On several occasions hydrophobia has prevailed in this
valley. It is remarkable thus to find so strange and dreadful a
disease appearing time after time in the same isolated spot. It has
been remarked that certain villages in England are in like manner
much more subject to this visitation than others. Dr. Unan?e states
that hydrophobia was first known in South America in 1803: this
statement is corroborated by Azara and Ulloa having never heard of
it in their time. Dr. Unan?e says that it broke out in Central
America, and slowly travelled southward. It reached Arequipa in
1807; and it is said that some men there, who had not been bitten,
were affected, as were some negroes, who had eaten a bullock which
had died of hydrophobia. At Ica forty-two people thus miserably
perished. The disease came on between twelve and ninety days after
the bite; and in those cases where it did come on, death ensued
invariably within five days. After 1808 a long interval ensued
without any cases. On inquiry, I did not hear of hydrophobia in Van
Diemen's Land, or in Australia; and Burchell says that during the
five years he was at the Cape of Good Hope, he never heard of an
instance of it.
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