CHAPTER VIII 



HYDROPHOBIA 



MAD dogs were formerly the terror of the 

 country-side. The mysterious charac- 

 ter of the malady, its frightful consequences to 

 those whom it attacked, classed it among those 

 scourges of the fields against which no certain 

 remedy was known. In ancient times Pliny the 

 Elder advised those who had been bitten to eat 

 the liver of the dog who had done the harm, 

 while Gallian prescribed as a remedy the eyes 

 of crabs! During the middle ages, which were 

 haunted by mad dogs, the remedies used were 

 omelettes made of ground oyster shells and 

 cauterisation of the wound with red-hot irons; 

 but most frequently they stifled the unhappy 

 sufferers between two mattresses. In the 

 eighteenth century a Lieutenant of Police 

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