HOESES AND HOUNDS. 97 



out, in either man or beast, I believe it hardly ever yet has been 

 subdued, but I think from what I have observed, that its 

 paroxysms may be much alleviated, and, I should say, success- 

 fully reduced, but I must leave to the medical profession to 

 determine by what treatment and medicines From its so un- 

 frequently occurring, I am induced to think that very great 

 attention of late has not been paid to hydrophobia, and being 

 considered an incurable disease, remedies have been thought 

 hopeless. That it may be prevented breaking out for many 

 years in a subject who has been most severely bitten by a mad 

 dog, I can attest. Many instances have been cited to the same 

 effect by writers on this subject, and if we are to believe certain 

 authorities of the old school, the Ormskirk medicine was an 

 infallible remedy. Beckford talks of a whole pack of hounds 

 belonging to a friend of his being bitten, and not one going mad, 

 which had been dosed with large quantities of Turbith mineral, 

 also of a man who was cured by Sir George Cob's medicine. A 

 learned writer, in the reign of King James the First, thus speaks 

 of madness : — " In hounds and dogs which fall mad the cause is 

 that black choler hath the mastry in his body, which choler 

 once roasted in them through vehement heat, it overcometh the 

 body, and maketh him to run mad, for the black choler, which 

 is so strong, infecteth his brain, and so from thence goeth to all 

 the other members, and maketh him venomous." He afterwards 

 gives a list of medicines, which if not instructive, may be 

 amusing to the reader, and I will leave him to determine which 

 is likely to prove most efficacious. Here it follows : — " Also 

 calamint, the seed of wild tares, sea onions, water-cresses, herb- 

 grace, salt, aristolochia, nuts with rue, the roots of asperage, and 

 the seed balsamum, vinegar, and the milk of an ass, child's 

 urine, the stones of a hedgehog, the stones of a stag or an 

 ass dried and drank; also castorium, garlic, gentian, mint, 

 dittany." 



From this dish of delicacies I leave our learned medical prac- 

 titioners of the present day to make choice. Much has been 

 written on this subject by other learned doctors from time to 

 time, and Dr. Mead professes that, '' in the space of thirty years 

 he had an opportunity of giving his plan a trial no less than 

 one thousand times with uniform success." Pity it is that all 

 these wonderful remedies have either been lost to the present 

 unenlightened generation, or not duly appreciated. In the 

 Medical Journal many cases are mentioned as having been 

 successfully treated by our different medical men of later years, 

 and I have little doubt that if remedies are applied immediately 

 the bite is inflicted, a cure may be eff"ected. 



