The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1855-07-31 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

SHOCKING TER24INATION TO A-2 MARRIAGB:IN FRANCE.  It-V,I3:I,SHTFITI, ease of hydrophobia is described in the. Lyons journals. A young farmer, named Peyron, about twenty-five years of age, in the department of the Rhine, was married a few weeks ago to a neighbour's. daughter. The young couple had-been long attached to each, other, but the parents of the bride bad refused their consent on account of the strangeness of conduct occasionally observed in the young man, who otherwise was a most eligible match, his parents being comparatively well off, andltheson himself generally of exemplary conduct. His passion.for the girl became at length so violent that he declared he could not exist without her, and his mother, fearing from- his manner that he meditated suicide, went to the parents of the young woman, and, after some entreaty, prevailed;upon them to agree to the-match. Young Peyron at once recovered his spirits, the young woman was delighted, and the marriage was celebrated with all the rustic pomp and ceremony common in that part of the provinces, concluding with a grand dinner and the inevitable ball. The gaieties were kept up until daylight, when the company separated. The new married couple were lodged in one wing of the. house, separated from the main building,. but, in a short timeafter they had retired, cries were heard from the nuptual chamber. At first they were unnoticed; but at length they increased, to fearful shrieks, and the father and mother, alarmed, hastened to the room, followed by the farm servants. The cries were by the time they arrived changed to scarcely audible groans from the poor girl ;, and on breaking open the door she was found in the agoniea of death—her bosom torn open and lacerated in the most horrible manner,, and the wretched husband in a fit of raving madness and covered with blood, having actually devoured a portion of the unfortunate girl's breast. A cry of horror burst from all present, and be was dragged from the noel after a most violent resistance, it taking no less than six men to hold him down. Aid was instantly sent for, and before the doctor could reach the spot the unhappy victim was no more. Young Peyron was put under treatment, and a strait waistcoat was attempted to be put upon him ; but his struggles. and screams were such that the doctor, apprehensive that he would expire in, the assistants' hands, ordered them to desist. The unfortunate man had by this time become so, weak that he was easily conveyed to beds and died at four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day without having for one moment recovered his consciousness, It was then recollected, in answer to. searching questions by a physician, that somewhere about five years previously he had been bitten by a strange deg, and taken the usual precautions against hydrophobia ; but, although the dog was killed, it had never been satisfactorily shown that it was really mad ; and, no ill consequences resulting from the bite, his friends concluded that it would come to nothing, and the incident had been altogeforgotten. It was considered by the doctor that the circumstances preceding the marriage, and the excitement of the occasion itself, had roused the latent virus which had so long lain dormant in the blood, and led to the terrible outbreak of frenzy which had ended so tragically. On the medical report being laid before the authorities, the extraordinary nature of the case naturally excited much attention and considerable controversy—the opinions of the heads of the profession being, after full inquiry, that there was no hydrophobia whatever in the case, but rooted insanity, and that it was shown to exist by the occasional aberrations of the unfortunate young man as before-mentioned, and that his diseased temperament and too violent passions, powerfully acted on by the circumstances, led to the fatal consequences narrated above. This sad catastrophe has given rise to a fierce medical controversy in some of the professional journals on the nature of hydrophobia, from which it would appear that, although instances of remarkable cures of this frightful malady are often described in the journals, no authenticated account of its favourable termination is yet known in France.—Paris Paper.