The inflammation of rabies is of a peculiar character in the stomach. It
is generally confined to the summits of the folds of the stomach, or it
is most intense there. On the summits of the rugae there are effusions
of bloody matter, or spots of ecchymosis, presenting an appearance
almost like crushed black currants. There may be only a few of them; but
they are indications of the evil that has been effected.
From appearances that present themselves in the intestines, the bladder,
the blood-vessels, or the brain, no conclusion can be drawn; they are
simply indications of inflammation.
We now rapidly, and for a little while, retrace our steps. What is the
cause of this fatal disease, that has so long occupied our attention? It
is the saliva of a rabid animal received into a wound, or on an abraded
surface. In horses, cattle, sheep, swine, and the human being, it is
caused by inoculation alone; but, according to some persons, it is
produced spontaneously in other animals.
I will suppose that a wound by a rabid dog is inflicted. The virus is
deposited on or near its surface, and there it remains for a certain
indefinite period of time. The wound generally heals up kindly; in fact,
it differs in no respect from a similar wound inflicted by the teeth of
an animal in perfect health. Weeks and months, in some cases, pass on,
and there is nothing to indicate danger, until a degree of itching in
the cicatrix of the wound is felt. From its long-continued presence as a
foreign body, it may have rendered the tissue, or nervous fibre
connected with it, irritable and susceptible of impression, or it may
have attracted and assimilated to itself certain elements, and rabies is
produced.
The virus does not appear to have the same effect on every animal. Of
four dogs bitten by, or inoculated from, one that is rabid, three,
perhaps, would display every symptom of the disease. Of four human
beings, not more than one would become rabid. John Hunter used to say
not more than one in twenty; but that is probably erroneous. Cattle
appear to have a greater chance of escape, and sheep a still greater
chance.
The time of incubation is different in different animals. With regard to
the human being, there are various strange and contradictory stories.
Some have asserted that it has appeared on the very day on which the
bite was inflicted, or within two or three days of that time. Dr.
Bardsley, on the other hand, relates a case in which twelve years
elapsed between the bite and the disease. If the virus may lurk so long
as this in the constitution, it is a most lamentable affair. According
to one account, more than thirty years intervened. The usual time
extends from three weeks to six or seven months.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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