Mad Dog!

Hundreds of U.S. dogs were foaming at the mouth last week. Rabies was frontpage news in:

New Orleans, where every month about 150 dog-bitten people get Pasteur treatments.

Pittsburgh, which has the worst rabies epidemic in the history of the city, with 305 rabid dogs since January 1943, and three deaths from hydrophobia.

Washington, D.C., where a posse killed a drooling Doberman pinscher after it had bitten four children.

The Bronx, where 22 people have been bitten by rabid dogs in the last few weeks. Though there have been no deaths, New York City (which has the densest canine population in the world--600,000 dogs, 30,000 dog bites a year) ordered that all stray Bronx dogs be destroyed. Promptly Bronx citizens beat up all the dogcatchers, one so badly that he had to stay home next day. After that, the dogcatchers had police protection. When 812 Bronx dogs (80 with licenses) had been destroyed, feeling ran so high that the city set aside a vacant building where licensed strays (at a small charge) will be quarantined for the six-month rabies incubation period. Said Bronx Borough President James J. Lyons: "I am somewhat annoyed at the unfavorable publicity given our great borough. . . ." He hinted that the infected dogs came from contiguous Westchester County.

Rabid dogs, cats, rats, foxes, hogs were also alarming Maryland, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, Colorado.

In a typical year about 7,000 U.S. dogs get rabies, infect thousands of people with the deadly virus. But only 50 to 100 people die of hydrophobia, because nearly all those infected get the Pasteur injections in time. The Public Health Service says that the current rabies outbreak is no worse than usual--so far. But it is potentially more dangerous because of the wartime increase in stray dogs. Rabies flare-ups are concentrated where busy working people let dogs run all day and where migrant populations leave their dogs behind them.

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