of the animal.—L.]

RHEUMATISM AND PALSY.

I do not know any animal so subject to 'rheumatism' as the dog, nor any one in which, if it is early and properly treated, it is so manageable.

[We agree with our author, that the canine family are exceedingly liable to inflammation of the fibrous and muscular structures of the body, and there is no disease from which they suffer more, both in their youth and old age, than rheumatism. No particular species of dogs are more subject to its attacks than others, all being alike victims to its ravages. Mr. Blaine remarks, that the bowels always sympathize with other parts of the body suffering under this disease, and that inflammation will always be found existing in the abdominal viscera, if rheumatism be present, and the lower bowels will be attended with a painful torpor, which he designates as rheumatic colic. We ourselves noticed, that old setters particularly, when suffering from this disease, are frequently attacked with an acute diarrhoea, or suffer from obstinate constipation attended by griping pains, but did not know that this state of things was so uniform an accompaniment to the other affection. There are two varieties of rheumatism, the 'acute' and 'chronic', both of which are attended with either general fever or local inflammation. The attacks usually come on rather suddenly, the joints swell, the pulse becomes full and tense, the parts tender, and the eyes blood-shot, the stomach deranged, and the bowels costive. Severe lancinating pain runs through the articulation, and along the course of the larger muscles, the tongue is coated, the muzzle hot and dry, and the poor animal howls with agony. The breathing becomes laboured, all food is rejected, and if you attempt to move the sufferer he sends forth piteous cries of distress. 'The causes' of this serious affection are very numerous; among the most usual and active agents may be enumerated, exposure to atmospherical vicissitudes, remaining wet and idle after coming from the water, damp kennels, suppressed perspiration, metastasis of eruptive diseases, luxurious living, laziness and over-feeding. These and many other causes are all busy in the production of this disease. Duck dogs on the Chesapeake, we have noticed as often suffering from this affection, owing no doubt to the great exposure they are obliged to endure; but few of them arrive at old age without being martyrs to the chronic form. 'Chronic rheumatism', generally the result of the other form of disease, is most usually met with in old dogs: it is attended with little fever, although the local inflammation and swelling is sometimes considerable. The pain is often stationary in one shoulder or loin, at other times shifts about suddenly to other portions of the body. The muscles are tender and the joints stiff, the animal seems lame till he becomes healed, and limber when all appearance of the disease vanishes. In old cases the limbs become so much enlarged, and the joints so swollen, that the dog is rendered perfectly useless, and consequently increases his sufferings by idleness. 'This form of the disease is known as gout.'

Treatment of 'acute rheumatism'—bleeding largely is very important in this affection, and if followed up with two or three purges of aloes, gamboge, colocynth and calomel will arrest the progress of this disease.

Rx. Extract of Colocynth 3 [Symbol: scruple] i. Calomel grs. x. Powdered Gamboge grs. ii. Socet. Aloes grs. x.

Made into four pills, two to be given at night, and the other the following morning. If these medicines should not be handy, give a large purging ball of aloes, to be followed by a full dose of salts. When the inflammatory action is not sufficiently high to demand depletion, warm bathing, friction and keeping the dog wrapped up in blankets before a fire will generally afford relief. If the pain appear very severe, it will be necessary to repeat the baths at short intervals: great attention must be paid to the state of the bowels: if a diarrhoea supervenes, it must not he checked too suddenly, by the use of astringent medicines, but rather corrected by small doses of oil and magnesia. If constipation attended with colic be the character of the affection, small quantities of oil and turpentine in connexion with warm enemata will be the proper remedies. If paralysis should occur, it will be found very difficult to overcome, but must be treated, after the reduction of inflammation, upon principles laid down under the head of this latter affection. Blisters to the spine, setons, electricity, acupuncturation, &c.

'Treatment of chronic rheumatism'—warm baths are useful, and warm housing absolutely necessary, attention to diet, and an occasional purge of blue mass and aloes, together with electricity, acupuncture, rubefacient applications to the spine, &c.—L.]

A warm bath—perchance a bleeding—a dose or two of the castor-oil mixture, and an embrocation composed of spirit of turpentine, hartshorn, camphorated spirit, and laudanum, will usually remove it in two or three days, unless it is complicated with muscular sprains, or other lesions, such as the 'chest-founder' of kennels.

This chest-founder is a singular complaint, and often a pest in kennels that are built in low situations, and where bad management prevails. Where the huntsman or whippers-in are too often in a hurry to get home, and turn their dogs into the kennel panting and hot; where the beds are not far enough from the floor, or the building, if it should be in a sufficiently elevated situation, has yet a northern aspect and is unsheltered from the blast, chest-founder prevails; and I have known half the pack affected by it after a severe run, the scent breast-high, and the morning unusually cold. It even occasionally passes on into palsy.

The veterinary surgeon will be sometimes consulted respecting this provoking muscular affection. His advice will comprise—dryness, attention to the bowels, attention to the exercise-ground, and perhaps, occasionally, setons—not where the huntsman generally places them, on the withers above, but on the brisket below, and defended from the teeth of the dog by a roller of a very simple construction, passing round the chest between the fore legs and over the front of the shoulders on either side.

The pointer, somewhat too heavy before, and hardly worked, becomes what is called chest-foundered. From his very make it is evident that, in long-continued and considerable exertion, the subscapular muscles will be liable to sprain and inflammation. There will be inflammation of the fasciae, induration, loss of power, loss of nervous influence and palsy. Cattle, driven far and fast to the market, suffer from the same causes.

[By palsy, we mean a partial or complete loss of the powers of motion or sensation in some portion of the muscular system: this affection is very common to the canine race, and very few of them reach an advanced age without having at some time in their life experienced an attack of this malady.

The loins and hind legs suffer oftener than other parts, in fact we do not recollect ever meeting with paralysis of the fore limbs alone. Although the limbs become perfectly powerless, and are only dragged after the animal by the combined efforts of the fore legs and back, it is seldom that they lose their sensibility.—L.]

Palsy is frequent, as in the dog. However easy it may be to subdue a rheumatic affection, in its early stage, by prompt attention, yet if it is neglected, it very soon simulates, or becomes essentially connected with, or converted into, palsy.

