250 
Yo the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
STR, 
HE late alarm respecting mad dogs 
bas had one good effect ;_1t has called 
forth several essays on the subject, and 
others are announced. This cannot but 
afford pleasing hopes that some of the 
writers may fail into a more fortunate path 
than has yet been trodden, even bythe most 
scrutinizing of their predecessors; although 
some of them, it must be owned, have ap- 
plied with industry and ability. 
He deserves even some praise, who, 
though unable to point exactly the right 
road, informs us from his observations, 
that we are pursuing the wrong, Our 
progress that way arrested, we stop, 
pause, and begin to explore another, in 
hopes of a better issue. 
The delusions of fancy, and the preju- 
dices of ignorance, have been pursued 
without reflection for ages, in many de- 
partments of medical investigation; but 
m none have they taken deeper root, than 
in what belongs tocanine rabies. I trust 
the gloom begins to be dispelled. 
For more than. twenty years have I en- 
deavoured, with ail my might, to remove 
errors, or what appeared to me such; 
and though it may be with little, yet I 
flatter myself it will not be without some, 
profit to those who succeed me in this 
waik,. 
There are several grand errors which I 
have cudeavoured to detect. 
1. I assert that the disease does not 
appear, from-the first day of the bite, ei- 
ther im man, quadruped, ot fowl, to any 
indeterminate period of hf#; an idea 
which has produced, for ages, unspeak- 
able distress among that part of the hu- 
man species who have had the misfortune 
to be bitten. 
IT, That after the lapse of a certain 
period, bitten persons may remove from 
their minds all suspicions of future di- 
sease. 
lil. That in no composition, under the 
name of specific or prophylactic, is any 
confidence whatever to be placed. 
IV. That the disease arises by ino- 
culation from a bite of a rabid animal, 
of the dug and cat tribe alone, and froin no 
other, as far as just observation has yet 
carried us. 
V. That it is also produced spontane- 
ously, or, in other words, is bred in 
the quadruped itself (but not in man), 
under certain circumstances, not yet per- 
haps all known, 
VI. That no cure has yet been made in 
any case of true rabies. 
Further Observations on Canine Rabies. 
-agenerallaw of nature. 
[ Oct. , 
VII. That those diseases resembling, 
but improperly named, hydrophobia, anc 
which admitted of a cure, arose not from 
the saliva of a rabid animal, but from fear 
and apprehension, which sometimes ex- 
cite maa, or resemble those arising from 
wounds inflicted on nerves, producing, 
through irritation, various degrees of te- 
tanic affection. : 
VII. That the only certain hopes and 
prevention in the true rabies, consist in 
the expulsion of the contagious saliva, by 
the complete destruction of the wound- 
ed parts. 
IX. That the term mud, applied to 
those of the human species labouring un- 
der it, ought no longer to be used, as it 
has been productive not ouly of neglect, 
but cruelty, by stiflmg or smothering the 
unhappy sufferers, under the notion of 
seli-preservation, although their saliva 
cannot communicate the disease, nor is 
the rational faculty in the least impaired, 
nor they themselves rendered unconscious 
of their actions except during the parox- 
ysis, which is one of the leading charac- 
teristics of this dire malady. 
Each of these beads L have discussed 
elsewhere at some leneth*, and need not 
here repeat, unless in such parts as 1 find 
are disputed on the authority of persons 
who are considered as unerring guides, from 
the opportunities of observation which 
they are said.to have possessed. 
Ou grounds such as these, it has beens 
asserted that rabies 1s never produced un- 
less by inoculation, orin other words from 
a wound into which the peculiar poison 
giving rise to the malady is instilled. 
A celebrated sportsman, who certainly 
had many opportunities of observing the 
isease, has given this opinion currency, 
and I find that it gains many advocates. 
ft certainly, however, is not the fact; and 
the most that can be granted, is that every 
ase of the rabid dog which he saw, arose 
from a wound by another dog. It would, 
however, be mere credulity to take the 
limited experience of any one person on 
which to build a superstructure requiring 
so broad a base as the present, involving 
Without dero- 
gating from the-respect due to this opi- 
nion, or the veracity of it, as far as his 
knowledge extended, it cannot, 1 venture 
to affirm, be unlimitedly admitted. There 
are jisks in the chain of facts belonging 
to this malady which neither he nor I, nor 
. * Vide Remarks on Hydrophobia, 2d edi- 
tion, 1798. a § 
many 
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