1884—1885 407 



The subject of hydropliobia goes back to the remotest 

 antiquity; one of Homer's warriors calls Hector a mad dog. 

 The supposed allusions to it to be found in Hippocrates are of 

 the vaguest, but Aristotle is quite explicit when speaking of 

 canine rabies and of its transmission from one animal to the 

 other through bites. He gives expression, however, to the 

 singular opinion that man is not subject to it. More than 

 three hundred years later we come to Celsus, who describes 

 this disease, unknown or unnoticed until then. ^'The 

 patient," said Celsus, ''is tortured at the same time by thirst 

 and by an invincible repulsion towards water." He counselled 

 cauterization of the wound with a red-hot iron and also with 

 various caustics and corrosives. 



Pliny the Elder, a worthy precursor of village quacks, recom- 

 mended the livers of mad dogs as a cure; it was not a suc- 

 cessful one. Galen, who opposed this, had a no less singular 

 recipe, a compound of cray-fish eyes. Later, the shrine of 

 St. Hubert in Belgium was credited with miraculous cures; 

 this superstition is still extant. 



Sea bathing, unknown in France until the reign of Louis 

 XIY, became a fashionable cure for hydrophobia, Dieppe sands 

 being supposed to offer wonderful curing properties. 



In 1780 a prize was offered for the best method of treating 

 hydrophobia, and won by a pamphlet entitled Dissertation sur 

 la Rage, written by a surgeon-major of the name of Le Roux. 



This very sensible treatise concluded by recommending 

 cauterization, now long forgotten, instead of the various quack 

 remedies which had so long been in vogue, and the use of 

 butter of antimony. 



Le Eoux did not allude in his paper to certain tenacious and 

 cruel prejudices, which had caused several hydrophobic persons, 

 or persons merely suspected of hydrophobia, to be killed like 

 wild beasts, shot, poisoned, strangled, or suffocated. 



It was supposed in some places that hydrophobia could be 

 transmitted through the mere contact of the saliva or even by 

 the breath of the victims; people who had been bitten were in 

 terror of what might be done to them. A girl, bitten by a 

 mad dog and taken to the Hotel Dieu Hospital on May 8, 

 1780, begged that she might not be suffocated ! 



Those dreadful occurrences must have been only too frequent, 

 for, in 1810, a philosopher asked the Government to enact a 

 Bill in the following terms: "It is forbidden, under paia of 



