600 COMMUNICATED RABIES NOT CONTAGIOUS. 
i m • fj i *i i u wi *-* r* * 
became rabid, but they did not communicate the disease to the 
animals bitten by them. This isolated fact, added the editor, is 
not sufficient to prove demonstratively the opinion of M. Bader, 
that rabies cannot be communicated beyond the first inoculation. 
This very proper reflection kept me for awhile in a state of in¬ 
certitude; but I was, at length, fully convinced by the cases 
which I saw in 1813, 16, 18, 20, and 21” 9 ig 
“ Does any one ask how it happens that spontaneous rabies 
should be so contagious, and communicated rabies not conta- 
gious at all, when the symptoms of the one and the other are 
precisely the same? I can only answer, that the science of me¬ 
dicine consists of a series of facts, and that the cases which I 
have described are facts. I might, indeed, add, that when we 
attentively consider the physiological and pathological state of 
organized and living beings, there are many obscure questions, 
the mystery surrounding which the most ingenious men have 
not been able to disperse. 
“ If I may be permitted to advance an opinion, I think that 
there is one peculiar cause of the development of spontaneous ra¬ 
bies : and this cause certainly does not exist in those that have ac¬ 
quired the disease by communication. The symptoms of hydro¬ 
phobia from a moral cause, and also those of sympathetic hydro¬ 
phobia, do they not resemble—simulate—those of essential ra¬ 
bies, and yet they belong not to an affection w 7 hich is virulent 
and contagious in its nature ? But the symptoms of spontaneous 
rabies are not identical, at least in degree, with those that cha¬ 
racterize the communicated disease. I have constantly observed, 
that the disobedience to command, the fury, the avoidance of 
society, which are precursor symptoms of the malady, are more 
intense, and more quickly appear in those that are affected with 
spontaneous rabies. The cases which I have reported prove this. 
It is rarely that dogs affected with spontaneous rabies are seen 
in inhabited places; when they become diseased they search out 
for caverns and the most secret recesses.” 
The author concludes his first memoir with making some ob¬ 
servations on the etiology of rabies. Compelled to admit some 
special cause of the existence of spontaneous rabies, he thus pro¬ 
ceeds :—“ The reflections which I have made on the development 
of rabies in theTiburtine country, induce me, among other causes 
described by authors, to recognize one exclusively, which I think 
will be the same wherever essential rabies manifests itself. It is 
neither rage, nor hot food, nor putrid meat, nor confinement, nor 
excessive fatigue, nor suppressed perspiration, nor variety of tem¬ 
perature, but simply venereal desire carried to excess and not 
satisfied. This circumstance seems to me to be the absolute 
