Aug. 28. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



207 



entirely solve his Query, but I have lately met 

 with a curiously detailed case of that disease, 

 which is strongly confirmatory that such was the 

 prevailing opinion within the last seventy years. 

 In the London MedicalJoumal, vol. viii. pp. 156 — 

 164., London, 1787, 8vo., it is stated that Henry 

 llider of Richmond was seized with hydrophobia 

 on Friday the 23rd February, 1787, having been 

 bitten by a dog eighteen months befoi'e, viz., in 

 Aug. 1785. He was from the beginning of the 

 attack on Friday convinced of the nature of the 

 disease, and that a fatal result was inevitable. 

 On the Sunday (the 25th), at mid-day, he imagined 

 be was to be smothered betwixt two feather-beds, 

 and the medical gentleman in attendance adds : 

 " Every time I came to see him, he apprehended it 

 was to give the fatal order ; no persuasion could 

 remove this unhappy idea from his mind ; and he 

 evidently suppressed his complaints, in order to 

 conceal, as he supposed, from me, the necessity of 

 my proceeding to the last extremity." Death put 

 an end to the poor man's suffering on Monday the 

 26th, at 4 o'clock A. m. The narrative is curious, 

 and is highly creditable to the skill and humanity 

 of the professional attendant. A . 



Babies Canina. — When I first went to school 

 at Eton, in 1794, I well remember a story which 

 all the boys believed, that the ostler at the Chris- 

 topher Inn, when in the last stage of hydrophobia, 

 was smothered under a feather-bed by his attend- 

 ants, in order to put a termination to his sufferings. 

 The tragedy was supposed to have recently oc- 

 curred, and it is possible that some more definite 

 information may still be obtained on the spot, 

 should Indagator wish to pursue the inquiry 

 further. Braybkooke. 



Smothering Hydrophohic Patients. — Mrs. Duff, 

 wife off the lateXord Fife, then Col. Duff, died of 

 undoubteS'Kydrophobia about the year 1 806. It 

 was induced by a bite on the nose from a favourite 

 Newfoundland dog ; this for Mr. J. Cornish. 

 The report was widely spread that she " had to 

 be smothered," which was of course groundless. 

 There can be no mistake here, for Mrs. Duff was 

 an Intimate friend of the lady who communicated 

 the fact to me, with many particulars needless to 

 repeat. A. A. D. 



SIMILES FOUNDED ON THE MAGNETIC NEEDLE. 



(Vol. vi., p. 127.) 



Your correspondent J. H. M. asks for other 

 instances of the use of the same metaphor that 

 occurs in the following passage from one of Leigh- 

 ton's Sermons : 



" The heart touched by the Spirit of God, as the 

 needle touched with the loadstone, looks straight and 



speedily to God, yet still with trembling, being filled 

 with holy fear." 



There is a passage In Bishop Jeremy Taylor's 

 sermon on " Growth In Sin," which amplifies the 

 same thought, and affords an interesting parallel : 



" But as the needle of a compass, when it is directed 

 to its beloved star, at the first addresses waves on either 

 side, and seems indifferent in his courtship of the rising 

 or declining sun, and when it seems first determined to 

 the north stands awhile trembling, as if it suffered in- 

 convenience ill the first fruition of its desires, and 

 stands not still in full enjoyment, till after first a great 

 variety of motion, and then an undisturbed posture j 

 so is the piety, and so is the conversion of a mau 

 wrought by degrees and several steps of imperfection; 

 and at first our choices are wavering, convinced by the 

 grace of God, and yet not persuaded ; and then per- 

 suaded, but not resolved ; and then resolved, but defer- 

 ring to begin ; and then beginning, but as all beginnings 

 are, in weakness and uncertainty ; and we fly out into 

 huge indiscretions, and look back to Sodom, or long to 

 return to Egypt : and when the storm is quite over, 

 we find little bubblings and unevennesses upon the 

 face of the waters, we often weaken our own purposes 

 by the returns of sin ; and we do not call ourselves 

 conquerors, till, by the long possession of virtue, it is a 

 strange and unusual, and therefore an uneasy and un- 

 pleasant thing to commit a crime." 



I cannot resist the temptation of offering you 

 another quotation, similar in purport, though from 

 a very different source : 

 " As still to the star of its worship, though clouded. 

 The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea. 

 So dark as I roam, in this wintry world shrouded. 

 The hope of my spirit turns trembling to thee." 



These lines are from one of the late Thomas 

 Moore's Sacred Songs, poems which I often think 

 are neither so much quoted nor so much read a» 

 they deserve to be. Joshua G. Fitch. 



^^tfiXitS ta Minor ^utticS. 



M. Barriere and the Quarterly Review (Vol. v.^ 

 pp. 347. 402. 616.). — In reply to your corre- 

 spondent C, I can only state that the great simi- 

 larity of certain articles in the Quarterly Review^ 

 and M. Barriere's representations of the same 

 events, seemed to me indicative of something ap- 

 proaching to plagiarism ; and I am not, I may add, 

 disposed or accustomed to urge unfounded or light 

 imputations : but the lapse of year?, and my own 

 very advanced age (eighty-two), with the diffi- 

 culty of referring to the articles of the Quarterly s 

 accumulated volumes, would make it an arduous 

 task for me just now to consult these publications, 

 and name the passages which may have produced 

 the Impression on my mind to which I gave ut- 

 terance. I therefore prefer at once acknowledging 

 that I may have been mistaken, and that your 

 correspondent must have been better informed 



