Hydrophobia

“ They are excessively filthy in their personal habits. Hydrophobia, so to speak, is a prevailing distemper; they never wash themselves. Hands and faces are covered with dirt, so thick, and of such ancient deposit, that their natural color only appears in spots, laid bare by the mechanical loosening and displacement of some of the strata, which curiously variegates the surface. ”

“ Any owner of one of these stones who hires it out should be prosecuted for getting money under false pretense, and then dealt with by the humane societies for engendering morbid and groundless fears.
Scientific men are yet divided on the question as to whether or not hydrophobia is a [Pg 54] bona fide disease, or whether it is only a functional disturbance in which the element of fear predominates. No hydrophobia germ has ever been isolated, and when the doctors these days can’t find a germ to fit a disease, it looks as if there was something wrong. ”

“ The most interesting is that on hydrophobia in an English groom who accompanied his master to Ryswick in October 1697, when the peace was being concluded, and was there bitten by a Danish dog. Symptoms of hydrophobia developed on 11 Dec., and it was observed that in the convulsions his head was generally turned towards the wound, while just before his death difficulty of swallowing ceased and he took a large quantity of toast soaked in beer. ”

“ Where the interval between the time of being bitten, and the appearance of a dread of water, exceeds five or six months, it is probable it may be occasioned by a disease derived from another cause. Such a person is predisposed in common with other people to all the diseases of which the hydrophobia is a symptom. ”

“ The most difficult to distinguish from the genuine disease are those cases in which hydrophobia occurs as a disease of the imagination, the result of fear—the lyssophobia or hydrophobie non-rabique of the writers. In these there is always the history of a bite; the cicatrix even may have become the seat of congestive redness, itching, or neuralgic pains, and these, acting on a susceptible brain, develop a disease which is hardly distinguishable from true hydrophobia, and which is quite as fatal if left to run its course. ”

“ Mad-stones, as well as snake-stones, are believed in by some persons at the present day. According to Curran, at one time in Ireland the fear of hydrophobia was so great that any person supposed to be suffering from it could be legally smothered.
According to French statistics, hydrophobia is an extremely fatal disease, although the proportion of people bitten and escaping without infection is overwhelmingly greater than those who acquire the disease. The mortality of genuine hydrophobia is from 30 to 80 per cent, influenced by efficient and early cauterization and scientific treatment. ”

“ These learned words are all formed on the same etymological principle as hydrophobia, but they are entirely psychic in origin, while hydrophobia, as it is well to explain to patients who think of the word phobia in connection with their symptoms, is, of course, a misnomer for an infectious disease—rabies—which develops as the consequence of a bite of a rabid animal, and the principal symptom of which is not fear of water, but the impossibility of swallowing any liquid because of spasm of the esophageal muscles. ”

“ There is much superstition relative to hydrophobia; the majority of wounds seen are filled with the hair of the dog, soot, ham-fat, and also with particles of decayed food and saliva from the mouth of some person who has practiced sucking the wound.
Ordinarily, the period of incubation of hydrophobia in man is before the end of the second month, although rarely cases are seen as many as six months from the reception of the bite. The first symptoms of the disease are melancholia, insomnia, loss of appetite, and occasionally shooting pains, radiating from the wound. ”

“ On several occasions hydrophobia has prevailed in this valley. It is remarkable thus to find so strange and dreadful a disease, appearing time after time in the same isolated spot. It has been remarked that certain villages in England are in like manner much more subject to this visitation than others. Dr. Unanue states that hydrophobia was first known in South America in 1803: this statement is corroborated by Azara and Ulloa having never heard of it in their time. Dr. Unanue says that it broke out in Central America, and slowly travelled southward. ”

“ When we consider all the uncertainties of life, and the danger from hydrophobia, cyclones and breach of premise, it seems sometimes as though the penitentiary was the only place where a man could be absolutely free from anxiety.
If you discover that your dog has hydrophobia, it is absolutely foolish to try to cure him of the disease. The best plan is to trade him off at once for anything you can get. Do not stop to haggle over the price, but close him right out below cost.
Do not tie a tin can to the tail of a mad dog. ”

