[ Youatt / On Canine Madness: Comprising the Symptoms, Post-Mortem Appearances, Nature, Origin, and Preventative and Curative Treatment of Rabies in the Dog, and Other Domestic Animals. Being a series of papers published in "The Veterinarian" in 1828, 1829, and 1830." ]
William Youatt (1776 - 1847) was an English veterinarian and animal researcher with a particular interest in animal diseases as well as in the humane treatment of animals (a revolutionary idea at the time). He mentions Newfoundlands in several of his works, all of which are treated here at The Cultured Newf.
This work was published by Longman and Co. (London) 1830, and was fairly controversial in veterinary circles, for Youatt's argument that rabies could be caused only by a bite from a rabid animal flew in the face of current thinking, which held that rabies could arise spontaneously. This theory Youatt owes to his mentor and veterinary partner DeLaBere Pritchett Blaine, who published the same argument in 1817: "it is my firm opinion, contrary to the general one, that no dog breeds madness; that is, that no dog becomes mad from any other cause whatever, but his being bitten or inoculated by another dog" (Canine Pathology, 1817). So ingrained was the idea of a spontaneous development of rabies that Youatt was still fighting that myth some 15 years after the publication of this volume.
Following is the book's only reference to Newfoundlands:
Two years before, a Newfoundland dog was sent to my residence, evidently unwell, but the nature of the malady not suspected. There was either something very deceptive in the case, or my assistant was unpardonably careless. The animal was dismissed with a little physic. On the next day rabies was sufficiently developed. One person only was bitten, but the poor fellow became hydrophobous. There can be no doubt, however, that the decided majority escape [death by rabies], even if no means, or those which are inert and insufficient, are adopted. Hence the falsely-acquired reputation of so many prophylactics.