For a history of the symptoms of the disease, and many interesting facts connected with it, I beg leave to refer the reader to Dr. Mease's learned and ingenious inaugural dissertation, published in the year 1792. The remote and exciting causes of the hydrophobia are as follow: 1. The bite of a rabid animal. Wolves, foxes, cats, as well as dogs, impart the disease. It has been said that blood must be drawn in order to produce it, but I have heard of a case in Lancaster county, in Pennsylvania, in which a severe contusion, by the teeth of the rabid animal, without the effusion of a drop of red blood, excited the disease. Happily for mankind, it cannot be communicated by blood, or saliva falling upon sound parts of the body. In Maryland, the negroes eat with safety the flesh of hogs that have perished from the bite of mad dogs; and I have heard of the milk of a cow, at Chestertown, in the same state, having been used without any inconvenience by a whole family, on the very day in which she was affected by this disease, and which killed her in a few hours. Dr. Baumgarten confirms these facts by saying, that "the flesh and milk of rabid animals have been eaten with perfect impunity[75]." [75] Medical Commentaries, Philadelphia edition, vol. 7. p. 409. In the following observations I shall confine myself chiefly to the treatment of the hydrophobia which arises from the bite of a rabid animal, but I shall add in this place a short account of all its other causes. 2. Cold night air. Dr. Arthaud, late president of the society of Philadelphians in St. Domingo, has published several cases in which it was produced in negroes by sleeping all night in the open air. 3. A wound in a tendinous part. 4. Putrid and impure animal food. 5. Worms. 6. Eating beech nuts. 7. Great thirst. 8. Exposure to intense heat. 9. Drinking cold water when the body was very much heated. 10. A fall. 11. Fear. 12. Hysteria. 13. Epilepsy. 14. Tetanus. 15. Hydrocephalus. Of the presence of hydrophobia in the hydrocephalic state of fever, there have been several instances in Philadelphia. 16. An inflammation of the stomach. 17. The dysentery. 18. The typhus fever. Dr. Trotter mentions the hydrophobia as a symptom which frequently occurred in the typhus state of fever in the British navy[76]. [76] Medicina Nautica, p. 301. 19. It is taken notice of likewise in a putrid fever by Dr. Coste[77]; and Dr. Griffitts observed it in a high degree in a young lady who died of the yellow fever, in 1793. [77] Medical Commentaries, Dobson's edition, vol. II. p. 476. 20. The bite of an angry, but not a diseased animal. 21. An involuntary association of ideas. Cases of spontaneous hydrophobia from all the above causes are to be met with in practical writers, and of most of them in M. Audry's learned work, entitled, "Recherches sur la Rage."