20.5 



may be athibuted in a principal degree the bringing 

 forward the valuable preventive detailed at the end 

 of this article ; a discovery that, when it beconiei 

 properly appreciated, succeeding ages will hail. 

 There, in fact, needs but one remark to shew how ex. 

 treniely ignorant the generality of persons are relative 

 to the nature of this disease, which is that the univer- 

 sally received distinguishing characteristic of the disease 

 should never exist, and that the general term also 

 applied to the complaint should be as inapplicable to 

 it as it would be to the human small pox or measles. 

 The dread of water, it is evident, must be here meant ; 

 and the term Hydrophobia, as characterising what 

 never exists, it is equally clear, must be a perfect 

 misnomer, and an error existing in general and vulgar 

 prejudice. It is incalculable the mischief that this 

 universal prejudice has produced : it has rendered 

 thousands of unfortunate persons miserable for months 

 and years, and many others it has lulled into a fatal 

 secui ity. If a poor dog, from illness or affection of 

 any kind whatever, is prevented from swallowing, he is 

 immediately pronounced mad, and is unreluctantly 

 destroyed, while horror pervades the mind of every 

 one who has been within his reach. Nor is the un- 

 fortunate person who may have been bitten by this 

 same dog years or months before exempt from the 

 panic ; for, among the popular prejudices that pre- 

 vail, is one, that, if a dog becomes mad, any person 

 who may have been formerly bitten by this dog, even 

 though he was in perfect health, is in danger of be- 

 coming mad. On the other hand, if a dog under any 

 com})laint can drink, then he is pronounced free from 

 all danger of madness ; and so universal is this opi^ 



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