this poison may take weeks. It is very necessary,
therefore, for the patient to be kept quiet, and this can best be done
in bed, for at least three weeks after the crisis has passed. The
nervous system is often affected, so that the child may squint or
stutter or perhaps not be able to see, but these effects are usually
temporary and pass away as the effect of the poison disappears.

_Rabies._

Rabies is the third assumed bacterial disease which is reacted upon by
the administration of an antitoxin. When it occurs in man, it is
generally known as hydrophobia, although it is the same disease as that
known as rabies in dogs, skunks, wolves, and other animals. The virus of
the disease is in the saliva of the animal, so that when a dog bites
another animal or human beings, the poison is injected into the wound
made with the teeth.

The actual germ has not been found, and while there is no doubt that it
originates with some specific bacterium, it is probable that the
transmitted disease is due rather to the toxin of the germ than to the
germ itself. The greatest number of cases, by far, are caused by the
bites of dogs, and the most obvious and plainest method of preventing
the disease is to prevent dogs from biting. That this is efficient in
stamping out the disease has been proved by the records of cases in
England and Germany. There, a quarantine on all the dogs in the country,
that is, the strict enforcement of laws requiring muzzling, has
eliminated the disease except on the borders of other countries where
such quarantine is not enforced.

In New York State, the number of cases of rabies is increasing at an
alarming rate, as determined by the examinations made on dogs' heads at
the New York State Veterinary College in Ithaca. Whereas a few years ago
one suspected case a month was the average number sent in, during this
last year, 1909, there have been sent to the laboratory, at times, as
many as five or six a day, the number being larger in the warm weather.
When the disease appears in the dog, one manifestation of it is that the
animal runs over large areas of country, perhaps within a radius of
twenty-five or thirty miles, and in this mad race the dog may infect
other dogs throughout the entire distance. It is, therefore, of small
value to muzzle dogs only in a particular village, since the dogs while
muzzled may be bitten by an outsider. There is no reason why the disease
could not be stamped out of a state in s