Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 4 (of 5)Law, James
Science
Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 4 (of 5)
Law, James
Veterinary medicine
Sooner or later exhaustion and paresis appear. The convulsions become
gradually weaker, the reflex irritability and hyperæsthesia abate, and
the patient may become once more able to swallow, but an ascending
paralysis, beginning in the limbs spreads over the body and death occurs
in from one to eighteen hours. In the paralytic stage there may still be
slight jerking of the muscles, or tremors, but violent convulsion no
longer occurs, and there is extreme prostration, with hurried, rattling
breathing, small, weak, irregular pulse and finally, stupor and coma.
_Diagnosis in man._ The only additional point, to those already stated
for animals, is in regard to _lyssophobia_. This false form of
hydrophobia is usually fortified by the fact of a bite, but as a rule it
lacks the exaltation of common sensation and of the special senses which
characterizes genuine hydrophobia. Very often also there is a flaw in
the history, the dog that inflicted the bite is unknown and may still be
alive, in which case no medicine is so good as to bring the healthy dog
into the presence of the patient. The dog may have been killed by an
excited community without any identification of his symptoms as those of
rabies or any post mortem examination to throw light on his case. The
attack may have come on after a conversation on the subject of the bite,
or of rabies, and perhaps, as in the case of the Montpellier cadet, long
after and when the patient had for the first time heard that the dog
that bit him had been mad. It may be that rabies does not exist in the
district and that no other victim in man nor beast can be adduced. It
may be that the patient has a nervous organization or is subject to
hysteria, and therefore specially predisposed to any disease of the
imagination. Such cases cannot be accepted as rabies until a successful
inoculation has been made on one or more animals.
RABIES AND HYDROPHOBIA. LESIONS. TREATMENT AND PREVENTION.
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