202 LOUIS PASTEUR 



cured of hydrophobia by the application of a so- 

 called mad stone which was believed to have the 

 curious property of clinging to the wound to which 

 it was applied, drawing the poison from the system 

 and dropping off after it had done its work. I 

 have never seen any one who had actually seen a 

 mad stone, but many people had heard of some 

 one else who knew of some one who had known it 

 to effect a cure. People commonly thought that 

 hydrophobia was caused by hot weather, and, 

 despite the fact that this supposition has been 

 definitely disproved, it still prevails more or less 

 in the popular mind. For a long time it was 

 thought that the disease could be communicated by 

 touch or through the breath, and in the fear that 

 its unfortunate victims might be sources of con- 

 tagion to others they were sometimes smothered 

 between mattresses or otherwise disposed of. A 

 person suffering from hydrophobia was smothered 

 as late as 1819. 



The term hydrophobia owes it origin to the dread 

 of water which is a not uncommon symptom of this 

 disease in man. This dread of water apparently 

 is not shown by rabid dogs or other animals, and 

 consequently the term rabies has now come to be 

 employed as not carrying the misleading implica- 



