MAD DOG'S BITE CURED BY A STONE.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 767, 24 January 1871, Page 3

MAD DOG'S BITE CURED BY A STONE.

The "Illinois Republican" tells the following story : —On Sunday, June 26, George H. Jacobs and wife, of Holderman's Grove, county Illinois, were bitten by a mad dog. They owned the dog, chained hitn, and he died on the following Tuesday ; hence there could be no mistake about his being rabid, and they then realised their terrible position. Having heard of some person at or near Morris that had long before been bitten and was cured by the application of a " mad stone," Mr Jacobs at once started to find hira for the purpose of ascertaining the location of the stone, &c. He found that it was owned and kept by ,1. P. Evans, in Lincoln, Logan County, 111. He at once took the train for Lincoln, arriving there on Thursday morning after he was bitten, and the stone was tried. He then tried to telegraph from Lincoln to his wife at Morris, to come to him. The agent informed him that Morris was on the opposition line, and that they would not receive messages that were to be sent over that line. The nature and the object of the despatch were explained, and pay for the transmission tendered, yet the agent said he would not send it, and there was no use of his talking any more about it. Mr Jacobs had no other alternative left him but to go home after his wife, which he did, after making arrangements with Mr Evans to meet him here in Joilet with the stone. On Monday Mr Jacobs came, and on "Tuesday evening last (ten days after the bite) Mr Evans came, and made five applications. The stone is small, being about one inch and a half long, nearly one inch thick, and perhaps one inch wide at the place of its greatest width, and seeming almost as porous as honeycomb. When removed from the wound it omits an odour similar to that of a dead snake, only more rank and nauseous. On the first and second applications of about twenty minutes each, Mrs Jacobs says she did not feel any sensation other than she would have felt had any other hard substance been placed on her hand, but the third application of the stone drew so hard, that it was actually painful to bear, and when taken off left the impression of the pores of the stone on her fingers. When the stone is taken from the wound it is placed in water for about the same length of time that it remains on the bite. Mr Evans says that the stone was brought from Wales by his great grandfather to Virginia, and by his grandfather to Kentucky, and his father brought it to this State forty years ago. At his father's death, twenty-one years ago, it came into his possession, and since then he has applied it to over one thousand different cases, and always with perfect success, except in one instance—that of John Bennington, of Minouk, in Woodford county, eleven years ago. He was frightfully mangled from his elbows to the endß of his fingers, and no application was made until he, had the disease. Then, by reason of their being so many wounds,

and it being so long (three weeks) after he was bitten, the poison seemed to accumulate as fast as the stone could draw it out. The man would be rational as loug as the stone was applied to any of the wounds but as soon as it was removed to bo cleansed he would take a fit, and so he continued—rational when the stone was on and raving mad when off—until he died. Mr Evana cannot tell how the properties of the stone were discovered, nor how long they have been known and in use. It has been in his own and his ancestors' family for about two hundred years.