In the Washington Post, August 22, 1897, the headline of a half page article on page 15 reads:

This article is put forth to the newspaper credited to “Our Animal Friends.” You may be surprised to learn that this is the periodical of the ASPCA. The by-line, in fact, belongs to John Peter Haines, president of the ASPCA from 1889 to 1906. At this time of this publication, he would have been serving on the ASPCA’s executive committee.

“Dog Days” is a term that refers to the period of time in the summer between July and August when it was assumed that rabies was most prevalent in cities. In reality, what was probably true was that due to people spending more time outdoors, stray dogs were more visible. While it might not be surprising to see an article debating this fact, you WILL be surprised to learn that many facets and groups of the early humane movement strongly promoted that not only did rabies rarely exist, if at all, if it did exist, the vaccine didn’t help if you were bitten.

The reasons behind this have to do with a few things things. The first and most obvious reason is that horrific cruelty to stray dogs was markedly increased during dog days. You’ll notice in the article that there is an undertone of, if not direction to, leave stray dogs alone. This was the battle of “every dog needs to be rounded up and killed” that was raging so specifically between 1875 and 1900.

The second reason is that the way that rabies vaccines were made involved a very gristly process of drilling a hole into the skull of a rabbit or guinea pig and infecting them with rabies. Once they were varying degrees of rabid, they were killed, and their spinal cords used to make the vaccine. (I know, disgusting and horrible, right?) There was already a strong anti-vivisection contingent in the humane movement. Both human medicine and veterinary medicine were evolving and medical schools of both types were beginning to open in the US. It was very common for doctors to use vivisection (which is performing demonstrative surgery on an animal while alive) to teach students. Caroline Earle White was co-founder of the American Anti-Vivisection Society, which led the fight against this practice and against the ability of these schools to take pets from shelters for this purpose. This society was extremely active in this time period.

A third reason, which was prevalent in all aspects of society that the humane movement took advantage of, was the fact that Louis Pasteur, who created the Pasteur treatment, a series of vaccines to protect against rabies given once someone was bitten, was quite vocal about the treatment working because of germ theory. Many people at this time were extremely suspicious of germ theory and therefore anti-vaccination.

Articles like this one, from a credible source such as the ASPCA certainly probably prevented at least some people from seeking the limited treatment available to them in the event of a dog bite. It’s notable that Bellevue’s Doctor Loomis, who in this article noted that he had rarely seen a case, would unfortunately loose his own young son to the disease shortly after this publication.

I could talk about all of this for a long time but my primary goal is to preserve this very cool article, so I’m transcribing it below. I’ll include a picture of it at the end. Enjoy, and keep the authors in mind while reading.

Warning: it’s long. Maybe get yourself a snack first.

-Audrey

Madness of Dog Days

Washington Post, August 22, 1897, John Peter Haines

The present number of Our Animal Friends is published at the beginning of the dog days. Hardly any phrase in the english language is more misleading or has done more cruel injury to man and beast than this. By “the dog days” people understand the period of great heat, occuring chiefly in July and August, in which they suppose that dogs are in peculiar danger of rabies, and that human beings are therefore in peculiar danger of hydrophobia, which is supposed to be communicated by the bite of a rabid dog. The consequence is that any dog that may happen to be suffering from any disease during the dog days is at once set down as mad. A frightened dog, cruelly pursued by thoughtless children with the cry of “Mad dog!” is regarded with terror and is often brutally killed. Any report of a case of rabies, ill-founded as it may be, is at once communicated to the newspapers and through them spreads consternation among hundreds of thousands of nervous people, sometimes as will see, causing them to experience the very symptoms which are supposed to accompany hydrophobia. When it actually happens that a human being is bitten by a dog, he is at once assumed to be in danger of hydrophobia and he very often resorts to expedients of prevention or cure which are much more likely to induce a simulated hydrophobia than to prevent or cure the reality.

Now, the very first observation we have to make on this subject is that there is no such thing in the year’s calendar as “dog days.” There are no days which, and no kind of whether during which, a dog is particularly liable to rabies, and there are no more cases of rabies in July and August than in December or January. It follows, therefore, that there is no more reason to dread our family friend, the dog, in hot weather than in cold, and no more reason to dread hydrophobia from his bite at one time of the year than at another. The phrase “dog days” is a false and misleading phrase, which all humane persons must avoid in the interest of the dog.

