HYDROPHOBIA. 795 



Bites of rabid animals upon bare portions of the body are far more 

 dangerous than if the part bitten be covered by the clothing ; as, in 

 the latter case, the poisonous saliva is not so readily conveyed to the 

 wound, being wiped off from the teeth by the clothing. For the same 

 reasons, there is no danger from the licking, or otherwise moistening, 

 of the sound skin by the saliva, blood, or other fluids of a rabid animal, 

 unless there should happen to be an abrasion or fissure upon its surface. 



The virus, when implanted upon an excoriation of the skin, does 

 not lead to hydrophobia unless there be a certain degree of predispo- 

 sition to the disease. Inoculations of the saliva of rabid animals, as 

 practised by Hertwig, succeeded only in twenty-three per cent, of the 

 animals operated upon, seventy-seven escaping ; and, according to Fa- 

 ber's statistics, out of one hundred and forty-five persons bitten by 

 rabid animals, in WUrtemberg, only twenty-eight had hydrophobia. 



ANATOMICAL APPEARANCES. No lesions characteristic of the dis- 

 ease are found in the bodies of those who have died of hydrophobia. 

 The most common conditions consist in intense rigor mortis, extensive 

 post-mortem hypostasis, early putrefaction (so that, soon after death, 

 blebs full of gas begin to arise), intense staining of the endocardium and 

 walls of the vessels, hypersemia and serous exudation in the brain and 

 its membranes, in the spinal marrow, in some of the sympathetic gan- 

 glia and nerves ; hypersemia and swelling of the mouth and fauces, 

 both of which contain a collection of tenacious mucus ; hypostasis and 

 oedema of the posterior parts of the lungs ; engorgement of the walls 

 of the stomach, and great abdominal glands. All these lesions, espe- 

 cially the injection of the nervous centres and nerves, upon which, at 

 times, great stress has been laid as explanatory of the nature of the 

 disease, are not constant, and, for the most part, seem to arise just 

 prior to dissolution, in consequence of the disturbance suffered by the 

 functions of respiration and circulation during the attacks presently to 

 be described. In the cases which I have seen, autopsy showed a 

 decided swelling of the tonsils and follicular glands at the root of the 

 tongue and the posterior wall of the pharynx, exactly corresponding 

 with Virchovfs observations. 



SYMPTOMS AND COURSE. Most cases of lyssa that have been 

 well observed and described closely resemble each other. One that 

 I have seen corresponds closely to the dreadful picture which 

 Romberg drew from his own and other cases. As it is universally 

 assumed that morbid processes due to the action of a specific poison 

 run their course with symptoms which only vary through personal idio- 

 syncrasy and the variable intensity with which the poison has acted, 

 those reports of lyssa humana differing from our description, in which 

 the characteristic symptoms and their peculiar sequence are not 



