A wine-porter was labouring under a low fever; after a time appeared some symptoms of hydrophobia, and much inquiry elicited the recollection of his having been slightly bitten by a dog six weeks before. In the interval he was convicted of some fraudulent practice in the cellar of his master, to whom he owed great obligation, and was dismissed with disgrace. Anxiety on this event seemed to produce the fever, which terminated in rabies.
Lately an officer was bitten by a dog, whose madness being recognised, the bitten part was excised immediately: after an undisturbed interval of two months, he was advised to go to England to dissipate the recollection of the accident. There he exercised himself violently in hewing wood, felt pain in the hand which had been bitten, embarked for Ireland, had symptoms of hydrophobia on board the packet, and died soon after his arrival. From the varying period of attack, we might infer that the influence of occasional causes is very considerable. In the last patient, hydrophobia supervened exactly five weeks from the time of the bite: he lost one hundred and twenty ounces of blood in twelve hours, which sunk him much; violent perspiration, and at length delirium, attended the water-dread; during the last twenty-four hours he swallowed, and recovered his senses; and died slightly convulsed, whilst cutting an egg. These cases seem to point out agitation of mind and feverish excitation as powerful occasional causes.
Herman Strahl has recently related the following case of rabies in which the dog that had bitten the patient was not mad. In the month of January, 1833, an innkeeper was taken ill. The doctor found him dressed, and stretched upon his bed. He did not complain of any particular ailment, but loathed all food. He at last admitted that he experienced some difficulty in swallowing; and his mother having offered him a cup of tea, he refused it with a sense of horror, and his countenance immediately assumed a character of ferocity that terrified the bystanders. An apple having been given to him, he ate it without repugnance. It was now discovered that, five weeks before, he had been bitten by a dog he was training; and the wound was slow in healing. The dog was sought, and did not show the slightest sign of disease,—barking, playing, and drinking freely. In the evening the patient’s case was aggravated; and it was with the utmost difficulty that he was made to swallow a spoonful of ptisan. The next day he was seized with a violent attack of rabies: seeing one of his sisters drinking, he fell into a furious rage, dashed a looking-glass to pieces, and entreated his relatives to withdraw, as he otherwise would inevitably bite them. This outrageous paroxysm lasted half an hour; at its expiration he fell into a tranquil sleep. But at night he was seized with another attack; and he began to howl and imitate the barking of a dog, and commenced breaking every thing in the room of a shining appearance. His sisters fled in dismay; but he seized his mother, a woman of sixty-five years of age, cast her on the ground, and bit her in the cheek. After this desperate act, he seemed to be struck with a conviction of what he had done, and became more tranquil; but, half an hour after, on entering his chamber, he was found dead, his head under the bedclothes. His mother did not experience any accidents from the injury.
It is singular that, in this miserable condition, the patients will frequently show singular partialities; and, although repulsing any fluid offered to them by some individuals, will take it from others, and attempt, however vainly, to drink. In the Hôtel Dieu of Paris, a young girl, affected with hydrophobia, would only take a cup of ptisan from me; but with looks of inexpressible anxiety returned it to me, after having struggled to moisten her burning lips. At Boulogne, a postilion, bitten by a mad dog, was violent with every one but one of my nephews: from him he also accepted drink, although unable to swallow it; before dying in excruciating agonies, he repeatedly asked for him, and begged that he might be sent for. He would not allow, even in his last moments, any other person to come near him;—another striking instance of that unknown power of sympathy to which I have frequently alluded in the preceding pages.
ON THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE SCIENCE OF MEDICINE.
In a former paper I have given a sketch of the progress of the Chirurgical profession, relating the many difficulties its members had to encounter in their endeavours to attain that degree of perfection to which surgery has risen; a perfection which we have every reason to believe will still continue to be improved by the daily discoveries of the Physiologist, whose labours may be considered the theoretical guide of the practitioner. The history of medicine is equally fraught with much interest, since its being a science more or less conjectural, it has opened a vast career to the speculative mind, and a wide field for the ambitious. Having been long considered a divine inspiration, priesthood in every age considered this science an attribute of their vocation, adding to their spiritual and temporal power.
In a rude state of society it is more than probable that the art of curing diseases, as well as that of healing injuries, did not constitute a special profession, but was practised indiscriminately by all persons whose experience and position in the midst of their uncivilized kinsfolks, gave some weight and importance to their advice. Warriors attended their wounded companions in arms. Parents sought to relieve their offspring, and children endeavoured to alleviate the sufferings of their aged and infirm sires. Thus, I may say, was the art of healing instinctively taught, and not unfrequently the brute creation guided the efforts of humanity; when man contemplated the means animals resorted to when labouring under disease. Plutarch affirms that it is to these instinctive efforts of animals that we are indebted for the knowledge of the various properties of plants. The wild goats of Crete pointed out the use of the Dictamus and vulnerary herbs—dogs when indisposed sought the Triticum repens, and the same animal taught to the Egyptians the use of purgatives constituting the treatment called Syrmaïsm. The hippopotamus introduced the practice of bleeding, and it is affirmed that the employment of enemata was shown by the ibis. Sheep with worms in their liver were seen seeking saline substances, and cattle affected with dropsy anxiously looked for chalybeate waters. This study might therefore have been called an instinctive school.
Herodotus tells us that the Babylonians and Chaldeans had no physicians, and in cases of sickness the patient was carried out and exposed on the highway, that any persons passing by who had been affected in a similar manner, might give some information regarding the means that had afforded them relief. Shortly, these observations of cures were suspended in the temples of the gods, and we find that in Egypt the walls of their sanctuaries were covered with records of this description. The priests of these shrines soon considered these treasures as their property, and turned their possession to a good account. Amongst the Hebrews we find that the Levites were considered as the only persons who could cure leprosy, and the practice of medicine became their province.
The priests of Greece adopted the same practice, and some of the tablets suspended in their temples are of a curious character which will illustrate the custom. The following votive memorials are given by Gurter: “Some days back, a certain Caius, who was blind, learned from an oracle, that he should repair to the temple, put up his fervent prayers, cross the sanctuary from right to left, place five fingers on the altar, then raise his hand and cover his eyes. He obeyed, and instantly his sight was restored amidst the loud acclamations of the multitude. These signs of the omnipotence of the gods were shown in the reign of Antoninus.”