Rabies and Hydrophobia: their History, Nature, Causes, Symptoms, and Prevention.
By George Fleming. (Chapman and Hall.)—Mr. Fleming, who is an authority of the greatest weight in all veterinary matters, has done excellent service to the community by publishing this very complete monograph. He treats of the disease commonly known as "Hydrophobia," as it manifests itself in the dog and other domestic animals and in man. The doable title of his book is itself highly sig- nificant. The word hydrophobia, "fear of water," is, he says, altogether inapplicable to the disease in the dog, though it indicates one of the most noticeable symptoms that manifest themselves in man. If Mr. Fleming had done nothing else, he would have earned our gratitude by exploding the dangerous error to which a well known authority in sporting matters has given a most dogmatic support, that the mad dog dreads water. The fact is that- "from the commencement to the termination of the disease there is no antipathy to water." There is a case recorded in Sir Thomas Watson's "Lectures," if we remember right, though Mr. Fleming doss not mention it, in which the patient afflicted with hydrophobia was bitten in the attempt to rescue a dog which was apparently drowning. The chapter on the disease as it appears in man is painfully interesting. It is unhappily not absolutely unfrequent, though the relative number of deaths, compared with that of common maladies, is very small. In ordinary years, for instance, ten thousand persons die in England of phthisis for one that dies of hydrophobia. Mr. Fleming is not inclined to believe in the reported cases of very long protracted incubation—sometimes reaching to as many as ten or twelve years—of the disease. On the other hand, he does not put any confidence in any cure. It is worth knowing that there is a spurious or nervous hydrophobia which may be possibly mistaken for the real. Persons suffering from it may be reassured by the fact that the real malady runs its coarse in a definite time. Mr. Fleming's book will interest readers other than professional. Every one who has much to do with dogs should certainly study it.
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