"If the animal, instead of being allowed to escape, is kept confined, the paroxysms of fury are seen to occur intermittently, or, in the absence of provacation, they may be entirely wanting. If excited, it howls, rushes upon objects that are thrust toward it, or throws itself against the bars of its cage and bites with great fury.

"As death approaches, the animal becomes exhausted and scarcely able to stand; the eyes are dull and sunken, and the expression is that of pain and despair. Paralysis appears in the jaws or in the posterior extremities and extends rapidly to other parts of the body. The animal, being unable to stand, lies extended upon its side; the respiration becomes more and more difficult; there are spasmodic contractions of certain groups of muscles, complete prostration, and death.

"The ordinary course of the disease is four or five days; it may be as short as two or as long as ten days.

Dumb Rabies

"When this form of the disease is typical, it comes on with restlessness, depression, a tendency to lick objects, and. paralysis of the muscles, which close the jaws. As a consequence of the paralysis, the lower jaw drops, the animal is unable to close the mouth, the tongue hangs out, and an abundance of saliva escapes. The mucous membrane of the mouth becomes dry, discolored, and covered with dust. The animal remains quiet, does not respond to provocations, and appears to understand its helplessness. As Bouley has said, the animal cannot bite and does not desire to bite.

"When dumb rabies follows a period in which the animal has been affected with the furious form, the desire and tendency to bite may be' retaine deven after the jaw is paralyzed.

"The course of the disease is short, death usually occurring in from two to four days.

"The dumb form of rabies is very common, and many persons know it as 'drop jaw' who have no idea of its true nature.

"Many of the common mistakes with reference to rabies arise from an imperfect knowledge of the symptoms. It is on this point that there is greatest need of educational work. Bouley has most earnestly warned us to 'distrust, a dog when it shows signs of illness; every sick dog should as a rule be suspected; more particularly distrust a dog when it becomes dull, morose and seeks for solitude, which appears not to know where to rest, which is always on the move, prowling, snapping at the air, and suddenly barking at nothing when all around is perfectly still, whose countenance is somber, and only assumes its usual animated expression by brief starts; beware of the clog that seeks and scrapes incessantly, and exhibits aggressive movements against phantoms; and, finally, beware, above all, of the dog which has become too fond of you, and is continually endeavoring to lick the hands or face."

The Period Of Incubation Of Rabies

The period of incubation of a contagious disease is the time which elapses between the inoculation or exposure and the appearance of the first symptoms. With rabies this period varies remarkably. It may be as short as six or seven days, and it occasionally exceeds one hundred days. In rare cases it has been reported on good authority that a year, or even fourteen months, elapsed between the time the animal was bitten and the time when the disease manifested itself. The majority of cases develop in from three to seven weeks.

During the greater part of the period of incubation the infected animal is healthy, and would not cause disease in any animal or person which it bites. The saliva may become virulent, however, two or three days before the appearance of the first symptoms, and any animal or person bitten after the contagion has contaminated the saliva is, of course, liable to contract the disease.

There is a very erroneous and rather stupid belief, quite common, to the effect that if a dog bites a person and becomes mad at any time thereafter the person so bitten will contract hydrophobia. This fallacy may have arisen from some instance in which a person had been bitten within a few days of the appearance of the symptoms of disease in the dog, and when the saliva was already virulent. However this may be, it is perfectly certain that a dog can not convey this disease when he does not have it or before he has himself contracted it. If, therefore, a dog does not show symptoms of rabies within a week from the time the bite is inflicted there is no danger of the person contracting the disease. The only possibility of an exception to this rule is the very doubtful one, that in extremely rare instances a dog may have rabies and recover from it without showing characteristic symptoms. A very few cases of this kind have been observed among dogs artificially inoculated, but it has not yet been shown that their saliva became virulent, or that similar cases occur under natural conditions. The fact remains, however, that a person is in no danger of contracting rabies because a healthy dog has bitten him, which dog is afterward inoculated with rabies."

The following - that I found in some paper, is too good to leave out of this book:

"It is a pleasure to note that Superintendent Frael of the New York Department of Health comes out flat-footed regarding the extreme rarity of rabies, asserting that what people suffer from is false or pseudo rabies brought about by scare. He draws attention to the fact that during the life of the New York Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which was started in 189 4, no less than three millions of dogs and cats have been handled. That the employes engaged in the work of collecting the strays number about thirty, and on an average everyone of them is bitten four times every month, or fifty times a year, and that some of the dogs' were subsequently declared by the local authorities to be rabid. On this basis of computation there has been thirty thousand bites by all sorts of animals and one hundred and fifty different men have been employed during the twenty years, yet not a single case of hydrophobia has resulted, all that the men did being to cleanse the wound thoroughly and have it dresseu.

Of course, we dog people, those of us who have had the greatest experience with dogs, have always held similar views, and your correspondent's very simple remedy has for years been to turn the water faucet on the wound, so as to thoroughly cleanse it, and while this is being done, get someone to take bicarbonate of soda, always to be found in every household, or if not, then common baking powder, and make a creamy paste, which spread on a clean piece of linen and put that on the wound and then, bind it. After a while the emulsion will dry, but pour a little water on the binding, so as to soak to the dressing, and that will do. You will have no feeling of anything wrong and there is little question that it is this feeling of something wrong that causes this pseudo-hydrophobia.

Dog men cannot be too emphatic in telling people not to be afraid of a dog bite, and if the United States would only pass a law to hang, draw and quarter every managing editor of a paper that published a mad dog story, every doctor who told a patient or suggested to a patient the possibility of hydrophobia and towed the Pasteur institutes out to the middle of the Atlantic and sunk them with all hands, that would end rabies and the hydrophobia scare."

And now read this: '

"The late Dr. Michel Peter, the greatest clinical expert of France, said: 'Pasteur does not prevent hydrophobia; he gives it.' This opinion was indorsed by such scientific leaders as Dr. T. M. Dalon, F. R. C. S., Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, Dr. Charles Bell-Taylor, Surgeon-General Charles Gordon, of England, and Professor VonFrisch, of Vienna. The celebrated Dr. A. Lutaud, editor-in-chief of the 'Jouranl de Medecine de Paris,' said in that journal on September 16, 1899, referring to the savants at the Pasteur Institute: 'They have not diminished the mortality; they have augmented it, in creating the 'madness of laboratories,' very often fatal, with which they have inoculated a great number of individuals.' "