196 RABIES CANTNA, 



tlie disease that had, at that period, ever appeared*. I would 

 hope therefore, that, in the present detail, as much has been added 

 on the subject to each several edition of the work, and to none 

 more than the present, that what follows will be found to more 



• The alarming prevalence of rabies at the periods alluded to produced in- 

 numerable papers, tracts, and even volumes, on the subject, of which there 

 were but few that did not borrow something from one or other of the above 

 sources. Of these writers some had the candour to own the obligation ; others 

 contented themselves with adopting and then offering as their own as much as 

 suited their purpose : while one or two have even affected to dispute the cor- 

 rectness of my views, apparently less from a legitimate search after truth, than 

 to favour the different opinions they had formed of the subject. Among those 

 who omitted any such notice, I must quote Dr. Gilman, who, in his justly 

 admired Prize Dissertation, may without hesitation be said to have borrowed 

 much from me. Dr. Parry even observes of it, " that the symptoms of rabies 

 were evidently taken from the article Dog, in Rees's Cyclopaedia, or at least 

 from the same source." Rabies Contagiosa, pp. 170-1. Dr. Gilman had ready 

 access to the author of that article, and he found him, when they met at the 

 house of Mr. Boyd (a gentleman whose hand had been lacerated by a rabid 

 dog), most ready to afford him every information on the subject, and to lend 

 him the work quoted. If in any way I assisted in the great cause of humanity 

 (and humanity itself was concerned in the production of so valuable a work as 

 that of Dr. Gilman), I am gratified; and had the ingenious author acknow- 

 ledged the debt, it would not, I hope, have detracted from his fame, while it 

 would have been creditable to his candour. I would also appeal to Mr. Lisp- 

 conib, and to a few others, whether they did not find me always ready to fur- 

 nish them with all the information they sought for ; but I never saw or heard of 

 any one of them afterwards. They are welcome to the information they gained j 

 but this is not my plan : on the contrary, it is my pride never, knowingly, to 

 have committed a literary theft, by becoming a plagiarist : when I differed, 

 I have endeavoured to express my dissent with candour ; and where I have 

 borrowed, I have owned the obligation : and of this I am assured, that there 

 is full as much of sound policy as honest principle in the practice. Silence, 

 however, is charity, compared with a method pursued by some authors of 

 abusing whatever they cannot confute. Of this unfair practice the Treatise 

 on Rabies Contagiosa, or Caiiine Hydrophobia ! I by the late Dr. Parry, of Bath, 

 is an instance. Dr. P., to establish an untenable theory of his own, endeavours 

 either to make the statements of others bend to the views he has taken, or 

 otherwise attempts to throw discredit on such as he finds too stubborn for his 

 purpose. From observation made on three hydrophobous cases only, and on 



