The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-07-27

again and applied to the wound on the second day 1t would not adhere, but did % to the wound or the girls arm. The excited parents Of these chil. dren started home, apparently satisfied that great calamity had been averted. These children, who seemeed not nearly % much interested in the mat ter as the parents had been bitten two days before and had travelled over 6 score of miles
 1 The day after the children had been treated s man and his wife made their appearance, also seek ing the maidstone. This man was also a farmer, and told the following story In substance: The same dog that had bitten the children had after ward entered his dooryard and attacked his own dog lying the front porch savage fight ensued between the two animals, and the farmers dog was badly bitten and torn. Both dogs were shot. The farmers wife, who was a neat house. keeper, immediately after the affray set to work bbing the froth and blood from the floor of the porch not thinking at the time that she had cut on her hand that might have come in contact with some of the saliva from the rabid dog This mat. ter so preyed upon her mind, for 6 neighbor had recently died from hydrophobia, that her husband took her to the maidstone.
 She was very much excited, and we actually feared for the great strain on her nervous system while the owner of the stone was preparing 1t. When applied the stone at once became fl xed to the wound on her hand, and did so for the third time, when it fell off and would adhere no more. The good woman seemed wonderfully relieved, and when they started for home some hours later her had not yet obtained the normal state. Still she was apparently as happy as could be. Nor did she the three children suffer any bad effects from the occasion afterward, although 1t was currently believed that 6 COW bitten by the same dog had died of hydrophobia.
 Still this was only negative evidence, really. The chances were very slight that the small wound on the woman's hand had absorbed any virus, but the chances were frightfully large of hydrophobic symptoms being the result of her highly excited nervous system. Neither could 1t be doub bted for 6 single moment that the maidstone in this particular instance was beneficial. This maidstone Is a terti- ary fossil with the mouth of the coralites open and without matrx, of which, although rare, there are living representatives in some of tho warmer waters of the tropical seas.
 Another noted maidstone Is of the same species and tertiary coral This has, during the last half century, by repeated boilings in vinegar water and other liquids, been reduced until it is a mere frag ment Recently the owner, an old, gray headed farmer in Jersey county, Illinois-was given new and perfect one His perfect faith in the new like his faith in the old, never wavers for & moment The old mans faith Is simply founded on the fact that no one to whom the stones have been applied have suffered from hydrophobia. This Is simply negative evidence.
 1 The writer has, without entire satisfaction how ever endeavored to convince himself that the action of the stone in adhering to the wound was purely I & mechanical one, after the manner of a cupping glass; and that each coraite or polyp cell became sort of valve, and exerted from a vacuum created
 He has not quite satisfactorily endeavored to attribute the action of the stone to the peculiar construction of the polyp cell itself. It is well known to naturalists that all coral-making polype have remarkable powers of absorption and secre- tion Enormous masses of coral are built up in the sea, the polype in some strange manner absorbing the stony matter from the sea-water. The little animals build their houses about their bodies never
 leaving their abode even for food this Is absorbed also. The peculiar radiation of the cells forms 6 sort of cilia, and, although stationary, may have acted as such. We do not know what peculiar substance the polyp absorbed food. No one seems to know this. But we do know that amid the tainted waters of the early seas when nothing in the water, the coral polype hourishd prodi. gously, and it is thought by one of our best natu raliss of to-day that the polype of the sea- like ths plants of the coral, absorbed the virus from the clement in which they live