A CURB FOR HYDROPHOBIA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 371, 8 July 1874, Page 3

A CURB FOR HYDROPHOBIA.

The "Salut Public*' of Lyons says Dr. Buiooon claims to liavo discovered a remedy for this terrible disease, and to have applied it with complete success in many cases. In attending a female patient in the last stage of canine madness, the doctor imprudently wiped his hands with a' handkerchief impregnated with her saliva. There happened to be a slight abrasion on the index finger of the left hand, and, confident in his own curative system, the doctor merely washed the part with water. He was fully aware, however, of the imprudence he had committed, and gives the following account of the malady afterwards. — " Believing that the malady would not declare itself until the fortieth day, auJhaving numerous patients to visit, I put off from day to day the application of my remedy — that is to say, vapor baths. The ninth day, being in my cabinet, I felt all at once a pain in my throat, and still greater pain in my eyes. My body felt so light that I felt as if I could jump to a prodigious height, or if thrown out of a window I could sustain myself in the air. My hair was so sensitive that I appeared to be able to count each separately without looking at it. Saliva kept continually forming in the moutb. Any movement of air caused great pain to me, and I was obliged to avoid the sight of brilliant objects. I had a continual desire to run and bite — not human beings, but animals, and all that was near me. I drank with difficulty, and I remarked that the sight of water distressed me more than the pain in my throat. I believe that by shutting the eyes any one suffering from hydrophobia can always drink. The fit came on every five minutes, and I then felt the pain start from the index finger, and run up the nerves to the shoulder. In this state, thinking that my course was preservative, not curative, I took a vapor bath, not with the iutention of cure, but of suffocating myself. When the bath was at tho heat of 52 centigrades (92 3 Fahrenheit) all the symptoms disappeared as if by magic, and since then I have never felt anything more of them. I have attended more than eighty persons bitten by mad animals, and I have not lost a single one." When a person is bitten by a mad dog, he must, for seven days,, take a vapor bath — a la Russe, as it is called — of 57 to 63 degrees. This is the preventive remedy. A vapour bath may be quickly made by putting three or four red-hot bricks in a bucket or tub of water, and let the patient sit over it on a cane-bottomed or willow chair,' enveloped in a large blanket, for fifteen or twenty minutes. When the disease is declared it only requires one vapour bath, rapidly increasing to 37 centigrades, then slowly to 53 '; and the patient must strictly confine himself to his chamber until the cure is complete.

Singt/lab Accident and Narrow Escape. — a young man named Joseph Hedges, son of Mr. Stephen Hedges, of Hillsborough,, was riding hemewards, when a violent squall overtookhim. The wind tore theleaves and boughs, of the trees off, and a large limb came crashing down upon the head of Hedge's horse, killing it instantaneously. The young man, howeTer, escaped with a violent bruise on the thigh, caused by a blow from the falling wood, which drove a tin match-box in his pocket violently against the flesh. The wood fell all round him, and when he came to himself, he found that he was in the centre of about two tons of broken timber, none of which, except that whichbruised his thigh, had touched him. — " Maitland Mercury." Peofitablb Fabming.— The " G-eelong Advertiser" remarks : — " Some of tho farmers in the Portarhngton district have been very successful with their onion crop alone, which has netted no less than £1000. As nn instance of successful husbandry it deserves to be mentioned that another farmer in tin's neighborhood commenced his career as -a cultivator with 20s. capital some six years ago, and he is now the proprietor of "a farm of 300 acreß, worth from £15 to £20 per acra." Said a youngster in high glee, displaying his purchase to a boßom friend on the sidewalk : " Tyro cocoanuta for ten cents ; that ■will make me sick to-morrow and I won't ,&ave to go-to scfcooj."