Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/263

Rh been seized with hydrophobia. Two months before he had been bitten on the great toe by a skunk as he lay asleep in his house at Agua Caliente, but had shown no symptoms of the disease until that day, when he suddenly began to bite at the door jamb in the store at Miraflores. They put him into the brick jail, where he soon became very violent. When I went down to the jail the next morning I found a group of Mexicans about the huge wooden door, which was chained fast and tied with riatas in addition. From the inside there came a succession of thumps and blood-curdling groans and strangles. I peered in through the barred window, and saw the unfortunate man lying on his back in a corner, spasmodically kicking out his legs from his chest and rolling his dilated eyes. Suddenly he leaped to his feet and, grasping the iron bars, shook the great door violently, chained and tied as it was. Then he seemed to leap against the walls, and at last fell down, groaning. He soon became rational again, and began to talk through a crack in the door to an old man whom I took to be his father. He asked for water, but they would not give him any, and while he was pleading for a knife or pistol another spasm seized him.

Presently the judge came over with two policemen. They said they were going to take the rabioso out and tie him to a tree, because he was getting the jail too dirty, and might not die for a week. As soon as the spasm passed, and the man lay weak and moaning, the burly policemen loosed the riatas, and, stepping in quickly, seized him from behind. He protested pathetically against going into the hot sunshine, but they pushed him out and started toward the corral to tie him up. But when the fierce sun struck him he was racked by horrible convulsions. He kicked and struggled, bit at his shoulders, and blew spittle into the air when he threw his head back. The policemen breathed hard, and the old man, his father, hugged himself in agony as he walked behind. There was a desperate struggle, then, with a final paroxysm, the rabioso suddenly collapsed and hung limp in their arms. At first they thought that he was dead, but when he showed signs of life they carried him to the corral and tied him to a tree before he became conscious. Two days later he died.

Pasteur himself does not undertake to cure patients who have been seized with spasms; but the judge told me that, fifteen years before, an Italian doctor had come through their country making marvelous cures. When he arrived at Miraflores there was a rabioso in the jail who was so badly afflicted and so long-lived that the judge had ordered him to be shot. When the Italian doctor heard this, however, he asked permission to try an experiment on the man. This being granted, he had the patient lassoed, dragged to the river, and held under water until he was apparently drowned. After the rabioso was full of water, the doctor rolled him on a barrel and