No animal presents a more striking illustration of the connexion between intestinal irritation and palsy than the dog. He rarely or never has enteritis, even in its mildest form, without some loss of power over the hinder extremities. This may at first arise from the participation of the lumbar muscles with the intestinal irritation; but, if the disease of the bowels continues long, it will be evident enough that it is not pain alone that produces the constrained and incomplete action of the muscles of the hind extremities, but that there is an actual loss of nervous power. A dog is often brought to the veterinary surgeon, with no apparent disease about him except a staggering walk from weakness of the hind limbs. He eats well and is cheerful, and his muzzle is moist and cool; but his belly is tucked up, and there are two longitudinal cords, running parallel to each other, which will scarcely yield to pressure. The surgeon orders the castor-oil mixture twice or thrice daily, until the bowels are well acted upon, and, as soon as that is accomplished, the dog is as strong and as well as ever. Perhaps his hind limbs are dragged behind him; a warm bath is ordered, he is dosed well with the castor-oil mixture, and, if it is a recent case, the animal is well in a few days. In more confirmed palsy, the charge, or plaster on the loins, is added to the action of the aperient on the bowels. The process may be somewhat slow, but it is seldom that the dog does not ultimately and perfectly recover.

It is easy to explain this connexion, although we should have scarcely supposed that it would have been so intimate, had not frequent experience forced it on our observation. The rectum passes through the pelvis. Whatever may be said of that intestine, considering its vertical position in the human being, it is always charged with faeces in the quadruped. It therefore shares more in the effect, whatever that may be, which is produced by the retention of faeces in the intestinal canal, and it shares also in the inflammatory affection of other parts of the canal. Almost in contact with this viscus, or at least passing through the pelvis, are the crural nerves from the lumbar vertebrae, the obtusator running round the rim of the pelvis, the glutal nerve occupying its back, and the sciatic hastening to escape from it. It is not difficult to imagine that these, to a certain degree, will sympathize with the healthy and also the morbid state of the rectum; and that, when it is inert, or asleep, or diseased, they also may be powerless too. Here is something like fact to establish a very important theory, and which should be deeply considered by the sportsman and the surgeon.

[Loss of the contractile power of the sphincters of the bladder and rectum, sometimes attends this disease, and involuntary evacuations are constantly taking place, or costiveness and retention are the consequences.—L.]

Mr. Dupuy has given a valuable account of the knowledge we possess of the diseases of the spinal marrow in our domestic quadrupeds.

He has proved:

1. That in our domestic animals the spinal marrow is scarcely ever affected through the whole of its course.

2. That the dorsal and lumbar regions are the parts oftenest affected.

3. That inflammation of the spinal marrow of these regions always produces palsy, more or less complete, of the abdominal members.

4. That, in some cases, this inflammation is limited to the inferior or superior parts of the spinal marrow, and that there is loss only of feeling or of motion.

5. That sometimes animals die of palsy without any organic lesion.

[Blows on the head, producing effusion on the brain, poisoning by lead, inflammation of the spinal marrow, affections of the nerves, caries of the spine, costiveness and affections of the bowels, are all productive of palsy. If the disease proceeds from rheumatism, or other inflammatory affections, independent of any organic lesion, the disease, if taken early, is not difficult to overcome in the young subject. Warm baths, bleeding, purging, and stimulating applications to the parts and along the spine, will answer. Castor oil and turpentine is a good purge: where the malady depends upon costiveness, purges of aloes should be administered in connexion with warm enemata, stimulating frictions along the spine, and hot baths. Croton oil dropped on the tongue will also be of great benefit: if there should be effusion or compression from fracture of the bones of the cranium, nothing but trephining will be of any service, as we can hardly hope for the absorption of the matter, and the removal of the spicula of bone can alone afford relief to the patient. Paralysis arising from poisoning should be treated as described under the head of mineral poisons. Chronic cases of paralysis arising from want of tone of the nerves and spinal marrow, repeated blistering, introduction of the seton along the spine, electricity, &c., have all been tried with some success.

Strychnia, from its peculiar effects upon the animal economy, and its almost exclusive direction to the nerves of motion, makes it a medicine particularly applicable to the treatment of this disease. It may be given in all stages of the malady, but is most serviceable after the reduction of inflammatory action, and when we are convinced that the disease depends upon want of tone in the motor muscles.

Great care should be had in its administration, as it is a powerful poison in too large doses, to a large dog; commence with a quarter of a grain in pill, three times daily, and gradually increase to a half grain or more if the animal seems to bear it well. But it should be discontinued immediately on the appearance of any constitutional symptoms, such as spasmodic twitchings of the eyelids or muzzle.—L.]

PALSY—MANGE

11th February, 1835.—A Persian bitch, at the Zoological Gardens, who was well yesterday, now staggers as she walks, and has nearly lost the use of her hind legs. Gave a good dose of the castor-oil mixture.

18th. She is materially worse and drags her hind legs after her. I would fain put on a charge, but the keeper does not like that her beautiful coat should be spoiled, and wishes to try what gentle exercise will do. She certainly, after she has been coaxed a great deal, will get on her legs and stagger on fifty yards or more. Gave the castor-oil mixture daily.

19th. She is a little stronger, and walks a little better. Continue the mixture. Embrocate well with the rheumatic mixture—sp. tereb., sp. camph., liq. ammon., et tinct. opii—and give gentle exercise.

2d March.—She does improve, although slowly; the charge is therefore postponed. Continue treatment.

30th. She is considerably better. Continue the mixture, and use the embrocation every second day.

10th April—She has mange in the bend of her arm, and on her chest. Use the sulphur ointment and alterative balls, and omit the embrocation and mixture. In less than a week she nearly recovered from her lameness, and ran about almost as well as ever.

30th. She runs about very fairly, but the mange has assumed that character of scurvy which I do not know how to grapple with. Continue the alterative balls, and the ointment.

18th May.—The mange has disappeared, but the palsy is returning; she staggers slightly, and droops behind. Give the castor-oil mixture and use the embrocation.

14th June.—Mange quite gone, but palsy continues to a very considerable degree. I want to use the plaster; but the keeper pleads for a little delay. Continue the treatment.

1st July.—I have at length determined to have recourse to the charge. A piece of thick sheep's leather was fitted lo her loins and haunches. 18th. She appears to be improving, but it is very slowly.

31st. Very little change. The plaster keeps on well: she has no power over her hind limbs; but she eats and drinks as well as ever.

23d August.—No change. Give her half a grain of strychnia, morning and night.

26th That singular secretion of milk, to which the bitch is subject nine weeks after oestrum, is now appearing. Her mammae are enlarged, and I can squeeze a considerable quantity of milk out of the teats. Give an aloetic pill, and continue the strychnia.

31st. The secretion of milk continues. There is slight enlargement and some heat of the mammae; but she feeds as well as ever. Increase the dose of strychnia to three-quarters of a grain.

