New theory and old practice in relation to medicine and certain industries : being an analysis of current literature of these subjects / by C.A. Gordon.

Gordon, Charles Alexander, 1821-1899.

Date:: 1886

Credit: New theory and old practice in relation to medicine and certain industries : being an analysis of current literature of these subjects / by C.A. Gordon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$As so great a variety as that above recorded takes place in the characters of the disease which follows inoculation with rabic matters, neither is any ground shown for considering that disease to be specific in nature, in the sense in which small pox, for example, following specific inoculation is itself specific. The various other points touched upon by M. Vignal may be compared with what has already been advanced in the article on Eabies and Hydrophobia in the text. [pp. 61, 140.] 2. This virulence is maintained during several days by observing a temperature varying from C to 12° Cent. (32° to 53.6° F), and avoiding decomposition. [That is t> say, the virulence, not of a definite and specific virus as that term is ordinarily understood, but of liquids and tissues of animals dead of a disease in which as shown in par. 1, there was no constancy or certainty in its symptoms, manifested in different animals. How then, to phenomena so various, the specific term rabies could with propriety and exactitude be applied does not appear by the report before us.] 3. There is more certainty attached to inoculation for rabies with nervous substance than with saliva or salivary glands, because rabid virus can be obtained from the nervous system free from foreign micro-organisms. [Let us refer to what is recorded on this point under paragraph 1 :— M. Galtier made certain inoculations with fragments of the cerebellum and spinal marrow, but as regards production of hydrophobia unsuccessfully. Note also that inoculation with rabic saliva produced a new disease (therefore not hydrophobia). Nor is the virus of hydrophobia always present in the cerebro-spinal fluids. Therefore the obvious conclusion to be drawn is, that neither is inoculation with nervous matter constant in regard to the phenomena which succeed to that operation, nor in regard to its o\vn virulence. Ante, pp. 144, 145.] [On the subject of micro-organisms see p. 90 of the text.] 4. .Inoculating the cerebral surface after trephining, also inocu- lating by venous injection is attended by more certain results than by introducing the virus in the subcutaneous areolar tissue. [Hydrophobia was said to have invariably followed; not one inocu- lation failed. Sometimes dumb madness—sometimes furious—was de- veloped. But in the record before U8 no statement occurs indicative of$