here, likewise, be enabled to distinguish between rabies and distemper. When a person, unacquainted with dogs, sees a dog struggling in a fit, or running along unconscious of every surrounding object, or snapping at everything in his way, whether it be a human being or a stone, he raises the cry of "mad dog," and the poor brute is often sacrificed. The very existence of a fit is proof positive that the dog is not mad. No epilepsy accompanies rabies in any stage of that disease.
The inflammation of the membrane of the nose and fauces is sometimes propagated along that of the windpipe, and the dog exhibits unequivocal proofs of chest affection, or decided pneumonia.
At other times the bowels become affected, and a violent purging comes on. The fæces vary from white with a slight tinge of gray, to a dark slate or olive colour. By degrees mucus begins to mingle with the fæcal discharge, and then streaks of blood. The fæcal matter rapidly lessens, and the whole seems to consist of mingled mucus and blood; and, from first to last, the stools are insufferably offensive. When the mingled blood and mucus appear, so much inflammation exists in the intestinal canal that the case is almost hopeless.
The discharge from the nose becomes decidedly purulent. While it is white and without smell, and the dog is not too much emaciated, the termination may be favourable; but when it becomes of a darker colour, and mingled with blood, and offensive, the ethmoid or turbinated bones are becoming carious, and death supervenes. This will particularly be the case if the mouth and lips swell, and ulcers begin to appear on them, and the gums ulcerate, and a sanious and highly offensive discharge proceeds from the mouth. A singular, half-fetid smell arising from the dog, is the almost invariable precursor of death.
the disease first visited the continent, it was regarded as a humoral disease. Duhamel, who was one of the earliest to study the character of the malady, contended that the biliary sac contained the cause of the complaint; the bile assumed a concrete form, and its superabundance was the cause of disease. Barrier, one of the earliest writers on the subject, described it as a violent irregular bilious fever. Others regarded it as a mucous discharge, or a depurative; and others, as a salutary crisis, removing from the constitution that which oppressed the different organs. Others had recourse to inoculation, in order to give it a more benign character; and others, and among them Chabert, considered that it possessed a character of peculiar malignity, and he gave it a name expressive of its nature and situation —
nasal catarrh
. It exhibited the ordinary symptoms of
coryza
: it was a catarrhal affection in its early stage; but it afterwards degenerated into a species of palsy. The causes were unknown. By some, they were attributed to the natural voracity of the dog; by others, to his occasional lasciviousness; by others, to his frequent feeding on carrion, or the refuse of fat and soups.