On the following day she was found dead. In making the usual longitudinal incision through the integuments of the abdomen a considerable quantity of milky fluid, mingled with blood, followed the knife. There was very slight enlargement of the teats, but intense inflammation of the whole of the mammary substance. The omentum, and particularly the portion opposite to the external disease, was also inflamed. Besides this there was not a vestige of disease.

This is an interesting case and deserves record. I fear that justice was not done to the animal at the commencement of the paralytic affection. In nineteen cases out of twenty in the dog, the constant but mild stimulus of a charge over the lumbar and sacral regions removes the deeper-seated inflammation of the spinal cord or its membranes, when the palsy is confined to the hind extremities, and has not been sufficiently long established to produce serious change of structure. The charge should have been applied at first. The almost total disappearance of the palsy during the cutaneous disease, which was attended with more than usual inflammation of the integument, is an instructive illustration of the power of counter-irritation, and of what might possibly have been effected in the first case; for much time was lost before the application of the charge, and when at length it was applied, it and the strychnia were powerless.

I consider the following case as exceedingly valuable, at least with reference to the power of strychnia in removing palsy:—

19th August, 1836.—A fine Alpine dog was suddenly attacked with a strange nervous affection. He was continually staggering about and falling. His head was forcibly bent backward and a little on one side, almost to his shoulder. A pound of blood was abstracted, a seton inserted from ear to ear, and eight grains of calomel administered.

21st. He has perfectly lost the use of every limb. He has also amaurosis. perfect blindness, which had not appeared the day before. He hears perfectly, and he eats, and with appetite, when the food is put into his mouth. Gave him two large spoonfuls of the castor-oil mixture daily; this consists of three parts of castor-oil, two of syrup of buck-thorn, and one of syrup of white poppies.

23d. A little better; can lift his head and throw it upon his side, and will still eat when fed. Continue the mixture, and give half a grain of strychnia daily.

24th. Little change.

27th. No change, except that he is rapidly losing flesh. Continue the treatment.

31th. The strychnia increased to three-fourths of a grain morning and night. The castor-oil mixture continued in its full quantity. He was fed well, but there was a sunken, vacant expression of countenance.

2d September.—He can move his head a little, and has some slight motion in his limbs.

4th. He can almost get up. He recognises me for the first time. His appetite, which was never much impaired, has returned: this is to be attributed to strychnia, or the seton, or the daily aperient mixture. They have all, perhaps, been serviceable, but I attribute most to the strychnia; for I have rarely, indeed, seen any dog recover from such an attack. Continue the treatment.

6th. Fast recovering. Medicine as before.

14th. Improving, but not so fast as before. Still continue the treatment.

28th. Going on slowly, but satisfactorily. Remove the seton, but continue the other treatment.

13th October.—Quite well.



* * * * *



CHAPTER VII.

RABIES.

We are now arrived at one of the most important subjects in veterinary pathology. In other cases the comfort and the existence of our quadruped patients are alone or chiefly involved, but here the lives of our employers, and our own too, are at stake, and may be easily, and too often are, compromised. Here also, however other portions of the chain may be overlooked or denied, we have the link which most of all connects the veterinary surgeon with the practitioner of human medicine; or, rather, here is the circumscribed but valued spot where the veterinary surgeon has the vantage-ground.

In describing the nature, and cause and treatment of rabies, it will be most natural to take the animal in which it oftenest appears, by which it is most frequently propagated; the time at which the danger commences, and the usual period before the death of the patient.

Some years ago a dog, naturally ferocious, bit a child at Lisson Grove. The child, to all appearance previously well, died on the third day, and an inquest was to be held on the body in the evening. The Coroner ordered the dog to be sent to me for examination The animal was, contrary to his usual habit, perfectly tractable. This will appear to be of some importance hereafter. I examined him carefully. No suspicious circumstance could be found about him. There was no appearance of rabies. In the mean time the inquest took place, and the corpse of the child was carefully examined. One medical gentleman thought that there were some suspicious appearances about the stomach, and another believed that there was congestion of the brain.

The owner of the dog begged that the animal might not be taken from him, but might accompany him home. He took him home and destroyed him that no experiments might be made.

With great difficulty we procured the carcass, and from some inflammatory appearances about the tongue and the stomach, and the presence of a small portion of indigestible matter in the stomach, we were unanimously of opinion that the dog was rabid.

I do not mean to say that the child died hydrophobous, or that its death was accelerated by the nascent disease existing in the dog. There was probably some nervous affection that hastened the death of the infant, and the dog bit the child at the very period when the malady first began to develop itself. On the following day there were morbid lesions enough to prove beyond doubt that he was rabid.

This case is introduced because I used afterwards to accompany every examination of supposed or doubtful rabies with greater caution than I probably had previously used.

It is occasionally very difficult to detect the existence of rabies in its nascent state. In the year 1813, a child attempted to rob a dog of its morning food, and the animal resisting the theft, the child was slightly scratched by its teeth. No one dreamed of danger. Eight days afterwards symptoms of rabies appeared in the dog, the malady ran its course, and the animal died. A few days afterwards the child sickened—undoubted characteristics of rabies were observed—they ran their course and the infant was lost.

There are other cases—fortunately not numerous—in the records of human surgery, resembling this. A person has been bitten by a dog, he has paid little or no attention to it, and no application of the caustic has been made. Some weeks, or even months, have passed, he has nearly or quite forgotten the affair, when he becomes languid and feverish, and full of fearful apprehensions, and this appearing perhaps during several days, or more than a week. The empoisonment has then ceased to be a local affair, the virus has entered into the circulation, and its impression is made on the constitution generally. Fortunately the disposition to bite rarely develops itself until the full establishment of the disease, otherwise we might sometimes inquire whether it were not our duty to exterminate the whole race of dogs.

The following case deserves to be recorded. On the 21st of October, 1813, a dog was brought to me for examination. He had vomited a considerable quantity of coagulated blood. I happened to be particularly busy at the moment, and not observing anything peculiar in his countenance or manner, I ordered some astringent sedative medicine, and said that I would see him again in the afternoon.

In the course of the afternoon he was again brought. The vomiting had quite ceased. His mouth seemed to be swollen, and, on examining him, I found that some of his incisor teeth, both in the upper and lower jaw, had been torn out. This somewhat alarmed me; and, on inquiring of the servant, I was told that he suspected that they had had thieves about the house on the preceding night, for the dog had torn away the side of his kennel in attempting to get at them. I scolded him for not having told me of this in the morning; and then, talking of various things, in order to prolong the time and to be able closely to watch my patient, I saw, or thought I saw, but in a very slight degree, that the animal was tracing the fancied path of some imaginary object. I was then truly alarmed, and more especially since I had discovered that in the giving of the physic in the morning the man's hand had been scratched; a youth had suffered the dog to lick his sore finger, and the animal had also been observed to lick the sore ear of an infant. He was a remarkably affectionate dog, and was accustomed to this abominable and inexcusable nonsense.

