OR MADNESS. 283 



tirpation unadvisable. Enough is stated below to render the 

 matter worthy of further investig-ation. Fourteen or fifteen 

 years' experience have only served to increase the conviction 

 in my mind, that the qualities of the tree box, as a preven- 

 tive of rabies, merit great public attention. 



Not only the mineral and vegetable world have yielded 

 prophylacticks of ephemeral popularity, the animal kingdom 

 also has been ransacked by interest, ignorance, or credulity. 

 The scarabei, or beetle tribe, particularly the cockchaffer, or 

 may-bug (^scarahceus melolontha, Linn.)*, the blister fly t 

 (nieloe vesicatorius} , and various testacea;};, are of this kind. 

 The liver of the animal by which a person has been bitten is 

 a remedy as old as the time of Pliny, who speaks himself of 

 its efficacy. We have it also recorded, that Palmerius 

 forced his patients, who had been bitten by a rabid wolf, to 

 lake the dried blood of the animal. 



But as the destruction of the bitten part, judiciously effect- 

 ed, has been found, in every instance, to prevent the further 

 developement of the disease, so this practice has nearly su- 

 perseded all other preventives : but by what immediate 

 process the wounded surfaces are to be removed, has occa- 

 sioned much difference of opinion. That which has been 

 generally practised, is either the actual cautery or burning, 

 the potential cautery by escharotics or caustics, or the exci- 

 sion of the part by the knife. 



The actual cautery was employed by the antients, who 



* Weikard, Thesaurus Pharmaceuticus Galeno-chemicus, 1626. If we 

 credit other accounts handed to us, these insects were no less famous in 

 Spain. Germany, and Prussia, than in France. — (Andry, p. 271.) 



f AvicENNA and Matthiolus wrote expressly on the virtues of this 

 meloe, as an infallible remedy for the rabid malady. Werthof and 

 Andry als o notice it. 



X As the testacea, particularly calcined crabs, were used so long- ago 

 as the time of Galen, and were recommended by Sennert, it would seem 

 that an early confidence was placed in absorbents. It was this confi- 

 dence, probably, that begot the Ormskirk medicine, which appears to 

 be only the earthy absorbents coloured. 



T 2 