“ Hybrid, s. Any animal whose sire is of one kind and dam of another.
Hybridous, a. Begotten between animals of different species; produced from plants of different kinds.
Hydrophobia, s. Dread of water; a malady destructive to the human and canine races.
Hydrophobia in medicine is a disease generally communicated to man by the bite of a rabid dog, and is so called because one of its principal symptoms is the inability of the patient to swallow water or any other liquid. ”

“ It seems there is firmer ground for their view of the matter than the rest of us have been willing to admit There is such a thing, doubtless, as hydrophobia proper, but also there is such another thing as pseudo-hydrophobia, or hydrophobia improper. ”

“ It raged with the greatest fury in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; and but for the timely destruction of every dog in the South, ten times the number of human beings would have perished. The death from hydrophobia is as disgraceful to a corporate body, as if the inhabitants had died of thirst, when good water was near them. ”

“ A comparatively short time ago it was the equivalent of a death warrant to be bitten by a rabid animal. Modern science, however, has made death from hydrophobia a rarity when treatment is administered in time.”
The remainder of the day was spent quite pleasantly, strolling about the grounds and on the white, foam-edged beach, or lolling on the large, conformable porch.
We had dinner at six, and I was enjoying a cigar in the swing shortly thereafter, when I heard the throb of a motor in the driveway and the big car of Dr. Dorp came into view. ”

“ CHAPTER IX HYDROPHOBIA—FUNERAL CEREMONIES—AT A PADDI HARVEST—ANOTHER TUBA-FISHING EXPEDITION—THE CHARM OF PRIMITIVE MAN—INTERESTING CEREMONIES—ON HEAD-HUNTING GROUND Hydrophobia was raging at Long Pelaban, and during my stay one man and seven children were bitten. For religious reasons the Dayaks do not like to kill dogs, so in cases like this the canines that are ill are caught, their legs are tied together, and they are thrown into the water to die without being killed. ”

“ At the risk of a smile and perhaps something more from the enlightened civilized medical fraternity we will now state how they absolutely can and do cure hydrophobia, in hopes of furnishing them with a hint that may be improved upon. ”

“ I say that too; but reforming the life will deliver from the poison in the character, when you cure hydrophobia by washing the patient's skin, and not till then. It is all very well to repaper your dining-rooms, but it is very little good doing that if the drainage is wrong. ”

“ The complaint is treated here as in India and in Abyssinia: when the tumour bursts, and the worm shows, it is extracted by being gradually wound round a splinter of wood. Hydrophobia is rare, and the people have many superstitions about it. They suppose that a bit of meat falls from the sky, and that a dog eating it becomes mad. ”

“ Have the Chinese anticipated the methods of the well-meaning persons who call themselves Christian Scientists? A third way of providing against hydrophobia is to take some of the hairs of the mad dog and burn them to ashes ”

“ In the summer season these repulsive creatures are seldom dangerous to man, except when they go mad (which in fact they are rather liable to do) , in which condition they rush through field and forest heedless of hunters, dogs, or aught else, biting every creature they meet; and such animals, man or beast, surely die of hydrophobia. ”

“ But it is a question whether the saltness of the water contributes any thing to this cure, since Boerhaave, the present professor at Leyden, affirms, that when men bitten by a mad dog are arrived to the fear of water, called an hydrophobia, they may be cured by blinding the patient’s eyes, and throwing of him into a pond of water often, till he seems not to be afraid of it, or but very little, and then force him to drink large quantities. ”

“ From such Actions as these, together with those mentioned before in relating the Symptoms, it is obvious enough to conclude, that Persons thus affected are in a proper Sence Delirous. Tho’ at the same time I do think that the Hydrophobia it self (whatever is commonly believed) does not at all proceed from this Delirium, as will by and by appear. ”

