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