230 RABIES CANINA, 



extensive as perhaps never fell to the lot of any other person. 

 These opportunities arising from some hundreds of distinct 

 cases were none of them lost: the importance of the subject, 

 and the popular attention directed towards the disease during- 

 the years of its prevalence, impressed my mind with more 

 than ordinary interest. The subjects that daily fell under 

 my notice were, therefore, sedulously watched while living", 

 and the several varieties that occurred carefully noted down. 

 Every popular remedy was tried, with many others, that, by 



one solitary fact to support his satements, he goes so far as to pro- 

 nounce every case in which there is not a manifest dread of water to be 

 spurious, and, in fact, any thing but rabies. In the total absence of facts, 

 arguments must necessarily be resorted to ; and of what nature Dr. P.'s 

 are, may be gained from the following specimen, which does not stand 

 alone in futility. " How, if no dread of liquids exists in mad dogs, came 

 *' the disease to be called, in all ages, hydrophobia?"— i2a&. Contag. 

 p. 145. — Can any question be more easily and satisfactorily answered ? 

 Have we not innvimerable instances of names borrowed from the human 

 towards the brute, and from the brute towards the hvxman, from a fan- 

 cied or partial resemblance, when the designation in essentials was as 

 intrinsically a misnomer as in this instance ? But it is not necessary to 

 rely on this well-known circumstance to disprove this non-reasoning; 

 for the fact is, that rabies has not been so called, either universally or 

 individually, when specifically noticed *. It has only been so called 

 cursorily, and in vernacular language, by persons not pretending to 

 scientific discrimination in general, or conversance with the complaint in 

 particular. Throughout the whole of Dr. Parry's treatise, a laboured at- 

 tempt is manifest to force the human and brute malady into one parallel, 

 and to assimilate their discordant features into one likeness. But, that 

 this view of the subject is completely at variance with truth, an atten- 

 tion to the symptoms of the complaint in both subjects, during life, 

 and an examination of the morbid appearances after death, will fully 

 evince ; and how dangerous a re-establishment of errors and preju- 

 dices, which it has been the endeavour of late observant writers to re- 

 move, may be gained, it is presumed, by an attention to the detail which 

 I am about to enter upon. 



* Et s'il etoit possible de soulever le voile dont le temps a convert la science 

 dcs medecins grecs, nous verrions prcbablement qu'ils n'ont point confondu I'hy- 

 drophobie simple avec la rage, piiisqu'ils les desigiioient par deux expressions 

 Ires-exactes, hydrophobia, horreur rie IVau ; et cynolysson, rage du chien.— Trcrzf. 

 de la R(rge, par Mons. TroUiet, p. 267. 



