[Infectious diseases 243]

The wounds are considered according to their severity and location.  Lacerating, tearing wounds upon uncovered surfaces, especially the head, are the most dangerous.  This is due to the fact of the closeness of the brain and the large amount of infection in such a wound, and for this reason treatment should be immediately given.  But smaller wounds should also be treated for the smallness of the wound furnishes no sure criterion as to the future outcome of the disease.  All possible infections should be regarded as dangerous when considering the advisability of taking the Pasteur Treatment.  The small wound has usually a longer period of incubation, because of the small amount of infection, still it may cause a fatal termination.  A dog never develops rabies from a lack of water or from being confined or overheated during the summer months.  A spontaneous case of rabies has never been known.  It must be transmitted from animal to animal and the history of the case will point to a previous infection by a diseased animal.

Where rigid quarantine rules exist the disease does not occur.  In Australia they quarantine every dog, that comes to that country, for six months, and in consequence they have never had a case of rabies.  In Russia they have had many cases.  In Constantinople the disease frequently “runs riot.”  France has lost as many as 2,500 dogs in one year.  Before the Pasteur Treatment was instituted (in 1885) there was an average of sixty deaths in human beings in the Paris hospitals.

Belgium and Austria average one thousand dogs annually.  There was a yearly average in Germany of four hundred dogs, dying of rabies, until the law requiring the muzzling of dogs was strictly enforced and since that time the disease is practically unknown.  We do not have strict quarantine laws against dogs, and the result is death from hydrophobia in many states annually.  It was formerly believed that rabies was a hot weather disease.  The number of cases during the winter months of late years has disproved that belief, for the records of the institute for treatment of hydrophobia at Ann Arbor have shown a decrease of cases during the summer months.  This was before 1908.  This shows that rabies is not a hot weather disease.

[244 Mothers’ remedies ]

Ordinarily cases of rabies occur here and there (sporadic), but if the conditions are favorable epidemics break out.  One dog may bite several dogs and these dogs bite others and thus spread the disease to many.  Not every animal bitten by a mad dog develops the disease.  The disease does not always follow the bite.  Only about forty per cent of all animals bitten by a mad dog contract the disease.  This is given by a noted authority.  Statistics also show that in man the disease develops in only about twenty per cent of the cases in those who have been bitten by rabid dogs.  But in dealing with those who have been bitten such measures should be taken as would be if they were certain of developing the disease; one cannot tell how much poison enters the system in such cases and preventive procedures should be taken.  There are reasons why everyone who is bitten does not contract the disease.