238 RABIES CANINA, 



The Medical Treatment of Rabies. 



The curative treatment of rabies in the dog has hitherto proved 

 invariably unavailing, neither has it been found otherwise in any 

 other animal ; while the few successful cases on record of a favour- 

 able result from any means tried on the human hydrophobia have 

 a veil of obscurity thrown over them that damps our confidence, 

 and leaves us to hope only that time may yet afford us a remedy^o 

 for this dreadful scourge. The extent to which this inquiry has 

 already been carried will prevent a circumstantial detail of the 

 various medicinal agents which have been tried as curative of rabies. 

 I shall only cursorily notice them, and reserve myself for those 

 that, fortunately for man and brute, are found efficacious as pre- 

 ventives against such attack ; pausing only to observe, that my 



the inability to swallow, and the alteration of the voice, implicate the glosso- 

 pharyngeus. The increased circulation, the laborious respiration, tlie peculiar 

 inflammation of the pleura, and the constant and often intense inflammation 

 of the stomach, are attributable to the par vagum. The involuntary barking, 

 the husky grating inspiration, the frequent inflammation of the trachea, the 

 uniform inflammation of some part of the glottis in the quadruped, and the 

 dreadful excitation of the membrane of the glottis, with all the horrors of hy- 

 drophobia in the human being, testify that the recurrent nerve has not escaped ; 

 while the hurried and uncertain action of the fore extremities, and the palsy of 

 the region of the loins, are clearly to be traced to the spinal accessory. These 

 nerves anastomose freely with the cerebral nerves, therefore cerebral affection 

 soon occurs. There is a state of general and extreme excitation, a very pecu- 

 liar wandering and delirium, and, in some animals, fits of lavage and uncon- 

 trollable ferocity. They likewise unite and blend with the ganglionic nerves, 

 and thence proceeds altered secretion ; a morbid secretion of the gastric juice 

 occasioning the strangely perverted appetite of the dog ; and a still more de- 

 praved secretion of the saliva, converting that bland and innocuous fluid into 

 the direst poison." 



^ "Nee desperandum tamen ob exempla jam in aliis venenis constantia, de 

 inveniendo hujus aingularis veneni antidoto si»gtiIarL" — Bocrhaave, Aphorism 

 1146. 



