IS HYDROPHOBIA CONTAGIOUS? 1027 



that a case of the kind recently occurred in Scot- 

 land. The prevalent opinion of medical men, 

 that it is a strictly contagious disease, was ad- 

 mirably ridiculed by Baron Munchausen, who 

 gravely tells us that " his cloak became mad 

 while in the wardrobe, after having been torn by 

 a rabid dog/' But to be serious, if hydrophobia 

 be generated by a specific poison, it ought to be 

 communicated in nearly all cases of inoculation 

 with the saliva of a rabid animal, or by exposure 

 to its bite. Yet we are informed by Mr. Youatt, 

 that of five dogs which he inoculated with the 

 saliva, not one became rabid. And he says, in 

 another place, that he had never been able to 

 produce rabies by inoculation with the saliva of a 

 dead dog, nor with the blood of a living one in 

 the rabid state. 



It was long ago related by John Hunter, that 

 out of twenty persons who had been bitten by the 

 same mad dog, only one of them was attacked 

 by the disease. And it was stated by Sir Ben- 

 jamin Brodie, a few years since, before a Com- 

 mittee of the House of Commons, that out of 

 above four thousand persons bitten by dogs sus- 

 pected or actually rabid, since he had been con- 

 nected with St. George's Hospital, not one, to his 

 knowledge, had become hydrophobous. Now if 

 canine madness were a contagious disease, like 

 small pox, psora, lues, or gonorrhsea, is it possible 

 that it should have failed in more than four thou- 



