480 Hi. C. Hovey—Rabies Mephitica. 
much to the man’s disgust, who thought simple dressing ‘sufi- 
cient. He refused to have the wound in the ear touched, and 
went to Fort Harker to consult Dr. R. C. Brewer. T'welve 
days afterward the latter reported that his patient bad died 
with hydrophobic symptoms. 
Another hunter, in the fall of 1872, applied to Dr. Janeway 
to be treated for a bite through one of the ale of the nose. 
He had been attacked by a skunk, while in camp on the Smoky 
River, two nights previous. He had been imbibing stimulants 
freely and was highly excited and nervous. A stick of nitrate 
of silver was passed through the wound several times. He was 
kept under treatment for two days, when he left to havea 
“madstone” applied. He afterward went home to his ranch, 
and died in convulsions twenty-one days from the time he was 
inoculated. 
I give but one more of the cases reported to me by Dr. Jane- 
way. In October, 1871, he was called to see a young man liv- 
ing in a “dug-out,” a few miles from the fort. He had been 
bitten by a skunk, seventeen days previous, in the little finger 
of the left hand. His face was flushed, and he complained 
that his throat seemed to be turning into bone. On hearing 
the sound of water poured from a pail into a tin cup, he went 
into convulsions, that followed each other with rapidity and 
violence for sixteen hours, terminating in death. This mans 
dog had also been bitten, and it was suggested that he had bet- 
ter be shut up. He chanced at the time to be in the hog-pen, 
and he was confined in that enclosure. Ere long he began to 
gnaw furiously at the rails and posts of the pen and to bite the 
hogs; until the bystanders, convinced that he was mad, end 
the scene by shooting all the animals in the pen. 
It is evidently the opinion of Dr. Janeway that the malady 
produced by mephitic virus is simply hydrophobia. Should 
he be correct, then all that is established by these facts would 
be this, viz: that henceforth the varieties of Mephitis must be 
e with those animals that spontaneously generate poison 
in the glands of the mouth and communicate it by salivary 10 
oculation. From this, as a starting-point, we might go further 
and seek a solution of the whole mystery of hydrophobia 1m 
the theory that this dread malady primarily originates with the 
allied genera of Mephitis, Putorius and Mustela, widely scat- 
tered over the earth;* being from them transferred to the 
* Since forwarding this article for publication, I have obtained an answer to DY 
e in Californi igh my friend, Dr. J. G. Tidball, respecting 
Mephitis zorilla, He described it as a very pretty little animal which usually 
oo But he adds that its bite is high'Y 
L regret that he gives no particulars of actual eases. But his testimony is inter- 
esting, a8 it rings into condemnation a species of Mephitis quite different from 
