Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1888 — Imaginary Hydrophobia. [ARTICLE]

Imaginary Hydrophobia.

Times A case of simulated hydrophobia was that of a policeman whom I saw a few years ago. The man was then in the Park Hospital, held down on the bed by three or four stout men, in order to restrain him from violence, and. snapping like a dog at everybody who came in his way. At the sight of water he became intensely excited, foamed at the mouth, and went through a series of frightful contortions of the limbs. But when I took a glass of water in my hand and told him in a commanding voice to drink immediately, he sw’allowed the liquid without the slightest difficulty. My tone and action had diverted his mind from himself, and had set up a train of thought altogether different from that to which he had previously been subject. Nervous sedatives in large doses were given to him, and by the next day all his symptoms had disappeared. On inquiry it was ascertained that he had been bitten by a dog several days before, and that his comrades had frightened him by their questions and suggestions. Not a year passes that cases similar to the foregoing are not reported in the newspapers. Tire fact is that real hydrophobia is a very rare disease, eight cases only of it having come under my person al observation during the whole of my professional career, while the false disease is very common.