The attempt to stamp out rabies in Great Britain was an experiment undertaken by the government in the public interest. The principal means adopted were the muzzling of dogs in infected areas, and prolonged quarantine for imported animals. The efficacy of dog-muzzling Muzzling order in England. in checking the spread of rabies and diminishing its prevalence has been repeatedly proved in various countries. Liable as other animals may be to the disease, in England at least the dog is pre-eminently the vehicle of contagion and the great source of danger to human beings. There is a difference of opinion on the way in which muzzling acts, though there can be none as to the effect it produces in reducing rabies. Probably it acts rather by securing the destruction of ownerless and stray—which generally includes rabid—dogs than by preventing biting; for though it may prevent snapping, even the wire-cage muzzle does not prevent furious dogs from biting, and it is healthy, not rabid, dogs that wear the muzzle. It has therefore been suggested that a collar would have the same effect, if all collarless dogs were seized; but the evidence goes to show that it has not, perhaps because rabid dogs are more likely to stray from home with their collars, which are constantly worn, than with muzzles which are not, and so escape seizure. Moreover, it is much easier for the police to see whether a dog is wearing a muzzle or not than it is to make sure about the collar. However this may be, the muzzle has proved more efficacious, but it was not applied systematically in England until a late date. Sometimes the regulations were in the hands of the government, and sometimes they were left to local authorities; in either case they were allowed to lapse as soon as rabies had died down. In April 1897 the Board of Agriculture entered on a systematic attempt to exterminate rabies by the means indicated. The plan was to enforce muzzling over large areas in which the disease existed, and to maintain it for six months after the occurrence of the last case. In spite of much opposition and criticism, this was resolutely carried out under Mr Walter Long, the responsible minister, and met with great success. By the spring of 1899—that is, in two years—the disease had disappeared in Great Britain, except for one area in Wales; and, with this exception, muzzling was everywhere relaxed in October 1899. It was taken off in Wales also in the following May, no case having occurred since November 1899. Rabies was then pronounced extinct. During the summer of 1900, however, it reappeared in Wales, and several counties were again placed under the order. The year 1901 was the third in succession in which no death from hydrophobia was registered in the United Kingdom. In the ten years preceding 1899, 104 deaths were registered, the death-rate reaching 30 in 1889 and averaging 29 annually. In 1902 two deaths from hydrophobia were registered. From that date to June 1909 (the latest available for the purpose of this article) no death from hydrophobia was notified in the United Kingdom.
See Annales de l’Institut Pasteur, from 1886; Journal of the Board of Agriculture, 1899; Makins, “Hydrophobia,” in Treves’s System of Surgery; Woodhead, “Rabies,” in Allbutt’s System of Medicine.
HYDROSPHERE (Gr. ὕδωρ, water, and σφαῖρα, sphere), in physical geography, a name given to the whole mass of the water of the oceans, which fills the depressions in the earth’s crust, and covers nearly three-quarters of its surface. The name is used in distinction from the atmosphere, the earth’s envelope of air, the lithosphere (Gr. λίθος, rock) or solid crust of the earth, and the centrosphere or interior mass within the crust. To these “spheres” some writers add, by figurative usage, the terms “biosphere,” or life-sphere, to cover all living things, both animals and plants, and “psychosphere,” or mind-sphere, covering all the products of human intelligence.
HYDROSTATICS (Gr. ὕδωρ, water, and the root στα-, to cause to stand), the branch of hydromechanics which discusses the equilibrium of fluids (see Hydromechanics).