I insisted on detaining the dog, and gave the man a letter to the surgeon, telling him all my fears. He promptly acted on the hint, and before evening, the proper means were taken with regard to all three.

I watched this dog day after day. He would not eat, but he drank a great deal more water than I liked. The surgeon was evidently beginning to doubt whether I was not wrong, but he could not dispute the occasional wandering of the eye, and the frequent spume upon the water. On the 26th of October, however, the sixth day after his arrival, we both of us heard the rabid howl burst from him: he did not, however, die until the 30th. I mention this as another instance of the great difficulty there is to determine the real nature of the case in an early stage of the disease.

M. Perquin relates an interesting case. A lady had a greyhound, nine years old, that was accustomed to lie upon her bed at night, and cover himself with the bed-clothes. She remarked, one morning, that he had torn the covering of his bed, and, although he ate but little, drank oftener, and in larger quantity, than he was accustomed to do. She led him to a veterinary surgeon, who assured her that there was nothing serious the matter. On the following day, he bit her fore-finger near the nail, as she was giving him something to eat. She led him again to the veterinary surgeon, who assured her that she needed not to be under the least alarm, and as for the little wound on her finger, it was of no consequence. On the following day, the 27th of December, the dog died. He had not ceased to drink most abundantly to the very last.

On the 4th of February, as the lady was dining with her husband, she found some difficulty in deglutition. She wished to take some wine, but was unable to swallow it.

On the 5th, she consulted a surgeon. He wished her to swallow a little soup in his presence. She attempted to do it, but could not accomplish her object after many an effort. She then fell into a state of violent agitation, with constriction of the pharynx, and the discharge of a viscid fluid from the mouth.

On the 7th, she died, four days after the first attack of the disease, and in a state of excessive loss of flesh.

There can be no doubt that both the dog and his mistress died rabid, the former having communicated the disease to the latter; but there is no satisfactory account of the manner in which the dog became diseased. [1]

Joseph Delmaire, of Looberghe, twenty-nine years old, was, on the 6th of October, 1836, bitten in the hand by a dog that he met with in the forest, and that was evidently rabid. On the following morning, he went to a medical man of some repute in the country, who washed the wound, and scarified it, and terminated the operation by tracing a bloody cross on the forehead of the patient.

He returned home, but he was far from being satisfied. The image of the dog that had attacked him was always before him, and his sleep was troubled with the most frightful dreams. So passed four-and-twenty days, when Delmaire, rising from his bed, felt the most dreadful trepidation; he panted violently; it seemed as if an enormous weight oppressed his chest, and from time to time there was profound sighing and sobbing. He complained every moment that he was smothered. He attempted to drink, but it was with great difficulty that a few drops of barley-water were swallowed. His mouth was dry, his throat burning, his thirst excessive, and all that he attempted to swallow was rejected with horror.

At nine o'clock at night he was largely bled. His respiration was more free, but the dread of every fluid remained. After an hour's repose, he started and felt the most fearful pain in every limb—his whole body was agitated with violent convulsions. The former place of bleeding was reopened, and a great quantity of blood escaped. The pulse became small and accelerated. The countenance was dreadful—the eyes were starting from their sockets—he continually sprung from his seat and uttered the most fearful howling. A quantity of foam filled his mouth, and compelled a continued expectoration. In his violent fits, the strength of six men was not sufficient to keep him on his bed. In the midst of a sudden recess of fury he would disengage himself from all that were attempting to hold him, and dash himself on the floor; there, freed from all control, he rolled about, beat himself, and tore everything that he could reach. In the short intervals that separated these crises, he regained possession of his reasoning powers: he begged his old father to pardon him, he talked to him and to those around with the most intense affection, and it was only when he felt that a new attack was at hand, that he prayed them to leave him. At length his mental excitation began to subside; his strength was worn out, and he suffered himself to be placed on his bed. The horrible convulsions from time to time returned, but the dread of liquors had ceased. He demanded something to drink. They gave him a little white wine, but he was unable to swallow it; it was returned through his nostrils. The poor fellow then endeavoured to sleep; but it was soon perceived that he had ceased to live.

The early symptoms of rabies in the dog are occasionally very obscure. In the greater number of cases, these are sullenness, fidgetiness, and continual shifting of posture. Where I have had opportunity, I have generally found these circumstances in regular succession. For several consecutive hours perhaps he retreats to his basket or his bed. He shows no disposition to bite, and he answers the call upon him laggardly. He is curled up and his face is buried between his paws and his breast. At length he begins to be fidgety. He searches out new resting-places; but he very soon changes them for others. He takes again to his own bed; but he is continually shifting his posture. He begins to gaze strangely about him as he lies on his bed. His countenance is clouded and suspicious. He comes to one and another of the family and he fixes on them a steadfast gaze as if he would read their very thoughts. "I feel strangely ill," he seems to say: "have you anything to do with it? or you? or you?" Has not a dog mind enough for this? If we have observed a rabid dog at the commencement of the disease, we have seen this to the very life.

There is a species of dog—the small French poodle—the essence of whose character and constitution is fidgetiness or perpetual motion.

If this dog has been bitten, and rabies is about to establish itself, he is the most irritative restless being that can be conceived of; starting convulsively at the slightest sound; disposing of his bed in every direction, seeking out one retreat after another in order to rest his wearied frame, but quiet only for a moment in any one, and the motion of his limbs frequently stimulating chorea and even epilepsy.

A peculiar delirium is an early symptom, and one that will never deceive. A young man had been bitten by one of his dogs; I was requested to meet a medical gentleman on the subject: I was a little behind my time; as I entered the room I found the dog eagerly devouring a pan of sopped bread. "There is no madness here," said the gentleman. He had scarcely spoken, when in a moment the dog quitted the sop, and, with a furious bark sprung against the wall as if he would seize some imaginary object that he fancied was there. "Did you see that?" was my reply. "What do you think of it?" "I see nothing in it," was his retort: "the dog heard some noise on the other side of the wall." At my serious urging, however, he consented to excise the part. I procured a poor worthless cur, and got him bitten by this dog, and carried the disease from this dog to the third victim: they all became rabid one after the other, and there my experiment ended. The serious matter under consideration, perhaps, justified me in going so far as I did.