They ought to equally avoid the phrase in the interest of human beings; for we shall presently show that greatly and cruelly as dogs have been made to suffer from the general dread of rabies, it is more than probable that human beings have been even more extensively afflicted by the terror of hydrophobia. The object of the present article is chiefly to remove, as far as possible, the pernicious and utterly unfounded terror which has produced such injurious and cruelly fatal results.

Hydrophobia a rare disease

First of all, then, we undertake to show that genuine hydrophobia is one of the rarest of all of the diseases by which humanity is afflicted, and we might begin by saying that rabies, the canine disease from which hydrophobia is supposed to be contracted, is also one of the rarest diseases of the dog. Medical men of eminence have not hesitated to say that there is no such disease, that no microbe of hydrophobia has been found, and that what we call a microbe of hydrophobia is found even in the healthy dog, and that they can give no assurance in diagnosis. In a paper read before the American Neurological Association, at Philadelphia, Dr. Irving C Ross, F.R.G.S., did not hesitate to speak of hydrophobia as a purely imaginative disease with no more reality to rest upon than the imaginary witchcraft which was punished with death in New England not so very long ago. Dr. Rosse had said that during many years of travel he had made diligent inquiry of the oldest cases of the practitioners of hydrophobia which had fallen under their observation. Many of them told him they had never seen a case, and the result of his own experience and inquiry had been “about as fruitless as the search for well authenticated instances of shark bites” which he had spent years investigating. Dr. Rosse stated many facts confirmatory of his own experience. In Asia minor and Constantinople, where pariah dogs abound, one never hears of hydrophobia. It is unknown in Japan or Korea, where there are more dogs than in any other country. In Germany it is seldom heard of; not a case has been reported in Berlin in many years. In London, with five and a half million inhabitants, only one case was reported in 1892, and of the 8000 stray dogs which were captured, not one showed symptoms of rabies. “The statistics of New York for thirty five years show nine years in which no death occurred and two successive years in which there was not one.” This statement, however, falls far short of what Dr. Rosse may have said. During the thirty years of existence of the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals there has been no single well established case of either rabies or hydrophobia. This experience of our society, which makes it a point to look into all reports of rabies and hydrophobia, is confirmed by the experience of the most eminent physicians. Dr. Landon Carter Gray publicly stated before the New York Academy of Medicine that “There was not a neurologist in New York who had ever seen a case in his practice.” Dr Birdsall said he had never seen a case of rabies but that he had seen cases of simulated hydrophobia from fright excited by the bite or scratch of a dog. Dr. H.P. Loomis said that “Of 20,000 necropsies at Bellevue Hospital, only eight cases of alleged hydrophobia showed no gross pathological lesion.” Dr. Charles W. Dulles, of Philadelphia, examined 78 cases of supposed hydrophobia and pronounced the great majority of them to be utterly incredible and wholly spurious; and it is a remarkable fact that no one “has yet claimed the large sum of money offered by various kennel clubs and by several physicians to anyone producing a well authenticated case of hydrophobia.

Simulated Hydrophobia

It is hardly necessary to say more on this subject, and yet it may be advisable to do so because the popular belief in hydrophobia amounts so nearly to a superstition that it can probably be suppressed by nothing other than superabundant evidence. When we read of cases of hydrophobia, what we have already said may be sufficient to cast some discredit upon them but when all symptoms popularly supposed to be connected to that fell disease do actually occur, what is to be said against them? When a man or woman is writhing in agony, is terrified by water, and gives every symptom of hydrophobia, shall we say that all this horrible suffering does not exist? Surely not. And yet, those very symptoms, even when they are most awful, may be, and often are, the product of a diseased and super-excited imagination. When a hungry man thinks of food, his mouth waters because nature supplies saliva not only to food but to the very thought of food. Nothing is more curious than this response of the physical system to the operation of the mind. Dr, Matthew Woods, in an admirable pamphlet upon “Mimetic Diseases” speaks of the familiar fact that at the close of many discourses delivered from the chair of the practice of medicine the professor is privately consulted by students suffering from all the symptoms described; and this imitative peculiarity is not limited to such ailments as disease of the heart, consumption, Basedow’s disease, gallstones, cancer of the pancreas, or appendicitis, but some have been known to become hemiplegic, viz. incapable of motion or sensation in the right or left half of the body, during a realistic lecture on cerebral apeplexy; others seized in ‘violent pain in the knee’ during an elucidation of the symptoms and pathology of Pott’s Disease, while there are reports of students acquiring all of the subjective symptoms of dislocation or fracture because of the impression made upon their minds of the lecturer while discussing these surgical states.

