II. Bites of Rabid Animals.—As the subject of Hydrophobia is fully treated of in Dr. Tanner’s work on “The Practice of Medicine,” remarks are here confined to the treatment to be adopted directly a person is bitten by a rabid animal. This is briefly as follows:—The tissues round the seat of injury are to be compressed by a ligature or otherwise, to prevent absorption. Then the wounded part is to be excised as soon as possible; taking care to remove every portion touched by the animal’s teeth, and to obtain a clean raw surface. The wound should then be thoroughly washed by a stream of water, long poured over it, and lunar caustic afterwards applied. Mr. Youatt prefers the nitrate of silver, freely used, to every other caustic; and he also recommends that after its application the wound should be quickly healed, though many authorities advise that it be kept open by irritating ointments. As these operations are very painful, there is no objection to the patient being placed under the influence of chloroform. He should afterwards be assured that everything has been done to prevent any subsequent mischief; and to give him greater confidence and to banish all fear from his mind, it may be as well to administer ammonia and bark for some days after the accident.
III. Stings of Bees, etc.—The poison apparatus of the common bee consists of glands, and a sting placed at the extremity of the body. The effect of the bite is usually slight, and the pain quickly passes off. In some few instances, however, there have resulted swelling and erysipelas, or suppuration and gangrene, or even death.
In the month of August, 1819, John Trevalli, of Pennsylvania, was stung by a bee in the middle finger of his right hand. He immediately became faint and insensible to surrounding objects; his complexion was livid, his breathing slow, and the perspiration saturated his clothes. At the end of an hour and a half he was bled, and recovered. On the 21st July, 1820, he was stung in the temple by a bumble bee. His wife was present and gave him some water, but in ten minutes he was dead.—(American Journal of Medical Sciences, Vol. 19, p. 265. Philadelphia, 1836.) Two other rapidly fatal cases are noticed in the same journal, as well as two examples of death from the sting of a wasp and one from the bite of a spider.
Mr. C. Hanbury has recorded a case of death from the sting of a bee (Medical Times and Gazette, p. 232. 10th March, 1860); and has also given short abstracts of several examples collected by Dr. Crisp, where severe symptoms have resulted from the same injury. Sir Benjamin Brodie (Lectures on Pathology and Surgery, p. 286. London, 1846) says he has seen a case in which sloughing of the cellular tissue followed from a leech bite, and another in which similar mischief followed the sting of a bee. Both the patients died.
And again, in a communication from Montbard (La Patrie, 19th September, 1858) it is stated that a youth sixteen years of age was drinking from a bottle, when a wasp, which he had not seen, got into his throat and wounded him. He died suffocated by the swelling, before any assistance could be procured.
According to Messrs. Kirby and Spence (Introduction to Entomology, Seventh Edition, p. 76, London, 1856), serious effects are sometimes produced on peculiar constitutions by eating freely of honey or from partaking of mead—a drink made by fermenting honey and water. These authors state that they knew a lady upon whom such things acted like poison, and they had heard of instances in which death was the consequence. Sometimes, when the bees have extracted their sweets from poisonous plants, these injurious results have not been confined to individuals of a particular habit. Thus, according to Dr. Barton (American Philosophical Transactions, vol. 5), there were numerous deaths in the autumn and winter of 1790 from eating honey collected in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, which, on inquiry, was found to be due to this substance having been extracted from the beautiful but poisonous flowers of the Kalmia latifolia.
The following Table from Dr. Garrod’s “Materia Medica” shows the proportions in which some of the more important drugs of the “Pharmacopœia” are contained in the Officinal Preparations.