HYDROPHOBIA AND RABIES. 



227 



and has no access to immediate medical help ? 

 Should he, the wound being within reach of his 

 lips, or should another person for him, try to 

 suck out the inserted venom ? That would prob- 

 ably be his first instinctive thought. But when 

 I call to mind what Mr. Youatt has said of the 

 danger attending the contact of the poisonous 

 saliva with even sound mucous membranes — and, 

 further, the risk that the sucker's lips might, 

 whether he knew it or not, be chapped or abraded 

 — I dare not counsel the expedient of suction. 

 By adopting it the sufferer might be rushing, or 

 bringing his helping neighbor, into the very peril 

 he was anxious to avert. 



A cupping-glass would be a safer application 

 of the same principle, provided that the place 

 and size of the wound would admit of its being 

 covered by the glass. But, at best, a cupping- 

 glass extemporized and clumsily used under ur- 

 gent and agitating circumstances can scarcely be 

 advisable. 



What I should most strongly recommend, and 

 fortunately it is very easy of performance, is 

 this : First, that a bandage tight enough to re- 

 strain the venous circulation should be applied 

 just above the wound, between it and the heart ; 

 and next, that without any delay a continuous 

 stream of tepid or cold water should be poured 

 from a height, and therefore with a certain degree 

 of force, upon and into the wound. This might 

 be done from the spout of a tea-kettle, or better 

 from a water-tap, and it should be persevered 

 with even for an hour or two, or until the arrival 

 of medical aid. In this way the implanted poison 

 would, in all likelihood, be thoroughly washed 

 away, and the safety of the sufferer secured. 

 Nevertheless this process need not exclude sub- 

 sequent excision or cauterization, should one or 

 the other be feasible or thought desirable, " to 

 make assurance doubly sure." 



The opinion which, as my readers must have 

 anticipated, I entertain, that rabies has at present 

 no other source than contagion, has been com- 

 bated with the same arguments as have been used 

 in the analogous case of small-pox ; such as that 

 the disease must at some time have had a begin- 

 ning, and therefore why not now ? that it often 

 springs up where no contagion can be traced, 

 and sometimes where contagion seems to be im- 

 possible. These arguments were discussed in my 

 former paper, and their futility fully demonstrated. 

 I refrain, therefore, from reconsidering them here. 

 But as I then related two striking instances in 

 which contagion had been deemed impossible, but 

 in which its operation was at length detected by 



some very singular evidence, so I will here give a 

 condensed account of a like result under similar 

 circumstances in respect of rabies. 



Mr. Blaine, Mr. Youatt's partner, was con- 

 sulted about a gentleman's dog, and pronounced 

 it undoubtedly rabid. But the dog, it was al- 

 leged, had never for many months been out-of- 

 doors, nor, indeed, out of the sight of its master, 

 or, in the master's absence, of his valet, who had 

 especial charge of the dog. Concurring with Mr. 

 Youatt in opinion, and anxious to learn the truth 

 in a matter so important, Mr. Blaine examined 

 the servants very closely ; and it was at length 

 remembered by the footman that he had had to 

 answer his master's bell one morning when the 

 valet, whose business it was to take the dog from 

 the bedroom, was accidentally absent ; and he 

 also distinctly recollected that the dog accom- 

 panied him to the street-door while he was re- 

 ceiving a message, went into the street, and was 

 there suddenly attacked by another dog that was 

 passing, seemingly without an owner. The wan- 

 dering dog was, no doubt, rabid. 



Again, a Newfoundland dog, which was chained 

 constantly to his kennel during the day, and suf- 

 fered to be at large during the night within an 

 inclosed yard, became rabid ; and as no dog was 

 known to have had access to the yard, the owner 

 felt sure that the disease must have arisen spon- 

 taneously. Mr. Blaine, however, elicited the facts 

 that the gardener to the family remembered to 

 have heard when in b'ed one night an unusual 

 noise, as if the Newfoundland dog was quarreling 

 with another. He recollected, also, that about 

 the same time he saw marks of a dog's feet in 

 his garden, which lay on the other side of the 

 yard, and the remains of hair were noticed on 

 the top of the wall. About the same time the 

 neighborhood had been alarmed by the absence 

 of a large dog belonging to one of the inhabitants, 

 which had escaped from confinement during the 

 night under evident symptoms of disease. Here 

 also was a ready solution of the previous mys- 

 tery. 



I can pretend to no originality on this sub- 

 ject. Mr. Youatt believed that rabies in the dog, 

 and in all creatures, results always from the in- 

 troduction of a specific virus into the system. 

 He maintained that a well-enforced quarantine 

 —every dog in the kingdom being confined sep- 

 arately — for seven months would extirpate the 

 disease. And the late Sir James Bardsley pro- 

 posed a plan which he thought would prove effi- 

 cacious for getting rid of the pestilence. 



