Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 215, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1913 — HYDROPHOBIA ON INCREASE. [ARTICLE]

HYDROPHOBIA ON INCREASE.

State Health Commissioner Issues i Warning and Gives Advice as to Treatment. Albany, N. Y. —Hydrophobia is increasing fast in this State, it is asserted by Dr. Eugene H. Porter, State Health Commissioner, in the current issue of the department’s monthly bulletin. “Kill the dogs” is the warning of the Commissioner, who says the animate are most dangerous long before they begin to troth at the mouth. “A rabid dog," says Dr. Porter, “displays at first undue lasiness, nnusual affection for its owner. Is disinclined to eat and has a slightly dilated pupil; infection is then possible through the dog’s disposition to be affectionate, the poison being communicable from his tongue into cots or scratches if “kissing” is permitted. The second stage manlfestsvjt‘self in either paralysis, or violence without frothing —which latter is identified with the third and most advanced stage.” The Commissioner says cauterisation is useless, and he asserts there is no cure for hydrophobia except? the Pasteur treatment, which has reduced the mortality tp practically nothing—fifteen one-hundredths of one per cent, in 9,800 cases. “The cure,” he continues, “consists in bringing the human astern to a point of resistance against inoculation of the most active virus through a series of inoculation of virus graded in respect to its activity. Tim brain of a rabid dog is crushed to pulp, which is then exposed to a dry atr mosphere for various periods of time, the dryness being the element Which affects Its 1 activity. Pulp exposed a fortnight is inactive, and in the Pasteur cure two injections of virus from fourteen days’ pulp . are first made. These are followed by injections of yirus from eleven-day pulp, and finally the cure is completed by injections of seven-day virus, which, without the previous inoculations, would cause a rabid oondltion. The patient’s system being brought to the necessary point of resistance, development of rabbles Is checked.” A rabid dog, Porter says, dies in ten days, and rabies in man usually does not develop in less than forty days, so the bitten person has thirty days in which to begin the oure after the death of the dog.