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An interesting letter has been issued in Philadelphia by...

From the October 1896 issue of The Christian Science Journal

Kansas City Star


An interesting letter has been issued in Philadelphia by the American Anti-Vivisection Society of Pennsylvania, appealing to the public not to circulate sensational stories about alleged mad dogs and the terrible results of people bitten by them. Such accounts, it states, frighten people into nervous disorders, and yet there is upon record a great mass of testimony from physicians asserting the extreme rarity of hydrophobia, even in the dog. The letter quotes a number of prominent physicians in support of the theory that practically there is no such affliction to mankind as hydrophobia. Dr. Hiram Corson, late president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, who was ninety-four years old wrote: "I have never seen a real case of hydrophobia." Dr. Vrail Green, the eminent physician of Lafayette college, who is over eighty years old, writes: "I have never had a case of hydrophobia, nor have I ever seen a case." Dr. Matthew Wood, who has been in quest of the disease for twenty years, asserts that he never saw hydrophobia in either man or animal, although six years ago he offered $100 reward to any person bringing him such a patient. He says further that he has never met a physician who had seen a case of the disease. Such distinguished physicians as Dr. Theophilus Parvin, Thomas G. Morton and Joseph W. Hern say that fright is responsible for nearly all alleged cases of rabies.—Kansas City Star

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