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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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