Abstract
II.WE do not intend to do more than allude in a cursory manner to the prophylactic treatment of hydrophobia, i.e. to the treatment adopted to prevent the occurrence of the disease in those who have been bitten by mad dogs. The general experience of the past sanctions, as might be expected, the practice of attempting to prevent the absorption of the poison of rabies by excising or destroying by caustics the wounds inflicted by rabid animals; of the innumerable internal remedies which have been proposed and made use of with the object of preventing the development of hydrophobia in those bitten by rabid dogs, it may be said with justice that nothing whatever is known which warrants the assertions of their advocates. This is indeed a case in which the fallacies which beset all therapeutical inquiries, especially when attempted by ignorant persons and fanatics, are specially liable to obscure the truth. Of all dogs supposed to be rabid, only an infinitesimal proportion really are so, and it is but rarely that the fact of a dog being rabid is tested by having it watched until it dies, or by the unfortunate fact that some of those bitten perish by hydrophobia; then, of all persons bitten by certainly rabid dogs, only a small proportion become affected with hydrophobia, even when no treatment is adopted, so that the value of any drug or remedial measure as a prophylactic could only be tested by an experience such as no one ever has had.
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Hydrophobia 1 . Nature 17, 139–141 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/017139a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/017139a0