Physicians and philosophers perfectly understand the effect of the “expectant attention” which has been the cause of not only individual diseases but of marvelous epidemics in various parts of the world. Witness the disease of Tarantism, so called because of it’s supposed origin in the bite of the tarantula, a species of spider. It’s victims were sometimes subjected to treatment of the most painful sort but it could be effectually cured by nothing but music. A bishop, who believed the whole thing to be imaginary allowed himself to be bitten by the tarantula and “fell to dancing with all the delirious grotesque of a peasant.” By and by when people ceased to think much of the tarantula, tarantism ceased and at the present day Italian peasants may be bitten again and again by the tarantula with no serious effect whatever. In other words, “expectant attention” being absent, the phenomena, which are no longer expected do not occur. Dr. Woods believes hydrophobia in human beings to be a mimatic disease caused by expectant dread and not by inoculation by the virus of a rabid animal.

Dr. Woods believes hydrophobia in human beings to be a mimatic disease caused by expectant dread and not by inoculation by the virus of a rabid animal.

-John P. Haines

There can be no soundness, he says, in a disturbed mind or in a disturbed body, and he adds the question “Can we not hope for a time when ‘hydrophobia’ may also be relegated to the limbo of abandoned vagaries.

Is there any true hydrophobia?

So far Dr. Woods has shown that even subjective symptoms of disease, and even of the dislocation of joints or the fracture of bones, are often induced by imagination and that the influence of expectant attention does, in fact, cause not only individual suffering but fearful epidemics. His conclusion is legitimate that the influence of imagination and expectant attention in a person who has been bitten by a dog and is in terror of hydrophobia may induce the symptoms of that disease. All cases must, of course, be distinguished from genuine hydrophobia, if indeed there is such a disease- that is to say, the rabies of the dog transferred to the human body. But is there in fact any hydrophobia that is really caused by the bite of a rabid dog?

Dr. Charles W. Dulles, the eminent lecturer on the history of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania “has corresponded on this subject with the most distinguished medical men in Europe.” He has been repeatedly appointed by medical societies in the state of Pennsylvania to investigate rabies. Dr. Wood says that he has also “performed the almost incredible task of investigating, either personally or by correspondence with the physician or others in attendance, every case of hydrophobia reported in the newspapers of the United States for the last sixteen years.” The result of all of this patient and conscientious work has not only brought Dr. Dulles to the conclusion that “hydrophobia is extremely rare” but also has inclined him to believe that “there is no such specific malady” since he failed, after sixteen years of investigation to find a single case on record that can be conclusively proved to have resulted from the bite of a dog or any other cause.” We need hardly to observe this fact, for a fact it is, reduces the probability that any supposed case of hydrophobia has been really caused by the bite of a dog almost to zero. And then this other conclusion of necessity follows that the cases of supposed hydrophobia which undoubtably occur are almost if not universally caused by the influence of imagination excited by dread of a disease which probably has no existence. In view of these facts is it not a duty to humanity to endeavor in every possible way to combat the supersistion which dreads hydrophobia from every overheated dog during dog days?

Is it not time for the press to refuse to publish reports which tend to spread a disease which is not rabies transferred to the human subject, but which is the spontaneous product of imagination, and is therefore called by at lease one eminent medical man by the name of “newspaper hydrophobia.”

