get at water he drinks a most extraordinary quantity of it.

This stage of ferocity and danger lasts about two days; and then the brightness of the eye dies away-a film steals over it-the dog becomes weak-he staggers about—and dies four or five days after the commencement of the attack.

At other times, rabies assumes a very different character. The dog does not exhibit the slightest symptom of ferocity, or even of ill-temper, unless he is very much put upon; but there is the peculiar glare of the eye, yet expressive of anxiety and supplication; there is the same making of the bed, but not with so much violence; the same watching of imaginary objects, but no attempt to seize them. The dog recognises his owner and obeys him, and fondles upon him.

The lower jaw, after the first day, begins to lose its power of motion; the dog may be able to close his mouth by a violent effort, but he cannot seize and masticate his food. The jaw hangs down, and the tongue protrudes. There is the same thirst, but the poor fellow is unable to swallow: and he hangs over the water for ́ a quarter of an hour at a time, plunging his muzzle into it up to his eyes, covering it with the spume which flows from his lips, yet unable to get a drop into the back part of the mouth. There is rarely any howl, but a harsh inward sound in the throat.

The disease continues about the same time; the dog becomes weak; he staggers; he loses the use of his hinder limbs; and dies without a struggle.

The appearances after death are different in the two varieties of the malady. In the first there is generally great inflammation about the back part of the mouth,

and the upper part of the windpipe; inflammation also in the stomach; and the stomach contains more or less of the strange substances of which mention has been made: in the latter there is less inflammation in the throat, and less also in the stomach; but yet sufficient to mark the disease, and the stomach usually contains a dark, blackish fluid.

Of the medical treatment of rabies in the dog little that is satisfactory can be said. If the animal is of extraordinary value, the owner may perhaps be forgiven. if he endeavours to save him after he has been bitten. In that case he should be shorn from the head to the tail, and every wound and scratch well burned with the lunar caustic. He should then be securely confined for seven or nine months; for until the expiration of that time he cannot be considered as safe; and there are a few instances, yet fortunately only a few, in which the disease has appeared at a more distant period.

As to preventives, no dependence can be placed upon them, and it will generally be the duty of the practitioner to urge the destruction of every dog that has been bitten, or on which any suspicion can lie. Human life is far too valuable to be endangered; and, even after the most careful search, and the freest use of the caustic, there will always be a degree of apprehension and fear attending the keeping of such a dog, and a consciousness of not doing that which is perfectly right, that will materially lessen the pleasure that should otherwise be felt in having these faithful animals about us.

A practitioner is exposed to considerable danger in the examination of suspected dogs, and he may deem himself fortunate if he is not, at some time or other, bitten by them. The remembrance of this ought to

render him cautious. But if he should be bitten, let him not make himself unhappy about it. The prevention of the disease is in his own power, and it will only cost him a little pain. Let him sharpen his lunar caustic to a point; and, if it is a superficial wound, apply it with some severity to every portion of the surface. If it is a punctured wound, let him be assured that he reaches the very bottom of it, and destroys every part that the tooth of the dog can have touched, and then there will be a perfect end of the matter. He may dismiss all fear-there is no absorption, or, at least, no immediate absorption in these cases; but, the surface to which the virus was applied being destroyed, all possible danger is destroyed with it.

This is not, and cannot, be the case with the dog; for even after he is shorn, some little scratch or abrasion may, and too often will, escape notice, concealed amidst the roots of the hair, and where the poison may still fatally lurk.

[An esteemed friend, Col. N. G., of Talbot Co., Maryland, to whose opinions we habitually defer, suggests rather as a question than a fact, whether Rabies, or Hydrophobia, has ever been known to originate with the female dog? With this doubt he couples the observation, said to have been made by late Commodore Kennedy, that in Turkey, where, he said, mad dogs are unknown, the sluts are never drowned or destroyed, as they are, for the most part, in this, and other countries where this awful malady takes place. The same gentleman, (Col. G.) is under the impression that dogs usually go mad in the extremes of hot or cold weather, when the streams of water are either dried, or frozen over. Thence he infers that madness may proceed from either

He queries

excessive carnal excitement or thirst! whether it might not be well to emasculate the male pups in the proportion that females are destroyed; and humanely recommends that we never allow a dog to suffer for water, as doubtless they, as well as our horses, and other domestic animals, and even young children often do. The safest, and most humane proceeding is, when a dog is known to have been bitten by a mad dog, to destroy him at once. Emasculation leads to fatness; and imbecility, physical and mental. Every man of feeling will regard it as an extreme exercise of arbitrary power, to be stigmatized as a cruelty when not resorted to for obviously good and adequate reasons. The great equestrians Pepin and Brechard said they would never again undertake to educate a gelding for the circus, as they were found to be inferior in aptness and docility to the stallion and the mare.]

10

CHAPTER XXIV.

DISEASES OF THE EARS.

THESE may be divided into such as affect the external and the internal parts of the ear. . Among those of the flap of the ear are,

ERUPTION AROUND THE EDGE OF THE EAR.

A scurfy roughness spreads around the edge of the ear, attended with a little thickening of the part, and intolerable itching. An eighth part of mercurial ointment should be added to the common dog mange ointment, and a little of the compound well rubbed into the ear morning and night.

RECIPE (No. 2).

Mange Ointment.

TAKE-Common horse turpentine, and

Palm-oil, of each a pound;

Train-oil, half a pint: melt them together, and when

they begin to cool, stir in

Flower of sulphur, three pounds.

At the same time, as this is usually connected with some mangy affection, a physic ball (Recipe No. 1, p.