The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-07-03

With July come the dog days" when
the dog star Sirius rules the heavens
for forty days, and according to a
world-old belief, dogs with rabies will
run wild in the land This supersti-
Etion with many others dear to the heart
of many long since has been exploded
by science, for Sirius has no more to do
with hydrophobia than has any other
bright and friendly member of the
sidereaI world. The American Society
for the Prevention Of Cruelty to
Animals, is making a case for the
homeless dogs, the pariahs of the ami
NAL worldwide are put to death in
greater numbers in the summer-de-
clares that there is no greater prev
alence of rabies in summer than in
winter. Yet the fear remains and pre-
guarding against the spread of this
most terrible of all diseases, a precau-
ton that must be praetised assiduous-
| ly until this enlightened American
people learn that the disease can be
effectually stamped out in one way
by muzzling dogs for several years.
Whenever the suggestion is made
that dogs be muzzled, or whenever a
progressive city enacts an ordinance
to that effect, a storm of protest goes
Dup from dog owners and dog lovers
over the inhumanity Of the practice
There is only one question with which
to meet this: Is it not better that
members of the dog family be given
this slight discomfort in the few hours
they are on the street, than have three
or four little children or grown persons
die in the most horrible commissions
Known in the annals of human suffer-
ing? The majority Of European coun-
tries have almost stamped out rabies
by legislating in an intelligent manner
against it. They require the killing of
suspected dogs and the muzzling of
4
STA began this work in 1875 and since
1883 no case has been known in Berlin,
and the rest of the country is now free
from it. Holland has had no cases
Size 1879, except such as occur along
the Belgian border.
Great Britain has had the same senti-
mental kind of folk to contend with in
the enforcement of muzziing ordi-
nances, as certain American sections
have had. That country ordered dogs
muzzled in 1889. and within three years
the disease had almost disappeared.
Then the determined opposition of mis-
guided sentimentalists prevailed and
the law was set aside. The disease
spread in the next three years in an
alarming fashion. Then muzzles again
became the fashion and since 1899
Great Britain has been free from dis
ease, and England proper with Aus
tralia does not know the meaning of
ra bies among human beings. So much
for intelligent handling of a situation.
1t is to such plane of intelligence
and cooperation that the United States
government, through its bureau of ami
NAL industry of the Department of
Agriculture, hopes TO some day lift the
50, 600, 900 people of the nation. Certain
districts in this country have always
been absolutely free from the infection.
and others have been known to have
cases for years. The largest area, ac-
cording to careful census made under
the direction of the American Kennel
west of Philadelphia Rabies began in
a Philadelphia suburb in 1870 and in
twenty years it spread out to such an
extent that 200 cases We're reported,
half of these being confined to six
special places. a report before the
American Veterinary Medical Associa-
ton last year showed that hardly a
county in Pennsylvania was then free
from rabies, and last summer it was
necessary in Chester County to destroy
154 dogs, twenty-five cows and ten
horses, an expensive affair to say moth
ing of the danger.
When the American Kennel Club
made its investigation ten years ago
its specialists reported that rabies was
unknown in the New England states
north of Massachusetts and Rhoda Is
land, with occasional ISOLATED eases in
Massachusetts and Connecticut, and
very rare cases in New York and New
Jersey: that Pennsylvania was badly |
infected only IN certain districts, not |
ably about Philadelphia; that there |
was little proof of its existence in the |
southern states or in the majority of /
the states east Of the Mississippi; that |
in Wisconsin. Iowa. Minnesota, Ne
braska, Colorado. Oklahoma and Kan /
sas there had been less than 100 all |
told, and that the disease was entire |
" unknown v-aST of the PoclxiaC