SOME SUPERSTITIONS OF HYDROPHOBIA. 181 



Among people more or less uncivilized, there prevail some curious 

 notions with regard to hydrophobia. In the mountainous districts of 

 Roumania, where the disease is common among wolves and dogs 1 , the 

 peasantry believe that birds of prey, as eagles, hawks, vultures, etc., 

 fall dead from an aerial elevation never reached by other creatures, 

 and are devoured by wolves ; these latter thus contract rabies, trans- 

 mit it to the shepherd-dogs, and they in turn communicate it to cattle 

 and human beings simply by infecting the atmosphere with emana- 

 tions from their diseased bodies. According to Burton (in his " Pil- 

 grimage to Medinah and Mecca "), the tribes of El-Hejaz a district of 

 Arabia on the Red Sea imagine that a bit of meat falls from the sky 

 and renders mad any person eating it. They also recognize the fact 

 of the commuuicability of hydrophobia from dogs. Burton says : " I 

 was assured by respectable persons that, when a man is bitten, they 

 shut him up, with food, in a solitary chamber for four days, and, if, at 

 the end of that time, he still howls like a dog, they expel the ghul 

 (devil) from him by pouring over him boiling water mixed with ashes 

 a certain cure, I can readily believe." 



Sir Samuel Baker, while exploring the Nile tributaries of Abys- 

 sinia in 1862, found rabies quite prevalent in those regions. He re- 

 lates how he was one night disturbed by a tremendous tumult, and 

 light filling the air, and yelping of dogs. He went out and ran toward 

 a blazing hut. " As I approached, first one, and then another dog- 

 ran screaming from the flames, until a regular pack of about twenty 

 scorched animals appeared in quick succession, all half mad with fright 

 and fire. I was informed that hydrophobia was very prevalent in the 

 country, and that the certain preventive from that frightful malady 

 was to make all the dogs of the village pass through the fire. Ac- 

 cordingly, an old hut had been filled with straw and fired, after which 

 each dog was brought by its owner and thrown into the flames." 



Fleming, while quartered with the British Army of Occupation at 

 Tien-tsin, near Peking, China, in 1861, was assured on the best author- 

 ity that, in some portions of the Flowery Land, it is the universal be- 

 lief that a man affected with hydrophobia is enceinte, and that he is so 

 distressed, and ultimately perishes, because he cannot be delivered ! 



Closely connected with outbreaks of lupine rabies, of which we 

 have authentic accounts as early as the thirteenth century, was the 

 remarkable superstition of the middle ages termed lycanthropia a 

 belief that human beings were temporarily transformed into wolves 

 (or " were-wolves " as they were called), in order to satisfy an unnatu- 

 ral craving for human blood. It is well known that the wolf, when 

 rabid, exhibits a peculiar change of habit and character. It quits its 

 customary haunts in the forest recesses, and displays no fear or hesi- 

 tancy in entering towns and villages, where it boldly encounters dogs, 

 men, and other creatures, attacking them furiously, biting and tearing 

 them, and then continuing its dreadful course of destruction. Brera 



