ON RABIES CANINA. 129 
ridedly rabid, but with every symptom materially mitigated, and 
nth no ferocity. 
In the year 1820, my attention was first directed to the scutel- 
aria lateriflora (the skullcap), Class Didynamia, Order Gymnos- 
>ermia, and which Dr. Spalding had found so extraordinarily 
uccessful as a preventive of rabies. It is a plant growing in most 
aoist shady places in America; a labiated plant, flowering from 
uly to September, bearing small blue flowers, but otherwise hav- 
ng considerable resemblance to our common mint. Dr. Spalding 
lfused a tea-spoonful and a half of the powdered leaf in a quart 
f hot w ater, and gave half a pint morning and night, omitting 
be dose every third day, when a mild purge of sulphur was given, 
le says that he has administered it, with invariable success, in 
o less than eight hundred cases; and in several of these cases 
be disease had actually commenced its career. 
I procured some from our herbalists; and although I uniformly 
filed in arresting the progress of the disease, I soon began to be 
atisfied that it had considerable preventive power. These expe- 
ments were then suspended, until I could import a quantity on 
ae genuineness of which I might place full dependence. 1 be¬ 
an with an infusion of the strength recommended by Dr. Spald- 
ig; but soon found it convenient to give a smaller and more pow- 
rful dose. Itproduced in myself, when four ounces were infused 
l a quart of water, and a wine-glass full taken, a feeling resem- 
ling the pleasing exhilaration of incipient intoxication, rapidly 
banging to a giddiness not so pleasant, but the whole passing oif 
ieight or ten minutes, and leaving no exhaustion or depression. 
As a cure of rabies once established, it never succeeded. Asa 
reventive, I was brought to regard it as a most valuable medi- 
ine. In three cases, at least, out of four, rabies appeared not; 
ut in about one case out of four I did not succeed. I then, for 
le sake of convenience and precision, used the powder beat into 
mass, in the proportion of two of the Scutellaria to one of palm 
il. I fancied that I was rather more successful; but awkward 
(stances of failure w T ould occur. 
I then began to combine it, and, at first, with all the other 
erbs in which I thought I had discovered some power—the box, 
isma, and belladonna. I did not succeed so well. I discarded 
rst the alisma, and then the box, retaining the belladonna in 
le proportion of half an ounce to a pound of the Scutellaria, and 
(e result has been a medicine which I cannot, dare not, call a 
>ecific, for it has failed, but the use of which in the cases of 
aubt and fear to which I have alluded, I would most earnestly 
commend. 
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