Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1891 — Truth About Mad Dogs. [ARTICLE]

Truth About Mad Dogs.

Brooklyn Eagle. For the benefit of nervous people and excitable policemen it deserves to be said that dogs do not go mad in hot weather more readily than they do in any other sort of weather. As a matter of fact rabies is a malady with which the weather has nothing to do. Ordinances requiring dogs to be muzzled during the summer months are the product of a superstition which science long ago exploded. If veterinary statistics werd adopted as a guide the muzzling would be enforced in the fall and spring rather than in the summer, although the excess in the number of cases at those periods is not so uniform or so large as to indicate that changes of temperature are instrumental in producing it. Further more, the veterinary reports show that upon an average out of twenty suspected cases of rabies only one is a real case. When a person has been bitten it is advisable to confine the animal rather than kill it, in order that its symptoms may be accurately determined.