The value of violent and profuse cutaneous transpiration, thereby securing a rapidly eliminating channel for discharging poison from the system, is well known; in no other way can action be had so thorough, speedy, and prompt. Captain Maxwell[11] tells us it was formerly the custom among the Irish peasantry of Connaught, when one manifested unmistakable evidences of hydrophobia, to procure the death of the unfortunate by smothering between two feather beds. In one instance, after undergoing this treatment, the supposed corpse was seen, to the horror and surprise of all who witnessed it, to crawl from between the bolsters, when he was found to be entirely free from his disorder; the beds, however, were saturated through and through with the perspiration that escaped the body in the intensity of his mortal agony. More recently a French physician,[12] recognizing the incubatory stage of rabies in his own person, resolved upon suicide rather than undergo its attendant horrors. The hot bath was selected for the purpose, with a view of gradually increasing its temperature until syncope should be induced, which he hoped would be succeeded by death. To his surprise, however, as the temperature of the water rose, his sensations of distress improved; and the very means chosen for terminating life became instead his salvation, restoring to perfect health. Again, Dr. Peter Hood[13] relates that a blacksmith residing in the neighborhood of his country house was in high repute for miles about by reason of his cures of rabies. His remedy consisted simply in forcing the person bitten to accompany him in a rapid walk or trot for twenty miles or more, after which he administered copious draughts of a hot decoction of broom tops, as much for its moral effect as for its value in sustaining and prolonging established diaphoresis. [Footnote 11: Wild Sports or the West.] [Footnote 12: _L'Union Medicale_--name withheld by request of the gentleman.] [Footnote 13: London _Lancet_.] Though the pathological conditions of hydrophobia and serpent poisoning are by no means parallel, the _rationale_ of the methods employed in opening the emunctories of the skin are the same; and were it not for its powerful protracting effect and depressing action upon the heart, we might perhaps secure valuable aid from jaborandi (_pilocarpus_), since it stimulates profusely all the secretions; as it is, more is to be hoped for in the former disorder than in the latter. It would be desirable also to know what influence the Turkish bath might exert, and it would seem worthy at least of trial. * * * * * TO FIND THE TIME OF TWILIGHT. _To the Editor of the Scientific American_: