Arsenicum [Ars]
A Swiss doctor, Guison, maintained that arsenic, in small doses, was the real prophylactic for the bites or rabid animals. It is used in the 3x tablet triturates, twice a day, for a week, unless arsenical symptoms develop, when, of course, it must be discontinued or lessened. A good treatment after being bitten by any animal. Safer, more efficient, and far cheaper than the Pasteur injections. To this it may be added that a very considerable number of learned medical men hold that there is no such disease as hydrophobia which means, fear of water, but that it is a disease of suggestion, by which is meant that if you had no belief in the disease you would not get it. A physician once told the author of this book that he, who did not believe that there was any such disease as hydrophobia, saw a case that seemed to disprove his belief, but he found the dog who had bitten the patient and the dog was alive, lively and healthy; when the victim heard this he at once recovered. The French wits said that hydrophobia came in as an actual disease with the advent of the Pasteur Institute. Possibly the ills that do follow bites sometimes are caused by the foul teeth of the animal, a species of blood poisoning. It is mostly the teeth of old animals that cause the poisoning, for such teeth are mostly decayed and full of septic matter. However, this is but speculation.
