perceived by any other person*. Dissection in this case produced nothing striking. GEN. I. SPEC. VIII. Rabies. Hypothesis Dessault, in his treatise on rabies, tells us that he has Lyssa. often met with numerous minute worms in the heads of those who have died of this disease; and he hence re- of Dessault, gards such animalcules as its cause. But this writer was who derives the disease a slave to the Linnéan hypothesis of invermination, and from aniapplied the same cause to syphilis, which he also suppos- malcules. ed to be maintained by a transfer of vermicules from one individual to another: and hence proposed to treat syphilis, lyssa, and itch, as diseases of a like origin, with the common antidote of mercury; and gives instances of a success which no one has met with out of his own practice. The cases, however, which he describes had not advanced to the stage of water dread; and in all of them he thought it prudent to combine with his mercurial inunction cold bathing, and Palmarius's antilyssic powder. the local irritation from a dormant or from uni Not from it com the last, as monly precedes it and Vander Brock and, after him, Rahn maintain that the Whether return of pain and inflammation to the bitten part, on the onset of the disease, does not occur from any virus which proceed has hitherto been lying dormant there, but from the universal excitement alone. It may be observed, however, seminium, in opposition to such an opinion, that this local affection versal exis in most instances a prelude to the general disease, and citement. forms the punctum saliens from which it issues; as though the contagious ferment had remained dormant there, and was at length called into action by some exciting cause. There seems, nevertheless, to be a slight departure from the general character of the disease in a few cases, and particularly in those that are produced by the bite of a rabid cat, whether the latter have originated it, or re- rabies from ceived it from a rabid dog, as though by a passage through the domestic cat the virus undergoes a similar change to that which takes place in the virus of small-pox, when passing through the system of an individual which by which has previously submitted to the influence of cow-pox for, upon the whole, the disease appears to evince some- to be ren * Medico-Chir. Trans. 1. 132. : gives rise to it. Variation in feline canine, the dis ease seems dered somewhat less malignant. GEN. I. Entasia . Hence two distinct forms. a E. Lyssa felina. Feline Rabies. Example from Morgagni. what less malignity, to be more disposed to intermit, and its spastic symptoms, and especially that of water-dread, to be both less frequent and less violent: so that in respect to symptoms we may perhaps mark out the two following varieties: a Felina. Feline Rabies. B Canina. Canine Rabies. The spastic symptoms less acute and frequently intermitting; produced by the bite of a rabid cat. The spastic constriction, for the most part, extending to the muscles of deglutition, which are violently convulsed at the appearance or idea of liquids: produced by the bite of a rabid dog, wolf, or fox. There is a case of FELINE RABIES, if it be rabies, in Morgagni, and which is copied from him into Sauvages' Nosology, in which the above distinction is so strongly marked, that the author, in the first edition of his own Nosology, was induced to follow M. de Sauvages' mode of classifying it, and made it, after him, a distinct species, though he deviated from the name under which it occurs in this justly celebrated writer, which is that of Anxietas à Morsu*. The history of the enraged cat is not given, nor is it certain that the rage was that of rabies. The master of the animal was attacked and wounded both by its teeth and claws. The symptoms took place four days after the bite, and were confined to spasms of the chest without hydrophobia; nor do these seem to have been of great violence, for they are described as "magna præcordiorum anxietas". Local and general bleedings were useless a frequent repetition of the warm bath afforded valescence, relief; but it only yielded to an ephemera with copious sweat. The intervals were lunar: for it returned with the full moon for two years: the bitten part, as usual, first becoming highly irritable, and the spasms or vehement In this case no hydrophobia, and, on con periodical returns, commenc ing in the bitten part, and continuing for two years. * Classis VII. Ord. I. v. 6. anxiety of the præcordia supervening, which were now relieved by bleeding. After this period it returned with every fourth full moon for two years more, and then pears to have ceased. ap GEN. I. SPEC. VIII. Feline A few in- periodical returns have occurred among dogs. Singular instance recorded by Peters: A few instances of intermission, with a return of periodical paroxysms, produced by the bite of a rabid dog, are also to be found in the medical collections: of which Dr. Peter's case, recorded in the Philosophical Transactions* affords a striking example, the paroxysm returning for many months afterwards, severely once a fortnight, or at every new and full moon, and slightly at the quarters, or in the intervening weeks. Selle, indeed, asserts that he has met with an instance of the same kind of intermission among dogs; and hence where the individual recovers, both varieties seem occasionally to subside in this terminate in manner. The Dr. Fothergill has given two cases of unquestionable affection from feline rabies produced by the same animal. The cat first bit the maid-servant, and afterwards the master of the house, about the middle of February. wound inflicted on the maid-servant remained open and irritable from the first, and continued to resist every application for many months; it healed however, at length, and no constitutional symptoms supervened. The wound inflicted on the master healed easily and in a short time, but in the middle of the ensuing June, being four months afterwards, the usual symptoms of lyssa appeared, yet with comparatively slight and occasional water-dread: insomuch that the patient, far from resisting the use of the warm-bath, sometimes called for it, expressed a high sense of the comfort it afforded him, and was able at times to dash the water over his head with his own hands. It terminated, however, fatally, and with the general symptoms of distress which we shall give presently †. In the Transactions of the Medical Society of London, we have a highly interesting case of the same kind, • Phil. Trans. 