HYDROPHOBIA. 405 



nately no such assurance can be given in respect to medical 

 treatment in this disease, whether as preventive, or palliative, 

 or curative, after the disease has once become fully manifested. 

 To various nostrums the faculty of warding-off an accession 

 of hydrophobia has been attributed ; but the merits of them 

 do not rest on evidence satisfactory to physiologists and me- 

 dical men. It is easy to understand, however, that the malady 

 is of such sort, that an advocate vaunting the powers of a pro- 

 phylactic might occupy a position of great seeming strength, 

 owing to the circumstance already noted, viz. that, of the 

 number of subjects exposed to hydrophobic contingencies, the 

 number actually infected is always a minority. 



As to the cause of hydrophobia, nothing whatever is 

 known. A certain vague popular opinion refers it to extreme 

 heat, and associates it in some manner with the dog-days. 

 This is wholly an error: first, the months in which, in Europe, 

 hydrophobia is most prevalent are not July and August, but 

 April, November, and December; secondly, in all hot cli- 

 mates the malady is rare, in some, Cyprus and Egypt, for 

 example, wholly unknown. Jamaica was a stranger to it 

 until recently, when the disease was conveyed there by im- 

 portation ; and Africa and South America have furnished 

 very few cases. 



Wherever hydrophobia does occur it presents the same 

 symptoms for similar animals ; establishing a comparison be- 

 tween hydrophobia in human beings and hydrophobia in dogs. 

 We have already seen that the chief characteristic difference 

 is, that whereas in man the difficulty of swallowing liquids 

 is usually extreme, dogs experience little or none. Although 

 dogs have been the chief subjects for the study of hydro- 

 phobia, the characteristics of the disease, when affecting them, 

 have been greatly misrepresented.' 



Amongst other erroneous statements concerning rabid 

 dogs, it has come to be matter of general credence that a dog 

 thus affected commonly runs about seeking out human beings 



