, OR CANINE 3IADNESS. 249 



mention ; but Dr. Spalding's account will furnish a sufficient hint. 

 Thus it may be hoped, that, between these apparent preventives, 

 some security may be gained, even in those distressing cases where 

 the extirpation cannot be carried to a sufficient extent without en- 

 dangering life, or exciting a dread which would be insupportable, 

 &c. &c. 



Of prophylactics whose inefficacy have been sufficiently dis- 

 proved, there are yet a sufficient number ; and such have been 

 drawn from the animal as well as the mineral and vegetable king- 

 doms. The scarabei, or beetle tribe, particularly the cock-chafFer, 

 or may-bug ( scarabceus melolontha, "Linn.^), the blister fly^ 

 (meloe vesicatorius J , and various testacea^, are of this kind. 

 The liver of the animal by which a person has been bitten is a 

 remedy as old as the time of Pliny, who speaks himself of its effi- 

 cacy. We have it also recorded, that Palmerius forced his 

 patients, who had been bitten by a rabid wolf, to take the dried 

 blood of the animal. 



The Destruction of the wounded Part the most certain 

 Preventive of Rabies. 



From what has already been stated with regard to the rationale 

 of the rabid inoculation, it will readily appear, that, provided the 

 virus be immediately taken into the circulation, it must yet return 

 to the part it was originally received by ; and it must there com- 



' Weikard, Thesaurus Pharmaceuticus Galeno-chemicus, 1626. If we credit 

 other accounts handed to us, these insects were no less famous in Spain, Ger- 

 many, and Prussia, than in France. — {Andry, p. 271.) 



* Avicenna and Matthiolus wrote expressly on the virtues of this meloe, 

 as an infallible remedy for the rabid malady. Werthof and Andry also no- 

 tice it. 



^ As the testacea, particularly calcined crabs, were used so long ago as 

 the time of Galen, and were recommended by Sennert, it would seem that an 

 early confidence was placed in absorbents. It was this confidence, probably, 

 that produced the Ormskirk medicine, which appears to be only the earthy 

 absorbents coloured. 



