Hydrophobia

Dr. Hammond - A dog perfectly healthy, or at least free from rabies, may produce tlie disease by liis bite through his saliva, as I have already stated. You remember tlie case of McCormick. In that case the dog Was exbibited to the Ncurological Society more tlian a month after lie bit McCormick, and, as hydropliobia ïitns its course in seven or eiglit days, and as tlie dog invariably dies, he eitker could not have liad it, or lie could not have been the dog in question. Bemember, it takes a wound to produce death. You might swallow the saliva and it would not kill you unless you had, perhaps, an abrasure on your lip. The saliva is only poisonous when communicated through a wound. You get lo;kjaw, or tetanus, from a simple ■wound, and hydrophobia seems to be tetanus plus a group of other symptoms. Beporter - From all this it would appear that the science of medicine knows very little about hydrophobia. Dr. H. - We can recognize the origin and symptoms of hydrophobia as wc can those of scarlet fever or mcaslcs. To this day no one has discovercd the primal origin of scarlet fever. We know that we cannot cure hydrophobia. Bemember that there never has been a cure on record. It is necessary not to confound the prevention with the cure. There are a great many people who claim to have invented cures f or hydrophobia, butthey mean cures after the bite and before tlie poison has been developed. This is an easy matter, but no cure has as yet been effected after the poison (which lies dormant in the system a fer weeks, and sometimes even several months, and even several years) has been developed. In the early part of last fall a distinguished officer of the army came to me, who had been bitten by a dog manifestly hydrophobic. I cauterized the wound with a red-hot iron, and I regard him as perfectly safe. - Neio York Ilerald's Interview rvith üuracon General Jiammond.