This kind of delirium is of frequent occurrence in the human patient. The account given by Dr. Bardsley of one of his patients is very appropriate to on profit purpose:

"I observed that he frequently fixed his eyes with horror and affright on some ideal object, and then, with a sudden and violent emotion, buried his head beneath the bed-clothes. The next time I saw him repeat this action, I was induced to inquire into the cause of his terror. He asked whether I had not heard howlings and scratchings. On being answered in the negative, he suddenly threw himself on his knees, extending his arms in a defensive posture, and forcibly threw back his head and body. The muscles of the face were agitated by various spasmodic contractions; his eye-balls glazed, and seemed ready to start from their sockets; and, at the moment, when crying out in an agonizing tone, 'Do you not see that black dog?' his countenance and attitude exhibited the most dreadful picture of complicated horror, distress, and rage that words can describe or imagination paint."

I have again and again seen the rabid dog start up after a momentary quietude, with unmingled ferocity depicted on his countenance, and plunge with a savage howl to the end of his chain. At other times he would stop and watch the nails in the partition of the stable in which he was confined, and fancying them to move he would dart at them, and occasionally sadly bruise and injure himself from being no longer able to measure the distance of the object. In one of his sudden fits of violence a rabid dog strangled the Cardinal Crescence, the Legate of the Pope, at the Council of Trent in 1532.

M. Magendie has often injected into the veins of an hydrophobous dog as much as five grains of opium without producing any effect; while a single grain given to the healthy dog would suffice to send him almost to sleep.

One of Mr. Babington's patients thought that there was a cloud of flies about him. "Why do you not kill those flies!" he would cry; and then he would strike at them with his hand, and shrink under the bed-clothes, in the most dreadful fear.

There is also in the human being a peculiarity in this delirium which seems to distinguish it from every other kind of mental aberration.

"The patient," in Mr. Lawrence's language, "is pursued by a thousand phantoms that intrude themselves upon his mind; he holds conversation with imaginary persons; he fancies himself surrounded with difficulties, and in the greatest distress. These thoughts seem to pass through his mind with wonderful rapidity, and to keep him in a state of the greatest distress, unless he is quickly spoken to or addressed by his name, and, then, in a moment the charm is broken; every phantom of imagination disappears, and at once he begins to talk as calmly and as connectedly as in perfect health."

So it is with the dog, whether he is watching the motes that are floating in the air, or the insects that are annoying him on the walls, or the foes that he fancies are threatening him on every side—one word recalls him in a moment. Dispersed by the magic influence of his master's voice, every object of terror disappears, and he crawls towards him with the same peculiar expression of attachment that used to characterize him.

Then comes a moment's pause—a moment of actual vacuity—the eye slowly closes, the head droops, and he seems as if his fore feet were giving way, and he would fall: but he springs up again, every object of terror once more surrounds him—he gazes wildly around—he snaps—he barks, and he rushes to the extent of his chain, prepared to meet his imaginary foe.

The expression of the countenance of the dog undergoes a considerable change, principally dependent on the previous disposition of the animal. If he was naturally of an affectionate disposition, there will be an anxious, inquiring countenance, eloquent, beyond the power of resisting its influence. It is made up of strange suppositions as to the nature of the depression of mind under which he labours, mingled with some passing doubts, and they are but passing, as to the concern which the master has in the affair; but, most of all, there is an affectionate and confiding appeal for relief. At the same time we observe some strange fancy, evidently passing through his mind, unalloyed, however, by the slightest portion of ferocity.

In the countenance of the naturally savage brute, or him that has been trained to be savage, there is indeed a fearful change; sometimes the conjunctiva is highly injected; at other times it is scarcely affected, hut the eyes have an unusually bright and dazzling appearance. They are like two balls of fire, and there is a peculiar transparency of the hyaloid membrane, or injection of that of the retina.

A very early symptom of rabies in the dog, is an extreme degree of restlessness. Frequently, he is almost invariably wandering about, shifting from corner to corner, or continually rising up and lying down, changing his posture in every possible way, disposing of his bed with his paws, shaking it with his mouth, bringing it to a heap, on which he carefully lays his chest, or rather the pit of his stomach, and then rising up and bundling every portion of it out of the kennel. If he is put into a closed basket, he will not be still for an instant, but turn round and round without ceasing. If he is at liberty, he will seem to imagine that something is lost, and he will eagerly search round the room, and particularly every corner of it, with strange violence and indecision.

In a very great portion of cases of hydrophobia in the human being, there is, as a precursory symptom, uneasiness, pain, or itching of the bitten part. A red line may also be traced up the limb, in the direction of the lymphatics. In a few cases the wound opens afresh.

The poison is now beginning fatally to act on the tissue, on which it had previously lain harmless. When the conversation has turned on this subject, long after the bitten part has been excised, pain has darted along the limb. I have been bitten much oftener than I liked, by dogs decidedly rabid, but, proper means being taken, I have escaped; and yet often, when I have been over-fatigued, or a little out of temper, some of the old sores have itched and throbbed, and actually become red and swollen.

The dog appears to suffer a great deal of pain in the ear in common canker. He will be almost incessantly scratching it, crying piteously while thus employed. The ear is, oftener than any other part, bitten by the rabid dog, and, when a wound in the ear, inflicted by a rabid dog, begins to become painful, the agony appears to be of the intensest kind. The dog rubs his ear against every projecting body, he scratches it might and main, and tumbles over and over while he is thus employed.

The young practitioner should be on his guard there. Is this dreadful itching a thing of yesterday, or, has the dog been subject to canker, increasing for a considerable period. Canker both internal and external is a disease of slow growth, and must have been long neglected before it will torment the patient in the manner that I have described. The question as to the length of time that an animal has thus suffered will usually be a sufficient guide.

The mode in which he expresses his torture will serve as another direction. He will often scratch violently enough when he has canker, but he will not roll over and over like a football except he is rabid. If there is very considerable inflammation of the lining membrane of the ear, and engorgement and ulceration of it, this is the effect of canker; but if there is only a slight redness of the membrane, or no redness at all, and yet the dog is incessantly and violently scratching himself, it is too likely that rabies is at hand.

In the early stage of rabies, the attachment of the dog towards his owner seems to be rapidly increased, and the expression of that feeling. He is employed, almost without ceasing, licking the hands, or face, or any part he can get at. Females, and men too, are occasionally apt to permit the dog, when in health, to indulge this filthy and very dangerous habit with regard to them. The virus, generated under the influence of rabies, is occasionally deposited on a wounded or abraded surface, and in process of time produces a similar disease in the person that has been so inoculated by it. Therefore it is that the surgeon so anxiously inquires of the person that has been bitten, and of all those to whom the dog has had access, "Has he been accustomed to lick you? have you any sore places about you that can by possibility have been licked by him?" If there are, the person is in fully as much danger as if he had been bitten, and it is quite as necessary to destroy the part with which the virus may have come in contact. A lady once lost her life by suffering her dog to lick a pimple on her chin.

