HYDROPHOBIA AND HOMOEOPATHY. 
33 
lie became tranquil, and we ventured to approach him. We 
offered him some water, but the sight of the water rendered 
him furious again, and his fit lasted another hour; when once 
more becoming calm, we again presented him with water, and he 
ran away from it ( ! !). The furious stage returned no more. 
We dressed his wound as ’before, and gave him one drop of 
the tincture, No. 30. Some hours afterwards we offered him 
water, and he drank it, and in the course of the night he ate 
a little. There was no hydrophobia after this. The wound 
healed. One drop of the tincture. No. 30, was administered to 
him until the 55tb day, and he was dismissed, cured.” 
Who does not recognize in this sudden access of fury, the 
destruction of every thing around him, and the gnawing of a 
door that was not shut, and which “ did not confine him at all,” 
not the determined efforts of a rabid dog to escape in order that 
he might gratify the irrepressible desire which lie felt to worry 
and destroy, but the unconscious violence of fits '! The approach 
to him, before he was fairly himself again, caused a return of 
the paroxysm ; and when he fled from water afterwards, he 
laboured under that excitation, and inexpressible dread of every 
thing about him, which accompanies the return of consciousness. 
It was a fit, and nothing but a fit. M. Laville de la Plaignc, 
however, thinks differently, and says, “ we may hence conclude 
that belladonna alone, and administered in sufficient time, has 
the power of curing rabies.” 
Of the next case, this gentleman may well say that it is not 
conclusive. A girl, nine or ten years old, was bitten in the hand 
by a dog. She said nothing about it for eight days, nor until 
the pain and swelling of the part compelled her to mention the 
circumstance. Her friends were much alarmed, for this dog had 
bitten several animals that had become rabid. This is somewhat 
strange : eight days alone had passed, and several animals bitten 
by the dog had become rabid ! We are not told in what country 
this happened ; but it was one in which rabies appears much 
sooner than in any other that we know of. It was one of the 
on ditSy the foolish stories of the peasants. 
The wound was washed with the diluted tincture of bella- 
donna, and one drop of No. 30 was administered daily. In 
sixty days she was considered to be safe. 
A third case is recorded : it occurred in May 1833. A dog 
had been bitten by another supposed to be rabid, six weeks before. 
Fifteen days afterwards, this dog accompanied his master to one 
of the meadows, and, while driving on the bullocks, bit one of 
them in the tail. Eight days after that he refused to eat and to 
drink — ran away — and was absent two days. On his return, he 
VOL. IX. f 
