290 
THE CURE OF HYDROPHOBIA. 
twenty horses out of one hundred and eighty ; whereas, by the 
antiphlogistic mode of treatment I lost twenty out of twenty. 
I ought, however, to acknowledge that, notwithstanding the 
efficacy of these remedies, and the rapid disappearance of the 
severer symptoms, the horses that recovered were very much 
reduced, and it was long before they regained their full condi¬ 
tion. I attribute this long convalescence less to the mode of 
treatment than to other circumstances altogether independent of it. 
Journal Theor. et Prat., Juillet 1833. 
The Cure of Hydrophobia by the Vapour Bath. 
M. Buisson was called to attend on a woman who was sup¬ 
posed to be hydrophobous ; in fact, she exhibited all the symp¬ 
toms of this disease, and had been bitten by a rabid dog forty 
days before. She, however, attributed her illness to another 
cause. At her earnest entreaty she was bled, but she died two 
days afterwards. M. Buisson, who had his hands covered with 
blood, dried them with a towel that had been used to wipe the 
foam from the mouth of the patient. He had at that time an 
ulcer on one of his fingers, the consequence of which impru¬ 
dence he thought that he should avoid by washing his hand care¬ 
fully with pure water. 
On the ninth day, being in a cabriolet, he all at once felt 
pain in his throat and his eyes; his body seemed to grow sud¬ 
denly light, and he felt as if he could leap to a prodigious height. 
His skin was so morbidly sensitive, that he said he thought he 
could count every hair without looking at them ; and the impres¬ 
sion of the air, and the sight of polished substances, caused 
him a most painful sensation. Saliva ran continually from his 
mouth ; he felt a desire to run at and to bite, not only human 
beings but animals. He drank with difficulty, and the sight of 
water gave him great uneasiness. 
He concluded that he was seized with hydrophobia, and he 
determined to destroy himself by suffocation in a vapour bath. 
He pushed the heat of the bath to 108 degrees, but he was sur¬ 
prised to find that, after awhile, he seemed to have got rid of 
all his ailments. He came out of the bath well, ate a hearty din¬ 
ner, and drank his usual quantity of wine. 
Since that time he says that he has treated in the same way 
more than eighty persons bitten by mad dogs, and in four of 
whom hydrophobia had developed itself. They were all cured, 
with the exception of a child of seven years of age, that died in 
the bath. 
The treatment which he prescribes for persons bitten by rabid 
dogs is, to take a certain number of vapour baths, and then en- 