HYDROXYLAMINE, NH2OH, or hydroxy-ammonia, a compound prepared in 1865 by W. C. Lossen by the reduction of ethyl nitrate with tin and hydrochloric acid. In 1870 E. Ludwig and T. H. Hein (Chem. Centralblatt, 1870, 1, p. 340) obtained it by passing nitric oxide through a series of bottles containing tin and hydrochloric acid, to which a small quantity of platinum tetrachloride has been added; the acid liquid is poured off when the operation is completed, and sulphuretted hydrogen is passed in; the tin sulphide is filtered off and the filtrate evaporated. The residue is extracted by absolute alcohol, which dissolves the hydroxylamine hydrochloride and a little ammonium chloride; this last substance is removed as ammonium platino-chloride, and the residual hydroxylamine hydrochloride is recrystallized. E. Divers obtains it by mixing cold saturated solutions containing one molecular proportion of sodium nitrate, and two molecular proportions of acid sodium sulphite, and then adding a saturated solution of potassium chloride to the mixture. After standing for twenty-four hours, hydroxylamine potassium disulphonate crystallizes out. This is boiled for some hours with water and the solution cooled, when potassium sulphate separates first, and then hydroxylamine sulphate. E. Tafel (Zeit. anorg. Chem., 1902, 31, p. 289) patented an electrolytic process, wherein 50% sulphuric acid is treated in a divided cell provided with a cathode of amalgamated lead, 50% nitric acid being gradually run into the cathode compartment. Pure anhydrous hydroxylamine has been obtained by C. A. Lobry de Bruyn from the hydrochloride, by dissolving it in absolute methyl alcohol and then adding sodium methylate. The precipitated sodium chloride is filtered, and the solution of hydroxylamine distilled in order to remove methyl alcohol, and finally fractionated under reduced pressure. The free base is a colourless, odourless, crystalline solid, melting at about 30° C., and boiling at 58° C. (under a pressure of 22 mm.). It deliquesces and oxidizes on exposure, inflames in dry chlorine and is reduced to ammonia by zinc dust. Its aqueous solution is strongly alkaline, and with acids it forms well-defined stable salts. E. Ebler and E. Schott (J. pr. Chem., 1908, 78, p. 289) regard it as acting with the formula NH2·OH towards bases, and as NH3:O towards acids, the salts in the latter case being of the oxonium type. It is a strong reducing agent, giving a precipitate of cuprous oxide from alkaline copper solutions at ordinary temperature, converting mercuric chloride to mercurous chloride, and precipitating metallic silver from solutions of silver salts. With aldehydes and ketones it forms oximes (q.v.). W. R. Dunstan (Jour. Chem. Soc., 1899, 75, p. 792) found that the addition of methyl iodide to a methyl alcohol solution of hydroxylamine resulted in the formation of trimethyloxamine, N(CH3)3O.
Many substituted hydroxylamines are known, substitution taking place either in the α or β position βα
(NH2·OH).
β-phenylhydroxyl-amine, C6H5NH·OH·, is obtained in the reduction of nitrobenzene in neutral solution (e.g. by the action of the aluminium-mercury couple and water), but better, according to C. Goldschmidt (Ber., 1896, 29, p. 2307) by dissolving nitrobenzene in ten times its weight of ether containing a few cubic centimetres of water, and heating with excess of zinc dust and anhydrous calcium chloride for three hours on a water bath. It also appears as an intermediate product in the electrolytic reduction of nitrobenzene in sulphuric acid solution. By gentle oxidation it yields nitrosobenzene. Derivatives of the type R2N·OH result in the action of the Grignard reagent on amyl nitrite. Dihydroxy-ammonia or nitroxyl, NH(OH)2, a very unstable and highly reactive substance, has been especially studied by A. Angeli (see A. W. Stewart, Recent Advances in Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, 1909).
HYDROZOA, one of the most widely spread and prolific groups of aquatic animals. They are for the most part marine in habitat, but a familiar fresh-water form is the common Hydra of ponds and ditches, which gives origin to the name of the class. The Hydrozoa comprise the hydroids, so abundant on all shores, most of which resemble vegetable organisms to the unassisted eye; the hydrocorallines, which, as their name implies, have a massive stony skeleton and resemble corals; the jelly-fishes so called; and the Siphonophora, of which the species best known by repute is the so-called “Portuguese man-of-war” (Physalia), dreaded by sailors on account of its terrible stinging powers.
In external form and appearance the Hydrozoa exhibit such striking differences that there would seem at first sight to be little in common between the more divergent members of the group. Nevertheless there is no other class in the animal kingdom with better marked characteristics, or with more uniform
