BY ALL RABID ANIMALS. 
227 
effect at all. A gentleman who imagines that he has a very 
powerful agent in controlling hydrophobia ;—who thinks that he 
has succeeded in two cases, and only waits for the result of a 
third to make the important discovery—took a great deal of 
pains in inoculating a dog at my house, from one clearly rabid. 
Months passed away, and at length the animal died of a very 
different disease. The brother of an eminent lecturer in one of 
our hospitals wished to institute some experiments, and he 
very carefully inoculated a dog for that purpose, without effect. 
Not one of the five last dogs that I inoculated, in order to try the 
power of certain medicines, became rabid. Therefore, although 
the production of the disease would be proof positive of the 
power of communicating it, the effect of one, and even of se¬ 
veral inoculations, might raise doubts as to the power of com¬ 
munication, but would not settle the question. Some professors 
of the French school have denied that it was possible to produce 
rabies by artificial inoculation from any animal. Here they are 
evidently wrong, for it has been produced again and again. 
These facts, however, prove that no conclusion can be drawn 
from the failure of artificial inoculation. 
Now, then, as to the effect which has been produced by ino¬ 
culation with the saliva of these innocuous animals. Man used 
to be placed among them. There were some instances, of rather 
doubtful authority, of hydrophobia being produced by the saliva 
of the human being. A father, in the last stage of hydrophobia, 
imprinted a parting kiss on the lips of his child, and the infant 
died hydrophobous. This case stood almost alone, and was not 
by many acknowledged to be genuine; and from the immunity 
which the attendants on hydrophobic patients seemed to pos¬ 
sess, although they w ere often covered with the spume, and a 
portion of it must have occasionally fallen on some abraded sur¬ 
face (in the case of the poor boy who lately died at St. Thomas's, 
some of it was received in the eye of one of the assistants), it be¬ 
came the general belief among medical men, that hydrophobia 
could not be communicated by the saliva of the human being, 
and for this sapient physiological reason, that he was not one of 
those animals who use their teeth as weapons of offence. 
