HYDROPHOBIA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1051, 16 January 1884, Page 4

HYDROPHOBIA.

The following is an extract from the diary of a local medico, which was handed to the Tatanaki Herald in order that that journal might publish the doctor’s account of his visit to the famous French doctor, M, Pasteur, in Parts“ He gave me the following information in respect to investigations into hydrophobia, or rabies. They were experimenting in this wise : They take from a dog suffering from rabies either ■some'spittle or a small piece of brain and inject it into the forehead of a healthy dbg, a very minute quantity only t-being used. In twelve days the dog into whom the matter has been injected dies of the worst kind of rabies.* This is always the result. They, have experimented on 200 dogs, and 'have established it as a fact. By opening the veins and injecting some infected matter into them he had not always had the same results, it causing paralysis and taking a longer time; byt if.this animal were to bite another it'would give it the very worst form of rabies. There are many kinds of rabies, depending from where it starts. It is a nervous disease. They cannot, as yet,' protect an animal from disease as in charbon. This gentlefnan then took me to an establishment some little distance away, where I saw a long line of -kennels with in them, and when they have given rabies to any of these they place boards between the kennels to pretent the animals from seeing each other or from infecting others. Each kennel was made of stone, and a small yard fenced in with iron wire netting. I asked whether any of the dogs took forty days to develop' the disease, as I had seen it written,that such was the case. He said some dogs were eight months after being bitten by an infected dog before they showed symptons of the disease; but when the matter was injected under the skin of the forehead the disease always took the same time to kill the dog,, viz., twelve days. He thinks that may he be able to protect the animals from the disease. It has never appeared amongst the dogs at Constantinople, and if it did it would destroy them all. It caa only be communicated (in the natural way he meant) from a dog suffering from the disease. I asked about the fear of it being brought out to the Australian colonies, as steamers could now do the' voyage in from thirty to forty days. He said that the dog bitten would roost likely die on the voyage. If b rice introduced it would never be got rid of.” Very consoling this.