394 HYDKOPHOBIA. 



consequence of inoculation, is still undetermined. The bal- 

 ance of testimony distinctly favours tlie belief, however, that 

 hydrophobia in human beings never arises without previous 

 Inoculation. I do not even find it ever alleged that hydro- 

 phobia has occurred in the human subject spontaneously; 

 whereas in respect to dogs and wolves, several cases of spon- 

 taneously occurring hydrophobia have been recorded, though 

 not definitively proved. 



In the presence of all the marked and awful character- 

 istics attributed to hydrophobia by general repute, and, as 

 we shall find in the sequel, mainly justified, it may be a sur- 

 prise to learn that certain physiologists have denied the 

 existence of hydrophobia as the result of specific poison-in- 

 oculation altogether. Thus Monsieur Girard, of Lyons, was 

 of opinion that the symptoms of hydrophobia were referable 

 to the mere mechanical puncture without poison, just as lock- 

 jaw is frequently referable to puncture of the hand or foot ; 

 an utterly untenable opinion, seeing that dogs have fre- 

 quently communicated the disease by merely licking some 

 abraded surface. 



Others have referred hydrophobia to the operation of 

 fear; an hypothesis which would neither apply to the cases 

 of young children, nor still more emphatically to the in- 

 stances wherein hydrophobic symptoms have been developed 

 in animals of various kinds, amongst which cats, rabbits, 

 guinea-pigs, and fowls may be enumerated. 



Opinions of this sort must be looked upon as eccentric 

 preoccupations, rather than as conclusions based upon any 

 sufficient evidence. Similarly with all other animal poisons, 

 that of hydrophobia is in its chemical nature very obscure. 

 Vainly does the chemist test it by re-agents or the micro- 

 scope : no agent, no quality stands thereby revealed. 



In this respect the poisonous principle of hydrophobia is 

 not more undefined, not less amenable to scientific scrutiny, 

 than is the poison of small-pox or of plague, than the poison- 