There is a beautiful species of dog, often the inhabitant of the gentleman's stable—the Dalmatian or coach dog. He has, perhaps, less affection for the human species than any other dog, except the greyhound and the bull-dog; he has less sagacity than most others, and certainly less courage. He is attached to the stable; he is the friend of the horse; they live under the same roof; they share the same bed; and, when the horse is summoned to his work, the dog accompanies every step. They are certainly beautiful dogs, and it is pleasing to see the thousand expressions of friendship between them and the horse; but, in their continual excursions through the streets, they are exposed to some danger, and particularly to that of being bitten by rabid dogs. It is a fearful business when this takes place. The coachman probably did not see the affray; no suspicion has been excited. The horse rubs his muzzle to the dog, and the dog licks the face of the horse, and in a great number of cases the disease is communicated from the one to the other. The dog in process of time dies, the horse does not long survive, and, frequently too, the coachman shares their fate. I have known at least twenty horses destroyed in this way.

A depraved appetite is a frequent attendant on rabies in the dog. He refuses his usual food; he frequently turns from it with an evident expression of disgust; at other times, he seizes it with greater or less avidity, and then drops it, sometimes from disgust, at other times because he is unable to complete the mastication of it. This palsy of the organs of mastication, and dropping of the food, after it has been partly chewed, is a symptom on which implicit confidence may be placed.

Some dogs vomit once or twice in the early period of the disease: when this happens, they never return to the natural food of the dog, but are eager for everything that is filthy and horrible. The natural appetite generally fails entirely, and to it succeeds a strangely depraved one. The dog usually occupies himself with gathering every little bit of thread, and it is curious to observe with what eagerness and method he sets to work, and how completely he effects his object. He then attacks every kind of dirt and filth, horse-dung, his own dung, and human excrement. Some breeds of spaniels are very filthy feeders without its being connected with disease, but the rabid dog eagerly selects the excrement of the horse, and his own. Some considerable care, however, must be exercised here. At the period of dentition, and likewise at the commencement of the sexual affection, the stomach of the dog, and particularly that of the bitch, sympathises with, or shares in, the irritability of the gums, and of the constitution generally, and there is a considerably perverted appetite. The dog also feels the same propensity that influences the child, that of taking hard substances into the mouth, and seemingly trying to masticate them. Their pressure on the gums facilitates the passage of the new teeth. A young dog will, therefore, be observed gathering up hard substances, and, if he should chance to die, a not inconsiderable collection of them is sometimes found in the stomach. They are, however, of a peculiar character; they consist of small pieces of bone, slick, and coal.

The contents of the stomach of the rabid dog, are often, or generally, of a most filthy description. Some hair or straw is usually found, but the greater part is composed of horse-dung, or of his own dung, and it may be received as a certainly, that if he is found deliberately devouring it, he is rabid.

Some very important conclusions may be drawn from the appearance and character of the urine. The dog, and at particular times when he is more than usually salacious, may, and does diligently search the urining places; he may even, at those periods, be seen to lick the spot which another has just wetted; but, if a peculiar eagerness accompanies this strange employment, if, in the parlour, which is rarely disgraced by this evacuation, every corner is perseveringly examined, and licked with unwearied and unceasing industry, that dog cannot be too carefully watched, there is great danger about him; he may, without any other symptom, be pronounced to be decidedly rabid. I never knew a single mistake about this.

Much has been said of the profuse discharge of saliva from the mouth of the rabid dog. It is an undoubted fact that, in this disease, all the glands concerned in the secretion of saliva, become increased in bulk and vascularity. The sublingual glands wear an evident character of inflammation; but it never equals the increased discharge that accompanies epilepsy, or nausea. The frothy spume at the corners of the mouth, is not for a moment to be compared with that which is evident enough in both of these affections. It is a symptom of short duration, and seldom lasts longer than twelve hours. The stories that are told of the mad dog covered with froth, are altogether fabulous. The dog recovering from, or attacked by a fit, may be seen in this state; but not the rabid dog. Fits are often mistaken for rabies, and hence the delusion.

The increased secretion of saliva soon passes away. It lessens in quantity; it becomes thicker, viscid, adhesive, and glutinous. It clings to the corners of the mouth, and probably more annoyingly so to the membrane of the fauces. The human being is sadly distressed by it, he forces it out with the greatest violence, or utters the falsely supposed bark of a dog, in his attempts to force it from his mouth. This symptom occurs in the human being, when the disease is fully established, or at a late period of it. The dog furiously attempts to detach it with his paws.

It is an early symptom in the dog, and it can scarcely be mistaken in him. When he is fighting with his paws at the corners of his mouth, let no one suppose that a bone is sticking between the poor fellow's teeth; nor should any useless and dangerous effort be made to relieve him. If all this uneasiness arose from a bone in the mouth, the mouth would continue permanently open instead of closing when the animal for a moment discontinues his efforts. If after a while he loses his balance and tumbles over, there can be no longer any mistake. It is the saliva becoming more and more glutinous, irritating the fauces and threatening suffocation.

To this naturally and rapidly succeeds an insatiable thirst. The dog that still has full power over the muscles of his jaws continues lo lap. He knows not when to cease, while the poor fellow labouring under the dumb madness, presently to be described, and whose jaw and tongue are paralysed, plunges his muzzle into the water-dish to his very eyes, in order that he may get one drop of water into the back part of his mouth to moisten and to cool his dry and parched fauces. Hence, instead of this disease being always characterised by the dread of water in the dog, it is marked by a thirst often perfectly unquenchable. Twenty years ago, this assertion would have been peremptorily denied. Even at the present day we occasionally meet with those who ought to know better, and who will not believe that the dog which fairly, or perhaps eagerly, drinks, can be rabid.

January 22d, 1815.—A Newfoundland dog belonging to a gentleman in Piccadilly was supposed to have swallowed a penny-piece on the 20th. On the evening of that day he was dull, refused his food, and would not follow his master.

21st. He became restless and pouting, and continually shifting his position. He would not eat nor would he drink water, but followed his mistress into her bed-room, which he had never done before, and eagerly lapped the urine from her chamber-pot. He was afterwards seen lapping his own urine. His restlessness and panting increased, He would neither eat nor drink, and made two or three attempts to vomit.