Is it not time for the press to refuse to publish reports which tend to spread a disease which is not rabies transferred to the human subject, but which is the spontaneous product of imagination, and is therefore called by at lease one eminent medical man by the name of “newspaper hydrophobia.”

-John P. Haines

Other Medical Opinions

So, at least, many eminent physicians believe, and among them the following: Dr. Parvin of Jefferson Medical College, says “During an experience of forty four years as a physician I have not seen a case of hydrophobia, and I am of the opinion that if newspapers could be prevailed upon to talk less about it, the number of so called attacks of the disease would be greatly diminished as they are mainly forms of hysteria, more due to the fear of hydrophobia than to the absorption of animal virus.

Dr. Thomas B. Morton, of the College of Physicians, says that during a period of 30 years as one of the surgeons at Pennsylvania Hospital, he has known but of two cases of hydrophobia brought there for treatment, and even these were questionable.

Dr. Mills of the University of Pennsylvania, says that while he does not feel justified in saying hydrophobia does not exist, he has taken special pains to find a clear case in the human subject and has not yet succeeded.

Dr. Hearn, of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, says “I am of the opinion that a dog bite is no more dangerous than the scratch of a pin or the puncture of an infectious nail, but because of the exaggerated printed and oral accounts, the picture of hydrophobia is so stamped upon the public mind that the thought of it, after being bitten by a dog throws imaginative people into such panics of nervous excitement that they unconsciously reproduce it’s supposed symptoms.” After twenty years practice in private and in many hospitals of Philadelphia, Dr. Hearn declares that he has “never seen a case of hydrophobia in man or dog,” nor does he know of any other physician or surgeon who has. Other eminent physicians and surgeons agree; and their case seems to us to be fairly made out that hydrophobia, at least in the majority of cases, is a disease of the imagination which simulates the characteristics ascribed-and very inaccurately ascribed by popular superstition-to the disease called rabies, when transplanted to the human subject.

The Pasteur Treatment

What, then, are we to think of the fearful accounts of hydrophobia that seem to have increased rather than diminished since 1884, when Pasteur announced to the world that he had discovered an infallible method of curing that disease? On that subject we have had, and we have expressed in these columns an opinion of our own. Quite independently of Pasteur’s method, which seems to us to be horribly cruel, we have never felt sure of the soundness of his system or the reality of it’s benefits. Dr. Dulles has carefully investigated the facts. He has repeatedly reported them to medical societies by which they have been widely published. In these reports he has challenged and demanded the most merciless investigation of his statements but no reply has yet been forthcoming. He says “No man has cared to proceed to a deliberate and detailed review of the arguments, by which I have, at various times, endeavored to present the views in regard to hydrophobia which I hold, and which are held by a large number of intelligent men.” What are these views? In brief they are these, that the treatment of M. Pasteur is so far from having diminished the number of deaths from alleged hydrophobia that they have actually increased since the date of his supposed discovery. Says Mr. Dulles “The year before he made that boast there were four deaths in Paris (the department of the Siene); The year after, when he had practiced his preventative method for six months, the deaths from hydrophobia leaped at least once from four to twenty-two. In 1886 that number fell to three again in Paris, but I have a list of 23 persons who died after the treatment of Pasteur himself in that year. In 1887 the deaths in Paris rose to nine. In 1888, to nineteen. These oscillations indicate that Pasteurs method is no more preventative of hydrophobia then is the method that he declared in 1884 would eradicate rabies in dogs. On the contrary, Pasteurs method has undoubtably increased the number of deaths from hydrophobia. “But that is not the worst.” Dr. Dulles continues. “I have indicated what has taken place in France and can assure you that there has been no diminution of deaths from hydrophobia in any part of the world; and at the same time there has been added to these a large number of deaths from inoculation of the virus of what ought to be called ‘Pasteur’s Disease.’ Just how many these have been no man can say. The statistics are confusing. Those from friendly sources contain remarkable discrepancies. Pasteur’s own statistics, published in Annalee de l’institute Pasteur for march of this year (1894) admit 72 deaths in seven and one half years after treatment in Paris. My own show a much larger number, while I find that Dujardin-Beaumetx, a most enthusiastic supporter of Pasteur, reported to the Academie de Medicine on June 12, 1886, ninety-eight cases in only six years which is only 26 cases more than Pasteur himself reported for eight years.The same manipulation may be found in the reports for other years.”

