Coininon Ailments. 133 



to rabies. For the greater part, until 

 quite recently, such space has been filled 

 with the hallucinations and cruesswork of 

 writers of the past centuries. This long- 

 continued repetition of erroneous state- 

 ments and illogical deductions is probably 

 owing to one or both of two causes : either 

 the writers did not possess the necessary 

 courage to break away from the old tradi- 

 tions, or they had not sufficient experience, 

 with the disease and the consequent knowl- 

 edge to enable them to pursue an inde- 

 pendent course. 



In this country the disease is in my 

 opinion extremely rare, even when we add 

 to the list many so-called cases in w^hich, to 

 say the least, the proof of its existence is 

 very doubtful. That there is, however, an 

 occasional case I am not disposed to deny; 

 but that it has ever been prevalent here to 

 any great extent I do not believe. 



Within the past thirty years I have con- 

 versed upon this subject with scores of our 