22d. He was brought to me this evening. His eyes were wild, the conjunctiva considerably inflamed, and he panted quickly and violently. There was a considerable flow of saliva from the corners of his mouth. He was extremely restless and did not remain in one position half a minute. There was an occasional convulsive nodding motion of the head. The eyes were wandering, and evidently following some imaginary object; but he was quickly recalled from his delirium by my voice or that of his master. In a few moments, however, he was wandering again. He had previously been under my care, and immediately recognised me and offered me his paw. His bark was changed and had a slight mixture of the howl, and there was a husky choking noise in the throat.

I immediately declared that he was rabid, and with some reluctance on the part of his master, he was left with me.

23d, 8 A. M. The breathing was less quick and laborious. The spasm of the head was no longer visible. The flow of saliva had stopped and there was less delirium. The jaw began to be dependent: the rattling, choking noise in his throat louder. He carried straw about in his mouth. He picked up some pieces of old leather that lay within his reach and carefully concealed them under his bed. Two minutes afterwards he would take them out again, and look at them, and once more hide them. He frequently voided his urine in small quantities, but no longer lapped it. A little dog was lowered into the den, but he took no notice of it.

10 P. M. Every symptom of fever returned with increased violence. He panted very much, and did not remain in the same posture two seconds. He was continually running to the end of his chain and attempting to bite. He was eagerly and wildly watching some imaginary object. His voice was hoarser—more of the howl mixing with it. The lips were distorted, and the tongue very black. He was evidently getting weaker. After two or three attempts to escape, he would sit down for a second, and then rise and plunge to the end of his chain. He drank frequently, yet but little at a time, and that without difficulty or spasm.

12 P. M. The thirst strangely increased. He had drunk or spilled full three quarts of water. There was a peculiar eagerness in his manner. He plunged his nose to the very bottom of his pan, and then snapped at the bubbles which he raised. No spasm followed the drinking. He took two or three pieces from my hand, but immediately dropped them from want of power to hold them. Yet he was able for a moment suddenly to close his jaws. When not drinking he was barking with a harsh sound, and frequently started suddenly, watching, and catching at some imaginary object.

24th, A. M. He was more furious, yet weaker. The thirst was insatiable. He was otherwise diligently employed in shattering and tearing everything within his reach. He died about three o'clock.

It is impossible to say what was the origin of this disease in him. It is not connected with any degree or variation of temperature, or any particular state of the atmosphere. It is certainly more frequent in the summer or the beginning of autumn than in the winter or spring, because it is a highly nervous and febrile disease, and the degree of fever, and irritability, and ferocity, and consequent mischief are augmented by increase of temperature. In the great majority of cases, the inoculation can be distinctly proved. In very few can the possibility be denied. The injury is inflicted in an instant. There is no contest, and before the injured party can prepare to retaliate, the rabid dog is far away.

It can easily be believed that when a favourite dog has, but for a moment, lagged behind, he may be bitten without the owner's knowledge or suspicion. A spaniel belonging to a lady became rabid. The dog was her companion in her grounds at her country residence, and it was rarely out of her sight except for a few minutes in the morning, when the servant took it out. She was not conscious of its having been bitten, and the servant stoutly denied it. The animal died. A few weeks afterwards the footman was taken ill. He was hydrophobous. In one of his intervals of comparative quietude he confessed that, one morning, his charge had been attacked and rolled over by another dog; that there was no appearance of its having been bitten, but that it had been made sadly dirty, and he had washed it before he suffered it again to go into the drawing-room. The dog that attacked it must have been rabid, and some of his saliva must have remained about the coat of the spaniel, by which the servant was fatally inoculated.

Another case of this fearful disease must not be passed over. A dog that had been docile and attached to his master and mistress, was missing one morning, and came home in the evening almost covered with dirt. He slunk to his basket, and would pay no attention to any one. His owners thought it rather strange, and I was sent for in the morning. He was lying on the lap of his mistress, but was frequently shifting his posture, and every now and then he started, as if he heard some strange sound. I immediately told them what was the matter, and besought them to place him in another and secure room. He had been licking both their hands. I was compelled to tell them at once what was the nature of the case, and besought them to send at once for their surgeon. They were perfectly angry at my nonsense, as they called it, and I took my leave, but went immediately to their medical man, and told him what was the real state of the case. He called, as it were accidentally, a little while afterwards, and I was not far behind him. The surgeon did his duty, and they escaped.

In May, 1820, I attended on a bitch at Pimlico. She had snapped at the owner, bitten the man-servant and several dogs, was eagerly watching imaginary objects, and had the peculiar rabid howl. I offered her water. She started back with a strange expression of horror, and fell into violent convulsions that lasted about a minute. This was repeated a little while afterwards, and with the same result. She was destroyed.

The horrible spasms of the human being at the sight of, or the attempt to swallow, fluids occur sufficiently often to prove the identity of the disease in the biped and the quadruped; but not in one in fifty cases is there, in the dog, the slightest reluctance to liquids, or difficulty in swallowing them.

In almost every case in which the dog utters any sound during the disease, there is a manifest change of voice. In the dog labouring under ferocious madness, it is perfectly characteristic. There is no other sound that it resembles. The animal is generally standing, or occasionally sitting, when the singular sound is heard. The muzzle is always elevated. The commencement is that of a perfect bark, ending abruptly and very singularly, in a howl, a fifth, sixth, or eighth higher than at the commencement. Dogs are often enough heard howling, but in this case it is the perfect bark, and the perfect howl rapidly succeeding to the bark.

Every sound uttered by the rabid dog is more or less changed. The huntsman, who knows the voice of every dog in his pack, occasionally hears a strange challenge. He immediately finds out that dog, and puts him, as quickly as possible, under confinement. Two or three days may pass over, and there is not another suspicious circumstance about the animal; still he keeps him under quarantine, for long experience has taught him to listen to that warning. At length the disease is manifest in its most fearful form.

There is another partial change of voice, to which the ear of the practitioner will, by degrees, become habituated, and which will indicate a change in the state of the animal quite as dangerous as the dismal howl; I mean when there is a hoarse inward bark, with a slight but characteristic elevation of the tone. In other cases, after two or three distinct barks, will come the peculiar one mingled with the howl. Both of them will terminate fatally, and in both of them the rabid howl cannot possibly be mistaken.

There is a singular brightness in the eye of the rabid dog, but it does not last more than two or three days. It then becomes dull and wasted; a cloudiness steals over the conjunctiva, which changes to a yellow tinge, and then to a dark green, indicative of ulceration deeply seated within the eye. In eight and forty hours from the first clouding of the eye, it becomes one disorganised mass.

There is in the rabid dog a strange embarrassment of general sensibility—a seemingly total loss of feeling.

