Something like this is the history of many animal poisons. In variola
and the vaccine disease the poison is determined to the skin, in
glanders to the Schneiderian membrane, and in farcy to the superficial
absorbents. Each in its turn becomes the depot of the poison. So it is
with the salivary glands of the rabid animal; in them it is formed, or
to them it is determined, and from them, and them alone, it is
communicated to other animals.
Professor Dick, in his valuable Manual of Veterinary Science, states
some peculiar views, and those highly interesting, respecting the
disease of rabies. He holds it to be essentially an inflammatory
affection, attacking peculiarly the mucous membrane of the nose, and
extending thence through the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bones to
the interior part of the brain, and so giving rise to a derangement of
the nervous system as a necessary consequence. This train of symptoms
constitutes mainly, if not wholly, the essence of an occasional epidemic
not unlike some forms of influenza or epizootic disease, and the bite of
a rabid animal is not always, to an animal so bitten, the exciting cause
of the disease, but merely an accidental concomitant in the prevailing
disorder. Also the disease hydrophobia, produced in man, is not always
the result of any poison introduced into his system, but merely the
melancholy, and often fatal result of panic fear, and of the disordered
slate of the imagination. Those who are acquainted with the effects of
sympathy, and imitation, and panic, in the production of nervous
disorders, will readily apprehend the meaning of the Professor.
Some of these diseases speedily run their course and exhaust themselves.
Cowpox and farcy, in many instances, have this character. Perhaps, to a
certain degree, this may be affirmed of all of them. I have seen cases,
which I could not mistake, in which the symptoms of rabies were one
after another developed. The dog was plainly and undeniably rabid, and I
had given him up as lost; but, after a certain period, the symptoms
began to be less distinct; they gradually disappeared, and the animal
returned to perfect health. This may have formed one ground of belief in
the power of certain medicines, and most assuredly it gives
encouragement to perseverance in the use of remedial measures.
It has then been proved, and I hope demonstratively, that rabies is
propagated by inoculation. It has also been established that although
every animal labouring under this disease is capable of communicating
it, yet, with very few exceptions, it can be traced to the bite of the
dog. It has still further been shown that the malady, generally appears
at some period between the third and seventh month from the time of
inoculation. At the expiration of the eighth month, the animal may be
considered to be safe; for there is only one acknowledged case on
record, in which the disease appeared in the dog after the seventh month
from the bite had passed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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