I’ve been reading about hydrophobia, or rabies. Before Pasteur developed his vaccine in 1885, there was no known cure. But lots of methods were tried.

One I’ve seen frequently in my research is ominously called “dipping” the victim. I had no idea what was meant, until I happened to stumble across an explanation in a book written in 1878 called The Nature and Treatment of Rabies or Hydrophobia. 

The writer, Thomas Michael Dolan, witnesses how an old man, the victim of a mad dog bite, gets taken out to sea and dipped, naked and head down, into the water. He is lifted out and plunged in three times. A sailor scoffs at Dolan’s concern and tells him that a salt herring immediately applied to the bite wound usually cures the victim, but that dipping is a fail-safe treatment. (225 -6)

Then yesterday I happened to be reading the proceedings of the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, 1674 – 1913. (What? Why is that funny?) And I came across the trial of one Joseph Draper, who was indicted in 1815 for stealing 112 sheep belonging to Joshua Lomax.

Here’s the statement made by Draper:

If there had been twice as many more, I should have taken them, for I was quite insane at that time. About sixteen years ago, I was bitten by a mad dog, and was dipped in the salt water at Gravesend for it, and I am always insane in the months of July and August. I really do not know how I came by these sheep at all.

That was another common belief, that the “dog days of summer” were a time when wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and men were susceptible to diseases—like recurring rabies.

The jury didn’t buy his insanity-from-rabies explanation. He was sentenced to death.