The Symptoms of Rabies Part 3
In a very great portion of cases of hydrophobia in the human being, there is, as a precursory symptom, uneasiness, pain, or itching of the bitten part. A red line may also be traced up the limb, in the direction of the lymphatics. In a few cases the wound opens afresh.
The poison is now beginning fatally to act on the tissue, on which it had previously lain harmless. When the conversation has turned on this subject, long after the bitten part has been excised, pain has darted along the limb. I have been bitten much oftener than I liked, by dogs decidedly rabid, but, proper means being taken, I have escaped; and yet often, when I have been over-fatigued, or a little out of temper, some of the old sores have itched and throbbed, and actually become red and swollen.
The dog appears to suffer a great deal of pain in the ear in common canker. He will be almost incessantly scratching it, crying piteously while thus employed. The ear is, oftener than any other part, bitten by the rabid dog, and, when a wound in the ear, inflicted by a rabid dog, begins to become painful, the agony appears to be of the intensest kind. The dog rubs his ear against every projecting body, he scratches it might and main, and tumbles over and over while he is thus employed.
The young practitioner should be on his guard there. Is this dreadful itching a thing of yesterday, or, has the dog been subject to canker, increasing for a considerable period? Canker both internal and external is a disease of slow growth, and must have been long neglected before it will torment the patient in the manner that I have described. The question as to the length of time that an animal has thus suffered will usually be a sufficient guide.
The mode in which he expresses his torture will serve as another direction. He will often scratch violently enough when he has canker, but he will not roll over and over like a football except he is rabid. If there is very considerable inflammation of the lining membrane of the ear, and engorgement and ulceration of it, this is the effect of canker; but if there is only a slight redness of the membrane, or no redness at all, and yet the dog is incessantly and violently scratching himself, it is too likely that rabies is at hand.
In the early stage of rabies, the attachment of the dog towards his owner seems to be rapidly increased, and the expression of that feeling. He is employed, almost without ceasing, licking the hands, or face, or any part he can get at. Females, and men too, are occasionally apt to permit the dog, when in health, to indulge this filthy and very dangerous habit with regard to them. The virus, generated under the influence of rabies, is occasionally deposited on a wounded or abraded surface, and in process of time produces a similar disease in the person that has been so inoculated by it. Therefore it is that the surgeon so anxiously inquires of the person that has been bitten, and of all those to whom the dog has had access, "Has he been accustomed to lick you? have you any sore places about you that can by possibility have been licked by him?" If there are, the person is in fully as much danger as if he had been bitten, and it is quite as necessary to destroy the part with which the virus may have come in contact. A lady once lost her life by suffering her dog to lick a pimple on her chin.
Related: Dog Health information.