Some dogs vomit once or twice in the early period of the disease: when
this happens, they never return to the natural food of the dog, but are
eager for everything that is filthy and horrible. The natural appetite
generally fails entirely, and to it succeeds a strangely depraved one.
The dog usually occupies himself with gathering every little bit of
thread, and it is curious to observe with what eagerness and method he
sets to work, and how completely he effects his object. He then attacks
every kind of dirt and filth, horse-dung, his own dung, and human
excrement. Some breeds of spaniels are very filthy feeders without its
being connected with disease, but the rabid dog eagerly selects the
excrement of the horse, and his own. Some considerable care, however,
must be exercised here. At the period of dentition, and likewise at the
commencement of the sexual affection, the stomach of the dog, and
particularly that of the bitch, sympathises with, or shares in, the
irritability of the gums, and of the constitution generally, and there
is a considerably perverted appetite. The dog also feels the same
propensity that influences the child, that of taking hard substances
into the mouth, and seemingly trying to masticate them. Their pressure
on the gums facilitates the passage of the new teeth. A young dog will,
therefore, be observed gathering up hard substances, and, if he should
chance to die, a not inconsiderable collection of them is sometimes
found in the stomach. They are, however, of a peculiar character; they
consist of small pieces of bone, slick, and coal.
The contents of the stomach of the rabid dog, are often, or generally,
of a most filthy description. Some hair or straw is usually found, but
the greater part is composed of horse-dung, or of his own dung, and it
may be received as a certainly, that if he is found deliberately
devouring it, he is rabid.
Some very important conclusions may be drawn from the appearance and
character of the urine. The dog, and at particular times when he is more
than usually salacious, may, and does diligently search the urining
places; he may even, at those periods, be seen to lick the spot which
another has just wetted; but, if a peculiar eagerness accompanies this
strange employment, if, in the parlour, which is rarely disgraced by
this evacuation, every corner is perseveringly examined, and licked with
unwearied and unceasing industry, that dog cannot be too carefully
watched, there is great danger about him; he may, without any other
symptom, be pronounced to be decidedly rabid. I never knew a single
mistake about this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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