Dr. Dulles attributes the faith in the Pasteur method, which has been so widely extended among medical men, to the “stupendous fallacy that Pasteur has saved from death by hydrophobia during the last eight years nearly 15,000 persons, who are in the report spoken of as ‘cured.’ Of this number he is supposed to have ‘cured’ about 1400 Frenchmen in the year 1893 – more persons than have died from hydrophobia in the United States in more than a century!” Dr. Dulles believes the Pasteur method has done nothing whatever to diminish hydrophobia but rather, on the contrary, that it has done much to increase the number of cases of simulated hydrophobia, and still further, that it has communicated to a large number of persons a purely artificial disease by the injection of diseased animal matter into their veins. In this opinion Dr. Dulles may be in error. Until they shall do so, we do not see how nor why any one should be expected to regard the Pasteur method with anything but grave apprehension.

The Buisson Cure by Vapor Baths

Another method of cure has recently come into much favor with the medical faculty in general. It is called The Buisson cure. It is very simple and it has this great merit, at least, that it it does no good, it can do no harm. It consists simply of a hot vapor bath repeated more or less frequently. M. Buisson recommending at least seven baths as desirable if not essential to the complete cure. The theory is that the poisonous matter absorbed into the system by the bite of a rabid dog is completely excreted by these baths and was never attacked by hydrophobia. In other cases of persons who had similar misfortune, Dr. Buisson has followed the same treatment with inevitable success. In England and in elsewhere, particularly in late years, the same treatment has been applied and appears to be equally effective. To say the least, we should expect it to be so. It is reasonable to believe that the intense perspiration caused by the vapor bath should completely excrete the poisonous element lodged in the patient by the teeth of a dog. Repeated baths would, of course, be more effective in this way than a single bath. The effect upon the patient’s nervous system might also be reasonably expected to be soothing and quieting. The hope and belief of the effectiveness of the remedy would banish the expectant attention which appears to be the real cause of the hysterical affection known by the name of hydrophobia. At all events, it is free from the dangers of the Pasteur treatment and it may help to hasten the time when the superstition of hydrophobia shall cease to affect civilized mankind, who alone are subject to it while savages round the world over are exempt.

We have said, and we repeat, that hydrophobia is one of the rarest of diseases; and that when it appears to be developed we believe it, in the vast majority of cases, to be a simulated disease produced by a morbid imagination.

Conclusions

We have said, and we repeat, that hydrophobia is one of the rarest of diseases; and that when it appears to be developed we believe it, in the vast majority of cases, to be a simulated disease produced by a morbid imagination.

-John P. Haines

We do not go so far as to assert that it is never caused by the bite of a rabid animal; and therefore we would advise that all proper care should be taken to destroy without delay all animals affected with rabies. Yet, here again one must recall that rabies itself is one of the rarest of all the diseases which dogs and other animals are affected. When we hear the cry of “Mad dog!” the chances are millions to one that the dog is not mad; it is the people who are mad with terror. When we read newspaper reports of the appearance of a mad dog here or there, the chances are enormously against the truth of the story. Yet there is such a a disease as rabies, and since there is no cure for it but death, an animal which is really rabid ought to be killed immediately.

We must remember, however, that the symptoms of rabies are not what they are generally supposed to be. An animal, for example, is not rabid because it avoids water; the rabid dog laps water eagerly. So, a dog is not mad because he froths at the mouth; when he does so it is a proof he is not mad. The secretion from the mouth of a really rabid dog is not froth; It is a thick, ropy substance all together unlike froth which the animal tries in vain to expel, at which he sometimes tears with his forepaws, and from which he often seeks relief by drinking. In view of this and other popular mistakes of the symptoms of rabies our society has put out a leaflet, of which I must subjoin a copy.

***

Hints for the Dog Days

A pamphlet included with the article

What are the dog days? They are the “heated term in July and August, during which dogs are supposed to be peculiarly liable to rabies, or canine madness.” That is one answer, but there is a better. There are no dog days, because there is no time of year when dogs are specially liable to rabies. There are no more cases of rabies in July or August than in December or January.

