A CASE OF HYDROPHOBIA, 
115 
ill the case before us : the boy was bitten just two months before 
the symptoms of the formidable malady under which he sunk 
made their appearance, and during that interval he continued 
perfectly well ; even the wound through which the poison had 
been introduced cicatrised quickly, and never occasioned any 
inconvenience. 
In the existence of a period of latency the hydrophobic virus 
does not differ from other morbid poisons, its great peculiarity 
consists in the great length of that latency. We find that mor- 
bid poisons, although they produce constitutional effects, are 
prone, notwithstanding, to affect certain parts more than others. 
Thus the typhoid poison is prone to irritate the glands of Peyer ; 
the poison of scarlet fever to affect the throat ; that of measles 
the lungs. It would seem that the hydrophobic poison localises 
itself chiefly on the spinal system, but especially on the medulla 
oblongata : hence the convulsive twitchings and spasms of the 
limbs — the sensibility and irritability of surface, even to the 
slightest breath of air — the excited respiration and the abundant 
bronchial secretion. Upon this also depends that severe and cha- 
racteristic symptom, the difficulty of deglutition; for the patient 
does not labour under a fear of water , as the name of the dis- 
ease would imply, and as is vulgularly supposed — he labours 
under a fearful sense of the difficulty, nay, almost the impossi- 
bility of swallowing water or any thing else. This we saw ex- 
emplified in the case before us. When water or bread was 
offered him to swallow he put it from him. The very idea of 
having to swallow any thing brought on general spasms. It was 
evident, too, that independently of the act of deglutition, the 
throat was the seat of extreme irritation, from the constant and 
violent retching under which he laboured ; yet there was no in- 
flammatory appearance, no swelling of the mucous membrane of 
the fauces, but the cause of the continued action of the pharyngeal 
muscles was seated elsewhere than in the pharynx itself. 
To the irritable state of the medulla oblongata must also be 
referred the tendency to spasm in the glottis, which constitutes 
so fearful a symptom of this disease. There was no inflamed 
state of the laryngeal mucous membrane, no more than that of 
the pharynx, for the voice was natural, and in the interval 
between the spasms the breathing was not stridulous. Here 
the nervous centre occasioned by an irritation in itself those 
spasmodic actions which are generally excited by a stimulus 
applied to the sentient surface, and conducted to it by the ex- 
citor nerves. That the boy did not suffer from the fear of water 
or other fluids was evident, inasmuch as he allov/ed it to be 
applied to his limbs, and did not shudder when he saw it. 
In the treatment of the case, Dr. Todd stated that he was in- 
