ALTERED STATE OF THE POISON. 387 
Dr, Parry relates an interesting circumstance applicable to our 
present subject. Dr. Ingenhousz was experimenting on the 
deadly power of the Ticunas poison. He had just envenomed 
the point of a knife, when it fell from his hand, and, piercing 
the shoe and stocking, wounded his foot. He threw himself 
back in his chair, and calmly said,“ In five minutes I shall be a 
dead man.'^ More than five minutes having elapsed, without 
his feeling any thing but the pain that would result from a simi¬ 
lar wound in any other way inflicted, he carefully washed the 
part; and he suffered no after inconvenience from it. The 
poison, like the vitiated saliva, was in a fluid form, and it had 
been entirely wiped from the point of the knife in its passage 
through the shoe and stocking. 
Altered State of the Poison .—It is in the early and ferocious 
stages of the disease that the bite is most dangerous; but with 
the declining strength of the animal the virulence of the poison 
seems materially to diminish. 
An insatiable thirst accompanies the latter stages of rabies. 
We can readily suppose that the virus, largely diluted by the 
water which the animal is almost incessantly drinking, may be 
rendered comparatively innocuous. 
I have already observed that it is sometimes exceedingly dif¬ 
ficult to inoculate the dog or any other animal with the rabid 
virus. This seems to arise from the rapidly decreasing virulence 
of the poison when taken from the dog. The virus of cow-pox 
retains its full efficacy, if carefully preserved, for many weeks, 
or even months; but that of rabies would seem to die speedily 
away. Mr. Earle inoculated some rabbits with saliva taken from 
a dog that had died rabid. A strange anomalous disease speedily 
followed, in which some of the characters of rabies could be de¬ 
tected. Dr. Hertwig imagines that the virus retains its power 
twenty-four hours after the death of the animal from which it 
had been taken. 
There are instances recorded of rabies being supposed to arise 
from the examination, with unsound hands, of dogs that had died 
rabid. Some of these accounts have not a little of the marvel¬ 
lous about them. Persons are said to have been wounded by the 
instrument with which a rabid dog had been destroyed many 
months before, and rabies has supervened. 
This is a question which deserves future and careful experi¬ 
ment. What a rich field for experiment does the whole of our 
subject afford ! Thus far I may state without fear of contradic¬ 
tion, that while, with very few exceptions, the disease folknvs 
the bite of a rabid dog, it does not so certainly follow inoculation 
with an armed lancet, or a seton cord impregnated with the virus 
