As for belladonna, its employment for the prevention and cure of hydrophobia is very ancient. Its external use for this purpose has been mentioned by Pliny, and its internal, with the same view, as far back as the year 1696. In 1763 belladonna was recommended by Schmidt as a remedy for hydrophobia, and in 1779 by J. H. Munch. But as this remedy has so often failed, very little confidence is placed in it in this country. In Italy, however, it is still employed, as Brera certifies, where its exhibition in very powerful doses, in conjunction with the warm bath and mercurial friction, tends to show that it will sometimes arrest the disease in its incipient state.

A few years ago the public hope was raised by the accounts given of hydrochlorine. In fact, Wendelstadt even published the story of an Englishman who allowed himself to he bit several times by a mad dog, and then saved himself by washing the bites with this acid; and still more recently the Italian "Journal of Physic," etc, published some observations tending to prove its efficacy. The bites were covered with charpie, which was wet with the acid; and when the symptoms commence, if it can be swallowed in a fluid state, so much the better; if not, it must be given in bread-pills imbued with it. For a child eight years old the dose is ij. four or five times a day, but gradually increased.

Now, in order to give hydrochlorine a fair trial, it wa3 used internally and externally on seven patients at Lyons. The bites were washed and bathed with it, and some of them also cauterised; each patient took one drachm of the acid made into an agreeable sweetened drink. Notwithstanding, all these unfortunate individuals afterwards died of rabies, although the treatment was begun the day after the wounds were inflicted.

The excision of the bite seventy hours after infliction and washing the wounds with oxymuriatic acid did not, in Dr. Johnson's ease, prevent the disease.

In America, the plant Scutellaria Iaterifolia has been greatly extolled as a certain specific for hydrophobia, and Dr. Marochetti of Moscow has described a new treatment, which consists in giving large doses of genista tinctoria, or butcher's broom, and pricking with a lancet, and then cauterising with a hot needle some little pustules said by him to form at the orifice of the submaxillary glands between the third and ninth day from the period of the bite, the mouth being afterwards well washed out with the aforesaid decoction of broom. Magendie, West, and various English practitioners, however, have not been able to discern those pustules in the mouth, possibly in consequence of their having looked for them too late, that is, after the accession of the constitutional disorder. For it appears that another authority noticed such pustules in several patients, namely, Majistel of Saintes. Some arose on the sixth, others later, and the latest on the thirty-second day.

M. Villermé also observed a transparent pustule under the left side of the tongue, in the case of a female, on the eighth day from the bite. Now in relation to this part of the subject, it is worthy of notice that the vesicles were particularly sought for in two rabid sheep, but could not be found.

Another remedy, the prussic or hydrocyanic acid, has likewise been proposed, on account of its reputed anti-spasmodic properties; but experiments made with it on dogs furnish no results in favour of its being likely to prove useful in the present disorder.

Indeed, the following statement (if correct) leaves little hope that any effectual medicine for hydrophobia will ever be discovered: - " The most active substances, the most powerful narcotics (says M. Magendie), have no effect upon man or animals attacked with rabies. I do not merely speak of substances introduced into the stomach, and the operation of which may be prevented or diminished by so many circumstances. I speak of substances injected into the veins, and the effects of which must be equally prompt and energetic. For instance, I have several times introduced into the veins of rabid dogs very strong doses of opium (ten grains) without producing the least narcotic effect, while a single grain of the watery extract injected into the veins of a healthy dog immediately makes him fall asleep, and often continue so eight or ten hours. The same phenomena are remarked in our species. M. Dupuytren and I injected into the radial vein of a young man labouring under hydrophobia eight grains of the gummy extract of opium without any apparent result. We have also seen mad dogs hear the introduction of prussic acid into their veins without an instant's remission in the progress of the disorder."

Magendie frequently noticed in his experiments that an artificial aqueous plethora manifestly enfeebles all the functions of the animals subjected to it, and especially those of the nervous system. Hence he was led to think that some benefit might arise from it in a case where the activity of the nervous system is at its greatest height. His idea received encouragement also from considering that, in hydrophobia, the patient takes no drink to replace the fluid separated from the circulation by the skin and pulmonary perspiration, and that after venesection the blood seems as if it hardly contained any serum (or water). The experiment was first tried on a rabid dog, from which a pound of blood was drawn, and then sixty ounces of water injected into the left jugular vein, about ten or twelve ounces of blood mixed with water, however, being purposely allowed to flow out during the latter part of the operation. The animal, which had previously been quite furious, now became tranquil; but five hours after it was attacked with difficulty of breathing, which ended fatally in half an hour.

He again tried the following experiment upon a man He injected a Paris pint of heated water into the veins of the man's arm, who was labouring under hydrophobia in an advanced and violent form. Directly after the operation, the patient from being furious became tranquil; the pulse fell from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and twenty, then to one hundred, and in twenty minutes to eighty. The convulsive motions ceased, and the patient drank a glass of water without any difficulty. Notwithstanding a haemorrhage from the bowels, he continued to improve till the fifth day, when he was seized with acute pain, accompanied by swelling of the wrists, knees, and elbows, and threatened with an extensive abscess of the leg, the consequence of the lodgment in the foot of two pieces of lancets, broken in the attempt to bleed him while he was suffering violent paroxysms in a previous stage of the disorder. Despondency and mental agitation again came on, and he died on the ninth day after the experiment On dissection the swelled joints were found filled with pus, the mucous membrane of a part of the small intestines reddened by the expansion of the veins, several small ulcerations in the large bowels, the blood in a decidedly putrified state, the heart and large vessels distended with gas, air under the peritoneal coat of the stomach and intestines, posterior part of the lungs a little swelled, windpipe sound, but the bronchi red. Magendie, therefore, considers this case on the whole very favourable to the practice; and when it is reflected that the patient underwent, directly after the experiment, a great and sudden change for the better, lived eight days after the injection, and then possibly died rather from accidental complaints, it must be acknowledged that the method seemed deserving of further trial. I would also particularly recommend its adoption in an earlier stage, and while the patient is less reduced than the one on whom the experiment was tried, and failed.