2. This disorder affected every sort of quadruped without distinction: and such was the degree of phrensy excited by it, that some animals in their fury bit and tore themselves to pieces; and, in situations where the heat was extreme, several men fell ill with all the symptoms of hydrophobia without having been bit.
3. The malady attached itself more especially to dogs, and some of them suffered so mild an attack that their bite was not mortal; but the greater number were severely affected, and propagated the infection to their kind, to other quadrupeds, and to man.
The mean and niggardly overseer of a sugar-estate had distributed among his negroes, though advised not to do so, some head of cattle that died rabid; which he did under the impression that they were only tocado, or touched with that disease which in hot weather usually affects cattle from the mountains: and the result was, that of the poor negroes who had partaken of this meat, many died with symptoms of hydrophobia.
4. In the towns of Ica and Arequipa the number of individuals who died, after having been bit by mad dogs, was greater, and their cases less equivocal than the preceding.
In Ica a single rabid bitch bit fourteen persons in one night, of whom eight were in one house; some sleeping al fresco, or in the open air; others were variously occupied; and the remaining six were among those who, on hearing the alarm, ran to assist in killing the bitch. The surgeon of the place, Don Mariano Estrada, wished to persuade them to submit to be cured; but they rejected his proposal, saying the will of God should be done; and all died with the exception of two men, the one twenty-eight and the other fifty years of age, who agreed to be placed under medical treatment. The physician cured them, happily, on the safest plan; which consists in applying a blister on the part bitten, with a view to promote suppuration from it, and in exciting salivation by means of mercurial inunction.
In the city of Arequipa it was much disputed whether or not the malady was a legitimate hydrophobia, and very learned papers pro and con were written by the Doctors Rosas and Salvani. In this paper-war much time was lost that should have been taken advantage of for resisting the progress of the malady. True it is, that in many cases those disorders, which by frightened imaginations were represented to be real examples of hydrophobia, were, in point of fact, no such thing; and the alarming misconceptions thus induced were soothed down and removed by persuasive means. Hence, this circumstance, which was the natural consequence of the general panic existing at the time, led Professor Salvani to think that it was precisely the same in all instances, until at length a succession of melancholy results declared the real nature of the disease. Immediately upon being made acquainted that the epidemic hydrophobia approached the capital, the Viceroy of Peru, Abascal, ordered all the dogs in the place to be killed,[53] by means of which he liberated Lima from the impending scourge; for though a very few hydrophobic patients entered, during this period, into the hospitals, they were not inhabitants of the city, but some individuals who had come in from the neighbouring farms and valleys.
5. When this calamitous epidemic commenced in the valleys of Costa Abajo, Don Jose Figueroa, Bachelor of Arts, wrote me to say, that “the dogs went about with their tails between their feet; they slavered much; hid themselves from human sight; howled lustily; and presently they fell down and moved no more:—as remedies in these cases, cutting off the ears and giving oil were tried in vain. The cats, with their hair on end, ran about the house-tops. Horses and asses got enraged the one against the other; they threw themselves on the ground, rolled about, and instantly on being dead they swelled and putrefied. Black cattle—roaring and lowing—bounded about, fought with each other, in the contest even broke their horns, and they died quickly.”
6. Professor Estrada confidently stated, that of forty-two individuals who died in the city of Ica, after having been bit by mad dogs, the greater number were cut off from twelve to ninety days after the accident. The symptoms which followed the ingraftment of the poison disclosed themselves in the form of convulsions, oppression at the breast, sighs, sadness, laborious breathing, horror at liquids and shining objects, fury, vomiting of dark bilious matter, and an incessant urgent call on the part of the patients that the assistants should depart from them, because they felt themselves impelled to attack, bite, and tear them to pieces: none in this state survived beyond the term of five days.
Since the year 1808 this terrible epidemic has been disappearing. From time to time, however, a dog may be seen running violently hither and thither, and biting all whom he may happen to meet, in the same way as is done by the really mad dog.—But, in the examples wherein no bad results arise from the bite, they may be considered of the same character with the disorder observed by Mr. Colombier, which attacks dogs, renders them furious, and excites them to bite, but has, nevertheless, nothing at all of hydrophobia in it;—still, however, the safest way is to kill the dogs thus affected, and to implore the Father of mercies that these regions may never again experience so severe a visitation.
Canis ore timendo,