PREVENTIVES / 459 
perfectly satisfied myself that many of them had power, and to a 
very considerable extent. 
Mr. Blaine had satisfactorily ascertained that the common 
Box was the basis of the preventive drinks that had acquired so 
much reputation in Hertfordshire and Kent. Some rue entered 
into the composition of the drench, but the box was the principal 
ingredient. Its bitter and nauseous taste would induce the sus¬ 
picion that it possessed some powerful medicinal virtue. It was 
evidently a narcotic. The human patient always experienced 
considerable giddiness for half an hour after taking it, and the 
dose for the dog was regulated by the degree of staggering and 
distress which it produced. Several of them were destroyed by 
an over-dose. The rue also is an acknowledged antispasmodic, 
and exerts its chief power on the nervous system. This compound 
was undoubtedly a preventive. Very few dogs bitten by a rabid 
dog, and no preventive measures being taken, escape; but the 
decided majority of those who were drenched with this mixture 
never exhibited the slightest symptom of rabies. Beyond this, 
however, we could not go. We saved the majority ; but we had 
no effectual security. 
The Alisma Plantago is a decided sedative. I experimented 
on it to a considerable extent, and v/as satisfied that it had effect, 
perhaps more than the box ; but it was not the preservative which 
it was asserted to be. ^ 
The Belladonna followed, and it also had power, but no abso^ 
lute dependence could be placed upon it. So it was with Dr. 
Spalding’s Scutellaria Lateriflora. Its effects on the cerebral 
system were singular. I repeatedly took an infusion of it, and 
the consequence almost invariably was a feeling resembling the 
pleasing exhilaiation of incipient intoxication, rapidly changing 
to a giddiness not quite so pleasing, and the whole passing off in 
eight or ten minutes, and leaving no exhaustion or depression. 
It was certainly more efficacious than either of the others; but 
instances of palpable failure too often occurred. I combined 
these medicaments in various ways; but I could never get any 
thing approaching to a specific. 
The end of the whole was, that I gave up these experiments 
altogether. 1 could not discover any simple or compound medi¬ 
cine on which full dependence could be placed. I also began to 
feel that by these continued experiments I was exposing myself 
and my assistants to a degree of danger which could not be justi¬ 
fied— I was likewise beginning to produce a dangerous state of 
mind in some of those about me. They saw that these medi¬ 
caments had power—that, ))robably, we saved rpiite as many dogs 
us we lost; and they began to cherish a faith in them that thieat- 