Absence of pain in the bitten part is an almost invariable accompaniment of rabies. I have known a dog set to work, and gnaw and tear the flesh completely away from his legs and feet. At other times the penis is perfectly demolished from the very base. Ellis in his "Shepherd's Sure Guide," asserts, that, however severely a mad dog is beaten, a cry is never forced from him. I am certain of the truth of this, for I have again and again failed in extracting that cry. Ellis tells that at the kennel at Goddesden, some of the grooms heated a poker red hot, and holding it near the mad hound's mouth, he most greedily seized it, and kept it until the mouth was most dreadfully burned.

In the great majority of cases of furious madness, and in almost every case of dumb madness, there is evident affection of the lumbar portion of the spinal cord. There is a staggering gait, not indicative of general weakness, but referable to the hind quarters alone, and indicating an affection of the lumbar motor nerve. In a few cases it approaches more to a general paralytic affection.

In the very earliest period of rabies, the person accustomed to dogs will detect the existence of the disease.

The animal follows the flight, as has been already stated, of various imaginary objects. I have often watched the changing countenance of the rabid dog when he has been lost to every surrounding object. I have seen the brightening countenance and the wagging tail as some pleasing vision has passed before him; but, oftener has the countenance indicated the mingled dislike and fear with which the intruder was regarded. As soon as the phantom came within the proper distance he darted on it with true rabid violence.

A spaniel, seemingly at play, snapped, in the morning, at the feet of several persons. In the evening he bit his master, his master's friend, and another dog. The old habits of obedience and affection then returned. His master, most strangely, did not suspect the truth, and brought the animal to me to be examined. The animal was, as I had often seen him, perfectly docile and eager to be caressed. At my suggestion, or rather entreaty, he was left with me. On the following morning the disease was plain enough, and on the following day he died. A post-mortem examination took place, and proved that he was unequivocally rabid.

A lady would nurse her dog, after I had declared it to be rabid, and when he was dangerous to every one but herself, and even to her from the saliva which he plentifully scattered about. At length he darted at every one that entered the room, until a footman keeping the animal at bay with the poker, the husband of the lady dragged her from the room. The noise that the dog made was then terrific, and he almost gnawed his way through the door. At midnight his violence nearly ceased, and the door was partially opened. He was staggering and falling about, with every limb violently agitated. At the entreaty of the lady, a servant ventured in to make a kind of bed for him. The dog suddenly darted at him, and dropped and died.

A terrier, ten years old, had been ill, and refused all food for three days. On the fourth day he bit a cat of which he had been unusually fond, and he likewise bit three dogs. I was requested to see him. I found him loose in the kitchen, and at first refused to go in, but, after observing him for a minute or two, I thought that I might venture. He had a peculiarly wild and eager look, and turned sharply round at the least noise. He often watched the flight of some imaginary object, and pursued with the utmost fury every fly that he saw. He searchingly sniffed about the room, and examined my legs with an eagerness that made me absolutely tremble. His quarrel with the cat had been made up, and when he was not otherwise employed he was eagerly licking her and her kittens. In the excess or derangement of his fondness, he fairly rolled them from one end of the kitchen to another. With difficulty I induced his master to permit me to destroy him.

It is not every dog, that in the most aggravated state of the disease shows a disposition to bite. The finest Newfoundland dog that I ever saw became rabid. He had been bitten by a cur, and was supposed to have been thoroughly examined in the country. No wound, however, was found: the circumstance was almost forgotten, and he came up to the metropolis with his master. He became dull, disinclined to play, and refused all food. He was continually watching imaginary objects, but he did not snap at them. There was no howl, nor any disposition to bite. He offered himself to be caressed, and he was not satisfied except he was shaken by the paw. On the second day I saw him. He watched every passing object with peculiar anxiety, and followed with deep attention the motions of a horse, his old acquaintance; but he made no effort to escape, nor evinced any disposition to do mischief. I went to him, and patted and coaxed him, and he told me as plainly as looks and actions, and a somewhat deepened whine could express it, how much he was gratified. I saw him on the third day. He was evidently dying. He could not crawl even to the door of his temporary kennel; but he pushed forward his paw a little way, and, as I shook it, I felt the tetanic muscular action which accompanies the departure of life.

On the other hand there are rabid dogs whose ferocity knows no bounds. If they are threatened with a stick, they fly at, and seize it, and furiously shake it. They are incessantly employed in darting to the end of their chain, and attempting to crush it with their teeth, and tearing to pieces their kennel, or the wood work that is within their reach. They are regardless of pain. The canine teeth, the incisor teeth are torn away; yet, unwearied and insensible to suffering, they continue their efforts to escape. A dog was chained near a kitchen fire. He was incessant in his endeavours to escape, and, when he found that he could not effect it, he seized, in his impotent rage, the burning coals as they fell, and crushed them with his teeth.

If by chance a dog in this state effects his escape, he wanders over the country bent on destruction. He attacks both the quadruped and the biped. He seeks the village street, or the more crowded one of the town, and he suffers no dog to escape him. The horse is his frequent prey, and the human being is not always safe from his attack. A rabid dog running down Park-lane, in 1825, bit no fewer than five horses, and fully as many dogs. He was seen to steal treacherously upon some of his victims, and inflict the fatal wound. Sometimes he seeks the more distant pasturage. He gets among the sheep, and more than forty have been fatally inoculated in one night. A rabid dog attacked a herd of cows, and five-and-twenty of them fell victims. In July, 1813, a mad dog broke into the menagerie of the Duchess of York, at Oatlands, and although the palisades that divided the different compartments of the menagerie were full six feet in height, and difficult, or apparently almost impossible to climb, he was found asleep in one of them, and it was clearly ascertained that he had bitten at least ten of the dogs.

At length the rabid dog becomes completely exhausted, and slowly reels along the road with his tail depressed, seemingly half unconscious of surrounding objects. His open mouth, and protruding and blackened tongue, and rolling gait sufficiently characterise him. He creeps into some sheltered place and then he sleeps twelve hours or more. It is dangerous to disturb his slumbers, for his desire to do mischief immediately returns, and the slightest touch, or attempt to caress him, is repaid by a fatal wound. This should be a caution never to meddle with a sleeping dog in a way-side house, and, indeed, never to disturb him anywhere.

In an early period of the disease in some dogs, and in others when the strength of the animal is nearly worn away, a peculiar paralysis of the muscles of the tongue and jaws is seen. The mouth is partially open, and the tongue protruding. In some cases the dog is able to close his mouth by a sudden and violent effort, and is as ferocious and as dangerous as one the muscles of whose face are unaffected. At other times the palsy is complete, and the animal is unable to close his mouth or retract his tongue. These latter cases, however, are rare.