“ Yet with the smartness and smirk of a graduating seminary girl refuting Epicurus she marshals them against the awful truth that every year in Europe and the United States alone more than one thousand human beings die of hydrophobia—a fact which her controversial conscience does not permit her to mention. ”

“ It was not long before she raised a discussion on hydrophobia, defending the disease from all the charges of horror and contagion that had been urged against it, narrating vehemently how a mad dog had died in her arms licking her hands and face, and appealing to the General, who denounced muzzling; but when the mangy mastiff came near him he whispered to Frank, “I wish they were all shot. You must come and see us; you must come and see us ”

“ His 'Observations on Symptoms of Hydrophobia, following the Mania,' may not be the greatest work of the kind, but it deserves a prominent place on the shelves of anyone investigating this mysterious form of disease, which has baffled man from the earliest records down to now. "I think I am myself peculiarly qualified to take up inquiry into particular forms of mental callousness or intensity, for I have what I believe to be a peculiar faculty of thrusting forth a portion of my mind into certain and limited psychological regions, into which I can find no one able to follow me. ”

“ Accordingly, an old hut had been filled with straw and fired, after which each dog was brought by its owner and thrown into the flames."
Fleming, while quartered with the British Army of Occupation at Tien-tsin, near Peking, China, in 1861, was assured on the best authority that, in some portions of the Flowery Land, it is the universal belief that a man affected with hydrophobia is enceinte, and that he is so distressed, and ultimately perishes, because he cannot be delivered! ”

“ The dog, by all means, should be allowed to live at least for some weeks, as the fact of his remaining will be the best guarantee that there is no fear of the bitten child having caught hydrophobia.
There is a foolish prejudice abroad, that a dog, be he mad or not, who has bitten a person ought to be immediately destroyed; that although the dog be not at the time mad, but should at a future period become so, the person who had been bitten when the dog was not mad, 268would, when the dog became mad, have hydrophobia! ”

“ We now got ready to go off, putting the boat’s head out; English Ben and I, who were the largest, standing on each side of the bows, to keep her “head on” to the sea, two more shipping and manning the two after oars, and the captain taking the steering oar. Two or three Spaniards, who stood upon the beach looking at us, wrapped their cloaks about them, shook their heads, and muttered “Caramba!” They had no taste for such doings; in fact, the hydrophobia is a national malady, and shows itself in their persons as well as their actions. ”

“ The old English word for mad, wood, is constantly used. The causes, the symptoms, and course of the disease, and its possible prevention by early treatment, are all discussed. The old tradition was already in existence that sufferers from rabies or hydrophobia, as it is called, dreaded water, when it is really only because the spasm consequent upon the thought even of swallowing is painful that they turn from it. ”

“ In about two hours the youth was seized with convulsive fits, and shortly after with hydrophobia; and, notwithstanding every assistance, his friends were obliged to smother him between two feather beds. ”

“ Galen and others have recorded, that the saliva, or spittle of a mad dog, if it touch an human body, and be not forthwith washed off, may cause madness. But in the Hydrophobia, there is so great force of the poyson, that the persons that are bitten do also piss or void by urine, little whelps, or pieces of flesh like them, as Avicenna lib. ”

“ If, as certain French physicians maintain, sea-water baths have only a mechanical action, infuse no new principle into the blood and are merely a simple branch of hydropathy, it must be confessed that of all the forms of hydropathy they are the harshest and most hazardous. Let it once be clearly shown that that sea-water, so rich in life, bestows no more of vitality than fresh water and we must confess that it is little less than madness to take sea-baths in the open air and at all the risk of the wind, the sun, and the thousand possible accidents. ”

“ The ghastly, shining swamp and the pools of poisonous water are horrible to the imagination because of their unnaturalness in the midst of such choking thirst. Only the perverted brain of a demon could have invented such a monstrosity. Water is in your thoughts all the time. From morning until night you are thirsty in the dry heat, and you look out over the shimmering miles and know that, though there is water here and there, if you leave the irrigation-ditch [Pg 123] you cannot quench your thirst. ”