Page:Camperdown - Griffith - 1836.djvu/44

 "No—it is many years since dogs were domesticated; it is a rarity to see one now. Once in a while some odd, eccentric old fellow will bring a dog with him from some foreign port, but he dare not let him run loose. I presume that in your time hydrophobia was common; at least, on looking over a file of newspapers of the year 1930, called the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, I saw several accounts of that dreadful disease. Men, women, children, animals, were frequently bitten by mad dogs in those early days. It is strange, that so useless an animal was caressed, and allowed to come near your persons, when the malady to which they were so frequently liable, and from which there was no guarding, no cure, could be imparted to human beings."

"Well, what caused the final expulsion of dogs?"

"You will find the whole account in that old paper called the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries; there, from time to time, all the accidents that happened to what were called steamboats, locomotive engines, stages, &c. were registered. You will see that in the year 1860, during the months of August and September, more than ten thousand dogs were seized with that horrible disease, and that upward of one hundred thousand people fell victims to it. It raged with the greatest fury in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; and but for the timely destruction of every dog in the South, ten times the number of human beings would have perished. The death from hydrophobia is as disgraceful to a corporate body, as if the inhabitants had died of thirst, when good water was near them."

"This was horrible; the consternation of the people must have been very great—equal to what was felt during the cholera. Did you ever read of that terrible disease?"

"No, I do not recollect itOh, yes, now I re-