Moreover, rabies is one of the rarest canine diseases. When you hear a cry of “Mad Dog!” in the street, the chances are many thousands to one that the dog is not mad. When you read in the newspapers that someone has been bitten by a mad dog, the chances are thousands to one that it is not true.

If a human being is bitten by a mad dog is he not doomed to die a fearful death by hydrophobia? Not at all, for hydrophobia in a human being is much more rare than rabies in a dog. Expert physicians who have given special attention to the subject are convinced that hydrophobia is never caused by the bite of the dog and is simply a hysterical nervous disease caused by unfounded dread.

Expert physicians who have given special attention to the subject are convinced that hydrophobia is never caused by the bite of the dog and is simply a hysterical nervous disease caused by unfounded dread.

John P. Haines

Don’t take that for granted, but remember these facts: First, that there are more than a million chances to one that any dog that is supposed to be mad is not mad at all; second, that in all probability, any dog by which any person should happen to be bitten is not mad; and third, that even if a person is bitten by a dog that really is mad, the danger of hydrophobia is slight indeed. What is done if you happen to be bitten by a dog that is supposed to be rabid? The best thing you can do is just take a few vapor baths, as hot as you can bear them. The perspiration will eliminate any poison the bite may have introduced into your system. Then endeavor to forget all about it. If you follow this simple advice, the chances are incalculably great that you will be perfectly safe.

But is there a such thing as rabies, and such a thing as a mad dog? Undoubtably there is, though I have never seen one. In the thirty years since the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was established, our officers and agents have been constantly on the outlook, but no undoubted case has ever fallen under their knowledge. And, over 160,000 dogs and other small animals which have been cared for at our shelter during the past three years, not one single case of rabies has been found. These facts sufficiently prove that rabies is rare in this city and in this. state; but there is such a disease and it is important for the public as well as yourself to know whether a sick dog is or is not rabid. If you will notice the following facts you will have no difficulty. You will probably find them to be quite different than the popular fancies by which most persons are misled.

1. It is supposed that a mad dog dreads water; it is not so. The mad dog is very likely to plunge his head to the eyes in water, though he cannot swallow it and laps it with great difficulty.
2. It is supposed that a mad dog runs about with evidences of intense excitement. It is not so. The mad dog never runs about in agitation; he never gallops. He is always alone, usually in a strange place where he jogs along slowly. If he is approached by dog or man, he shows no excitement, but when the dog or man is near enough he snaps and resumes his solitary trot.
3. If a dog barks, yelps, whines or growls, that dog is not mad. The only sound a mad dog is ever known to emit is a hoarse howl, but that is seldom. Even blows will not extort an outcry from a mad dog. Therefore, if any dog under any circumstances, utters other sound than that of a hoarse howl, that dog is not mad.
4. It is supposed that a mad dog froths at the mouth. It is not so. If the dogs jaws are covered or flecked with white froth, that dog is not mad. the surest of all signs that a dog is mad is a thick and ropy brown mucus clinging to his lips, which he often tries vainly to tear away with his paws or wash away with water.
5. If your own dog is bitten by any other dog, watch him carefully. If he is infected by rabies you will begin to discover signs of it possibly in from six to ten days. Then he will be restless, often getting up only to lie down again, changing his position impatiently, turning from side to side, and constantly licking or scratching some particular part of his head, limbs or body. He will be irritable and inclined to dash at other animals, and he will sometimes snap at objects which he imagines to be near him. He will be excessively thirsty, lapping water eagerly and often. Then there will be a glandular swelling about his jaws and throat and he will vainly endeavor to rid himself of a thick, ropy mucous discharge from his mouth and throat. If he can, he will probably stray away from home and trot slowly and mournfully along the highway or across country, meddling with neither man nor beast unless they approach him, and then give a single snap. The only exception to this behavior occurs in ferocious dogs, which, during the earlier stage of excitement, may attack any living object in sight. These symptoms of rabies are condensed from valuable information received from physicians of undoubted authority.

-John P. Haines