Miscellaneous Rabies Symptoms

Every sound uttered by the rabid dog is more or less changed. The huntsman, who knows the voice of every dog in his pack, occasionally hears a strange challenge. He immediately finds out that dog, and puts him, as quickly as possible, under confinement. Two or three days may pass over, and there is not another suspicious circumstance about the animal; still he keeps him under quarantine, for long experience has taught him to listen to that warning. At length the disease is manifest in its most fearful form.

There is another partial change of voice, to which the ear of the practitioner will, by degrees, become habituated, and which will indicate a change in the state of the animal quite as dangerous as the dismal howl; I mean when there is a hoarse inward bark, with a slight but characteristic elevation of the tone. In other cases, after two or three distinct barks, will come the peculiar one mingled with the howl. Both of them will terminate fatally, and in both of them the rabid howl cannot possibly be mistaken.

There is a singular brightness in the eye of the rabid dog, but it does not last more than two or three days. It then becomes dull and wasted; a cloudiness steals over the conjunctiva, which changes to a yellow tinge, and then to a dark green, indicative of ulceration deeply seated within the eye. In eight and forty hours from the first clouding of the eye, it becomes one disorganised mass.

There is in the rabid dog a strange embarrassment of general sensibility — a seemingly total loss of feeling.

Absence of pain in the bitten part is an almost invariable accompaniment of rabies. I have known a dog set to work, and gnaw and tear the flesh completely away from his legs and feet. At other times the penis is perfectly demolished from the very base. Ellis in his Shepherd's Sure Guide, asserts, that, however severely a mad dog is beaten, a cry is never forced from him. I am certain of the truth of this, for I have again and again failed in extracting that cry. Ellis tells that at the kennel at Goddesden, some of the grooms heated a poker red hot, and holding it near the mad hound's mouth, he most greedily seized it, and kept it until the mouth was most dreadfully burned.

In the great majority of cases of furious madness, and in almost every case of dumb madness, there is evident affection of the lumbar portion of the spinal cord. There is a staggering gait, not indicative of general weakness, but referable to the hind quarters alone, and indicating an affection of the lumbar motor nerve. In a few cases it approaches more to a general paralytic affection.

In the very earliest period of rabies, the person accustomed to dogs will detect the existence of the disease.

The animal follows the flight, as has been already stated, of various imaginary objects. I have often watched the changing countenance of the rabid dog when he has been lost to every surrounding object. I have seen the brightening countenance and the wagging tail as some pleasing vision has passed before him; but, oftener has the countenance indicated the mingled dislike and fear with which the intruder was regarded. As soon as the phantom came within the proper distance he darted on it with true rabid violence.

Also read: Dog Health Info.