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prominent. The first evidence of the impending disorder is usually 
malaise, mental depression, disturbed sleep, and some discomfort 
about the throat, with a difficulty of swallowing, especially liquids. 
The attempt occasions some spasm in the throat, which soon, if not 
at first, involves the muscles of respiration, causing a short quick 
respiration, a ‘catch in the breath’’ resembling that due to the 
affusion of cold water. Ina few hours this increases to & strong 
respiratory effort, in which the extraordinary muscles of respiration 
take more part than the diaphragm, or the great muscular partition 
situated between the chest and the abdomen, the shoulders are 
raised, the angles of the mouth are drawn outwards, the saliva, 
which is abundant and viscid, cannot be swallowed. As the intensity 
of the spasm increases, so does the readiness with which it is excited. 
The mere contact of water with the lips, or cutaneous impressions, 
as a draught of air, will bring ona paroxysm, The distress it 
occasions leads to a mental state which increases the readiness with 
which the spasm is produced. The mere sight of water, or the 
sound of dropping water will cause it, (hence the name), and even 
analogous visual impressions, as a sudden light or the reflection 
from a looking glass, 
Thus, the respiratory spasm, excited by swallowing liquids, which 
is, as it were, the key-note of the disease, extends on the one hand 
to widely-spread muscular spasm, and on the other to mental dis- 
turbance. In each of these directions the symptoms develope. The 
spasm, from being limited to the muscles of respiration, may become 
general and convulsive in character, still excited by the same causes. 
The mental distress passes into disturbance, in which the balance 
of reason is lost, continuously, or during the paroxysms. 
In the frenzy, the horror of the distress is transferred to the 
attendants, by whom any discomfort may have been occasioned, and 
during the paroxysm the patient may attempt to bite them, and 
even others. Consciousness may so far remain that in the intervals 
he may beg those whom he regards to keep away. The saliva is 
ejected with force, and the patient hawks it up with a noise “like 
a dog.” ‘The sight of a dog has been known greatly to intensify the 
disturbance; and this strangely enough, in cases in which the 
sufferer had no suspicion of the nature of his affection. 
The duration of Hydrophobia is usually from one to four days; 
sometimes it lasts six, or eight, or ten days, A 
The common cause of death is exhaustion from the attacks of 
frenzy and convulsions. Sometimes the patient has died in a 
paroxysm of respiratory spasm. 
Unfortunately we know little or nothing of the poison of rabies ; 
most probably the morbid poison of rabies is a living micro-organism, 
and therein in some measure lies our hope, for there may exist an 
