A Manual of Veterinary Sanitary Science and Police. By George
Fleming. 2 vols. (Chapman and Hall.)—These volumes are, of course, of too technical a character for review in these columns. We may briefly commend them to such of our readers as may be interested in the subject for their orderly arrangement and completeness. A feature which may be called comparatively new is the full account of the statutes which relate to the prevention of contagions diseases of animals. Most of the legislation on this subject is of recent date, and there is probably much ignorance about it. There is one of the diseases of animals in which most people feel at least a speculative interest, and that is hydrophobia. Mr. Fleming's remarks on this sub- ject are very valuable, the more so as they give a distinct contradiction, backed by professional authority of the highest kind, to the dicta of a well-known amateur. "There is," he says, and he italicises the words for greater emphasis, " no dread of water in the rabid dog. Water does not inspire it with fear or horror, neither does it produce aversion ; from the commencement to the termination of the disease there is no antipathy to water." The rabid dog will swim across rivers to attack an object when it is in the furious stage; it will plunge into water to satisfy, if possible, its frantic thirst. Sir Thomas Watson relates a case in his "Lectures" where a man suffered from hydrophobia brought on by the bite of an animal which he had rescued from the water under the idea that it was drowning.
Previous page
