678 
RABIES. 
This brings me to the burthen of my story; and I must frankly 
avow that I have yet to be convinced that the rabid animal 
of the brute creation has hitherto had afforded him what I con- 
ceive to be the only reasonable chance of enabling his constitu- 
tion to wrestle with and in the end to wear out the malady, — l 
mean the aid of the tracheotomy operation. 
I have already declared my conviction that an established 
law of nature prevails for the propagation of contagious disease 
throughout the animal kingdom ; but, on the other hand, I have 
equal faith that there exists, in many individuals of every species, 
the gift of a repulsive power to rid itself of it to a certain extent, 
not excepting some of the class deemed incurable. 
Spontaneous cures even of contagious diseases are not so rare 
as vain man imagines. 
Spasm of the glottis is among the first alarming indications of 
rabies ; it is never absent throughout the progress of the dis- 
order, except at short intervals, — it invariably exists with re- 
doubled fury at the close of this awful scene. 
All modern writers appear to agree that the post-mortem ap- 
pearances, on minute dissection, fail to exhibit morbid lesions 
commensurate with the outrageous symptoms exhibited during 
life. But 1 have myself invariably found, on dissection, intense 
inflammation of the larynx and pharynx and the adjacent parts, 
and have almost invariably read the same report from others. 
Convulsive movements of the entire muscular system prevail 
at intervals throughout the progress of the disorder; but as all 
maladies have their favourite localities, so this appears to be 
concentrated about the nerves and muscles of the throat, most 
likely from an especial impression of a particular part of the 
sensorium. 
Now I have long entertained the idea, though ashamed to 
confess I have never put it in practice, that an aperture in the 
windpipe, made sufficiently below the larynx shortly before the 
expected outbreak of the disease, might, by affording the tortured 
animal more of the breath of' life during the paroxysms in point 
of quantity, as well as a little extension in point of time, by the 
prolongation of life, enable the system to rally, re-act, and 
accumulate that conservative force inherent to every individual, 
viz. the vis medicatrix natura, and thereby ultimately wear out 
and expel the invader. This may be thought Quixotic; but the 
case is desperate. Nothing ventured, nothing gained ; and until 
I hear your critical reply, I cannot divest myself of the belief, 
that every hydrophobic patient has had his life extinguished — 
before this grand vital principle has been thoroughly dissipated — 
simply by the mechanical closure of the glottis from spasm of 
