The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

April, 1927 The Health Bulletin 17
PENALIZING CHILDREN FOR BENEFIT OF DOGS
As these lines are being written the
State Laboratory of Hygiene is receiving
numerous requests from nearly
every section of North Carolina for the
Pasteur treatment to administer to persons
who have been bitten by rabid
dogs.
The question of how long the people
of North Carolina are going to continue
penalizing their million children for the
benefit of a few thousand, mostly
worthless, dogs is one that intelligent
people are constantly asking themselves.
No season of the year and no place in
North Carolina out in the open is safe
from a sudden attack by a rabid dog.
The method of control usually followed,
which produces no permanent results
and conduces very little to safety, is
for people to get in a panic on the report
of the presence of a mad dog in a
community, then they one and all rise
up and murder every dog in sight, most
of which is a useless procedure. Children
are penalized by keeping them in
the house or closely confined when they
should be outdoors in the open air and
sunshine.
In another part of this issue we are
publishing a very interesting article by
Dr. C. A. Shore, director of the State
Laboratory of Hygiene. The article contains
a great deal of information and
discusses concisely and pointedly
methods for intelligent control of this
menace which have been successful in
other countries and could very easily
be put into effect in this country, which
would once and for all end this menace
to the population. Be sure to look up
the article, the title of which is
-Rabies," and read it through. Dr.
Shore attaches to the article specific
figures giving the number of animals
examined at the State Laboratory of
Hygiene since 1908, year by year, and
also the number of patients treated.
RABIES
By C. A. SHORE, M.D.
Director N. C. State Laboratorj' of Hygiene
(Paper read before a public meeting at Fayetteville on the occasion of the Tri-State
Medical Society meeting.)
My subject is chosen not because the
disease of rabies is one of our greatest
problems, nor because I have new facts
to present, but because it is the one
disease which, at the present time could
actually be exterminated if we would
but apply the knowledge we possess. We
know the germ which causes it, we
know the way in which it is conveyed
from animal to animal or from animal
to man, we know the behavior of the
germ in the body and the explanation
of the peculiar symptoms, we know
how to give protection, and above all
we know how it may be eradicated.
Rabies is one of the oldest of recognized
diseases : its peculiar symptoms
and the inevitable fatal outcome have
always made a powerful impression on
the human imagination. Medical literature
on the subject extends well beyond
the Christian Era and in general literture
there are many references in
ancient writings. There is an excellent
description written by Apuleius in the
second century in his Metamorphosis,
and there are said to be references in
Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Plutarch. This
ancient history is exceptional, for the
great scourges of the human race, like
tuberculosis, bubonic plague, and influenza,
if mentioned at all, can be
recognized only with difiiculty.
During the hundreds of years in
which rabies was recognized as a separate
entity, a great mass of superstition
had collected around it and remnants of
this ignorance still remain in the popular
mind. We all know persons who
believe that a dog's bite is dangerous
only in that season of the year when
Sirius, the Dog Star, is in the ascendancy.
I have not seen a "mad-stone" in
several years, but formerly I have been