1745. No. 475. Neue Beträge zur Natur und Arzney-wissenschaft. B. 11. 118. And hence both varienes seem sometimes to this manner. Fothergill's two ex amples of affection from feline rabies. In the one the wound heal, but no constitu difficult to tional sym ptoms. In the other the wound healed easily, but death ensued. Further illustrated from a marked case in the Philosophical Transactions. GEN. I. * E. Lyssa felina. Feline rabies. which proved equally fatal, in seventy-four days from the SPEC. VIII. time of receiving the injury, and fifty-eight hours from the commencement of the disease; all the symptoms moreover exhibiting less violence than usually occurs in canine madness, with little or no water-dread, and consequently an ability to drink fluids to the close of the disease, though the muscles of deglutition, as well as those of the chest, evinced always some degree of constriction, with occasional exacerbations. The patient was a young lady of eighteen years of age; the attack was made in the month of January, with both claws and teeth, by a domestic cat that was lurking under the bed, and, which though not known to be ill, had for some time before been observed to be wild, and had been roving in the woods. The fate of the animal is not mentioned. The lacerated parts were incised and purposely inflamed by the application of spirit of turpentine. The wounds healed, and the general health of the patient continued perfect till the beginning of the ensuing April, when she was suddenly frightened by looking out of a window, and seeing a maddog pursued by a crowding populace. This proved an exciting cause. She instantly expressed alarm, anxiety, and dejection of mind. In the afternoon she complained of an unusual stiffness in moving her left arm, and its sense of feeling was impaired; she discovered an aversion to company: the irritations of noise, heat, and light, were offensive to her; she avoided the fire, and forbade a candle to be brought near her. sibility of the affected arm seemed to shoot in a line from the middle finger which had been lacerated, and was accompanied with an acute pain which terminated in the glands of the axilla, where she complained of a considerable swelling. Yet neither of the hands (for both had been injured) were affected with discolouration, tension, tumefaction, or any other mark of local injury, though a degree of lividity had been observed upon the lacerated part of the finger a short time before the discase made its Exciting cause clear. Little affec tion of the parts origin ally injured. The rigidity and insen Vol. 1, Art. iv. p. 78. 8vo. 1810. GEN. I. SPEC. VIII. felina. Feline Spasms appearance. She had a painful constrictive sensation in her chest, and the respiration was interrupted by frequent a E. Lyssa sighings. The spasmodic symptoms increased, and at length the whole system, but especially the lungs, was rabies. affected with violent convulsions: the breathing was exquisitely laborious, but the paroxysm subsided in about two minutes. Frequent sickness and vomiting followed: the convulsive spasms about the throat obliged her to gulp what she swallowed, and she showed a slight reluctance, but nothing more, to handling a glass goblet. The pulse was 132 strokes in a minute; the skin was cool, the tongue moist, the bowels open, the thirst urgent, without any tendency to delirium. She was worn out, however, by sensorial exhaustion and distress, and at last mination, expired calmly at the distance of time from the attack already stated. about the throat, but little water dread. Fatal ter canina. Distinctive In the general progress of CANINE RABIES, all the above 6 E. Lyssa indications are greatly aggravated, and the mind often Canine participates in the disease and becomes incoherent. What- rabies. ever be the exciting cause, the wounded part almost alsigns, and ways, though not universally so, takes the lead in the general detrain of symptoms and becomes uneasy, the cicatrix look- scription. ing red or livid, often opening afresh, and oozing forth a little coloured serum, while the limb feels stiff and numb. The patient is next oppressed with anxiety, and depression, and sometimes sinks into a melancholy from which nothing can rouse him. . The pulse and general temperature of the skin do not at this time vary much from their natural state. A stiffness and painful constriction are, however, felt about the chest and throat; the breathing becomes difficult, and is interrupted by sobs and deep sighs, as the sleep is, if any be obtained, by starts and frightful dreams. Bright colours, a strong light, acute sounds, particularly the sound of water poured from bason to bason, even a simple agitation of the air by a movement of the bed-curtains, is a source of great disturbance, and will often bring on a paroxysm of general convulsions, or aggravate the tetanic constriction. The patient is tormented with thirst, but dares not drink; the sight or even |