298 WORMING. 



which done, divide it at one extremity, and carefully drawing it 

 forwards with a tenaculum, divide the other also. The uninitiated 

 in sporting mysteries may smile at all this minuteness of detail 

 and recommendation of caution, in the division of a line of skin, 

 and the extraction of a thread of ligament ; but all this is actually 

 necessary to satisfy the prejudices of those who put faith in the 

 operation : for with them, it is essential to the prospective benefits 

 of it, not only that the whole of the worm (for which read 

 fraenum), should be extracted ; but that, if possible, it should be 

 done in one continuous mass. 



In the removal of this cord by huntsmen, game-keepers, &c., 

 the violence used in stripping it off puts its fibrous substance so 

 much on the stretch, that when extracted its elasticity making it 

 recoil, gives it somewhat the character of the contraction of a 

 dying worm ; and we may yet read of this appearance, and its 

 general form being adduced, as proofs of its vermicular identity. 

 And although now no informed person gives credence to its being 

 other than a portion of the canine tongue, yet there are many 

 sporting characters, of education and ability, who still lend them- 

 selves to an opinion, that there is some enigmatical property in- 

 herent in this part, which renders its retention dangerous ; by 

 making the un wormed dog the subject of acute rabies, but the 

 wormed one the subject of the dumb variety. Of a piece with 

 this palpable error was that of Marochetti's vesicles in the same 

 vicinage ; which being also with him the hiding-place of the rabid 

 virus, it became as necessary, according to his doctrine, to destroy 

 them, as it was with the ancients (and yet remains with some of 

 the moderns) to remove the worm. 



Now, as Marochetti's alleged discovery originated with the 

 Greeks, it would seem that the tongue was early destined to be 

 considered, in one part or other, the particular seat of rabies. 

 It has, however, fared very differently with these two errors; for 

 while the vesicles are almost entirely discarded from every mind, 

 a certain connexion between this organ and rabies, modified, in- 



