THE TRUE THEORY OF HYDROPHOBIA.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2129, 2 March 1886, Page 4

THE TRUE THEORY OF HYDROPHOBIA.

A cokrkm'ondknt, who li.is sjivcn much nttuntion tn tliw "iiljjevc, \uitcs to n C<>ntenii«oi.vi\ : V fou days apt lh Tlmroivinid i elated the follow ing ai.ecdote of hydrophobia .— 'Some \ears ayo, when out walkmp v.itli a \ .tillable dog, a lii.U) c.illof] out. " Youi d"? i-j best a.i .iy fioui that j^site, for they killed •t, mad dop theie vesteiday," The warning came too late, .md within a week my dog hail unmist ikcable rabies, and the vetenluuv surgeon advised th.it he should be Jit once shot. It ceitainly seemed as if the poison h.id tTitt liitn his system in home \nv, by lin smelling about the place wheie the m.id dog h.id been j>ut to death.' I cannot accept JJi Thoiowood's deductions but should luterptct thu incident thus. Kabie*, when iiniocul.tted by bite, take-> weeks - often months —tojincubate before ltdev elopes palpable symptom*. These two dogs — the mad one and the doctoi s dog- had nppaicntly Ijeen neighbour. Prob.ibly each had been bitten '-ome tune back l>y another rabid dop, and the disease incubated for much the same period in each patient, the one developing fatal hvinptom-> ' within a week ' of the other. This U a simple solution— far more so than the doctor s decidedly f.u -fetched theory. It is, of course, possible that dog No. 2 may has c become spontaneously and comcidently rabid within a week of the other, but it is less piobable than the solution which we propounded. Anyhow, wo never heard of hydrophobia dei eloping by inoculation ' within a week ' in dog or man, and, inoculating has never been known to occur nave through a puncture or abrasion effected by the saliia of a rabid dosr. A rabid dop may exist among a kennel of others and in contact with them, but none are known to be infected by him unless he bites them, and not always then. I may claim to have propounded the true theory of hydrophobia in the Pall Mall Gazette some five years ago, before M. Pasteur had proved it to be correct. The rabid dog is a fever striken dog, fevered because of bacteria in his blood, When he becomes delirious in the latter t>t.ige of his ' brain 'or typhoid fe\er, he is prone, to bite wantoiny. Now, a dog's skin does not perspire ; his pei^piration exhales from his tontfiie and fauce->. If l>i-> blood i = poivmed, the whole of the poisonous exhalations of it, which in a '•kin-pci-'piiiu n ' animal would be distributed r.n the whole skin smface, are concentrated at the safety valve of peispmition, the throat and tongue, and unko his .-aliva, which is secreted from the blood, especially poisonous. A dog may be fewied and capable of poisoning by his saliia long befoie he becomes delnious — that is,' mad ;' this explains the superstition that if a dop goes mad after biting a man the man goes mad also. The explanation is that when such coincidences occur, the dog was already blood-poisoned, though not yet delirious, when he bit his patient,"