Hydrophobia in dogs and other animals : and the sanitary precautions against its transmission to the human race.

  • Russel, Charles P.
Date:
[1874?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hydrophobia in dogs and other animals : and the sanitary precautions against its transmission to the human race. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Missouri, U. S. Between i860 and 1862 numerous cases of hydro- phobia communicated from dogs to natives occurred in China at Tietsien, near Pekin, and at Canton, while about the same period the presence of rabies was more than usually noted in Vienna and Rhenish Prussia. According to Sir Samuel Baker the disease was epizootic in Abys- sinia in 1862. In Bavaria, between 1863 and 1867, there was a yearly average of 800 cases of hydrophobia in a total of 275,000 dogs. From 1863 to 1867 it was very prevalent in Saxony also, where in the three last years of that period there were reported 764 cases of canine madness. It created much alarm in Lancashire, England, in 1864. In 1864-5 the city of Lyons was thrown into great excitement on account of the ter- rible frequency of this redoubtable disease. In 1865 it was unusually common in the vicinity of London, and during the next year it assumed formidable dimensions in England. In 1866 it was epizootic in Athens, Greece. In 1867 the English dogs at Shanghai, China, were seriously affected, and a number of persons were bitten, with fatal results. In 1868 many mad dogs were seen in Belgium, a country usually exempt from the affection. In 1869 the disease was rife in Paris. In 1870 canine rabies created great terror in the north of England, and it has prevailed very constantly in that country up to the present time.* In 1871 hydrophobia was remarkably fatal in Barba- does. Oertle reports a severe epizootic of the disease among foxes in Carinthia from 1866 to 1872. According to the last United States census for the year ending June ist, 1870, there had occurred in the State of Louisiana alone 22 deaths from hydrophobia, in a total for the whole country of 63.f Of the remainder the States of New York and Pennsylvania each furnished 9. ■* Fleming remarks that the wide and serious extension of this epizooty over the country appears to have been largely if not altogether due to the insufficiency of the police measures adopted in the different towns and districts, the 'late period at which they were introduced, the want of a proper and uniform sanitary organization to combat the spread of this and other contagious diseases of animals, and the general ignorance prevailing with regard to its symptoms and nature. t The mortality of hydrophobia in the human subject, like that of other communicable diseases, varies very considerably in different countries at various periods. In France, between 1854 and i860, the number of deaths were computed by the Minister of Public Works at 1,000. In Prussia, from 1810 to 1819, there were 1,635 deaths, and 1,073 from 1820 to 1834. In Bavaria, between •1839 and 1847, the mortality was 39. The Austrian Empire suffered severely during the period from 1830 to 1847, when 1,038 persons succumbed to hydrophobia. In Sweden the mean annual death-rate at four different periods of the disease was : 58 from. 1778 to 1785, 138 from 1786 to 1790, 6 from 1831 to 1835, and 42 from 1856 to i860. In Belgium, between 1856 and i860, there were 26 deaths. In Algeria, from 1844 to 1863, there were recorded 47 deaths—34 Europeans, 7 natives, 6 nationaUty unknown. The deaths in England in 1849 amounted to 17, in 1850 to 13, in 1851 to 25, in 1852 to 15,,