The dread of water, from which this disease derives its name, has five distinct grades. 1. It cannot be drunken. 2. It cannot be touched. 3. The sound of it pouring from one vessel to another, 4. the sight of it, and 5. even the naming of it, cannot be borne, without exciting convulsions. But this symptom is not a universal one. Dr. Mead mentions three cases in which there was no dread of water, in persons who received the disease from the bite of a rabid animal. It is unfortunate for this disease, as well as many others, that a single symptom should impose names upon them. In the present instance it has done great harm, by fixing the attention of physicians so exclusively upon the dread of water which occurs in it, that they have in a great measure overlooked every other circumstance which belongs to the disease. The theory of the hydrophobia, which an examination of its causes, symptoms, and accidental cures, with all the industry I was capable of, has led me to adopt, is, that it is a _malignant state of fever_. My reasons for this opinion are as follow: 1. The disease in all rabid animals is a fever. This is obvious in dogs who are most subject to it. It is induced in them by the usual causes of fever, such as scanty or putrid aliment[78], extreme cold, and the sudden action of heat upon their bodies. Proofs of its being derived from each of the above causes are to be met with in most of the authors who have written upon it. The animal matters which are rendered morbid by the action of the above causes upon them, are determined to the saliva, in which a change seems to be induced, similar to that which takes place in the perspirable matter of the human species from the operation of similar causes upon it. This matter, it is well known, is the remote cause of the jail fever. No wonder the saliva of a dog should produce a disease of the same kind, after being vitiated by the same causes, and thereby disposed to produce the same effects. [78] "Animal food, in a state of putridity, is amongst the most frequent causes of canine madness." "Canine madness chiefly arises from the excessive number of ill-kept and ill-fed dogs." YOUNG'S ANNUALS, vol. XVII. p. 561. 2. The disease called canine madness, prevails occasionally among dogs at those times in which malignant fevers are epidemic. This will not surprise those persons who have been accustomed to observe the prevalence of the influenza and bilious fevers among other domestic animals at a time when they are epidemic among the human species.