An evening contemporary is much impressed by the experi- ment
of a French doctor, M. Reynaud, who, having inoculated an unhappy rabbit with the saliva of a patient dying from hydrophobia, found that the rabbit "was attacked with rabies on the fourth day, and died after twenty-four hours of intense suffering, foaming at the mouth the whole time." It infers from this cruel experiment that "when there is doubt as to whether a dog which has bitten a person is mad, it will be well to inoculate a rabbit, for, as with that animal the symptoms develop° themselves very rapidly, it will soon be known whether the disease is latent in the bitten person's system." Only unluckily, it is a fact already established by experiment that this horrible disease has been given to dogs by inoculating them with the saliva of perfectly healthy dogs, so that this cruel experiment would be very likely to do nothing but harm,—to kill with fright a patient bitten by a perfectly healthy dog. M. Rey- nand's experiment was as superfluous as it was cruel, and was evidently made,—as so many of these cruel experiments are,—in complete ignorance of former experiments which ought to have taught its inconclusiveness as well as its inhumanity.
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