Our Arkansas ancestors faced many threats to their health and safety. But nothing was more justifiably frightening than getting rabies.
Arkansas newspapers reported regularly on confrontations with rabid animals. In October 1879, the Arkansas Gazette reported that a mad dog had bitten seven people near Little Rock. In February 1874, a rabid sow attacked two children in Lawrence County. Within a single week in 1873, the Gazette reported on two deaths caused by rabies, a woman in Little Rock and a man in Woodruff County.
Rabies is caused by a virus which attacks the central nervous system of mammals, including humans. Victims suffer hideously from convulsions, hallucinations, and strangely, an inability to swallow liquids--which explains its earlier name, hydrophobia, or "fear of water."
Abby Burnett, author of the entry on rabies in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, believes that "rabies was the most feared of all the incurable diseases, for it guaranteed an agonizing death." In 1890 Mrs. M.A. Ussery of Pine Bluff began showing signs of the disease seven weeks following a dog bite, with convulsions and an inability to swallow liquids. She died quickly. A Bentonville boy died "in the greatest agony" from rabies in 1888: "In the hour of death he imagined he was in a creek and was making terrible struggles to get out."
Sometimes it was necessary to restrain patients who seemed to be suddenly endowed with great strength when in the throes of convulsions. A Helena man "begged piteously to be killed; and when the paroxysms were on him it required several strong men to hold him to his bed." Willis Etris, a Bentonville child who was bitten by a rabid puppy in 1894, became "perfectly wild, it being necessary on one occasion to tie him in bed." Willis' mother died the following year due to "pining over the sad fate of her dear boy."
Family members often went to great lengths to cure their rabies-exposed loved ones. Medical science offered no cures, but folk medicine held out hope. For centuries people exposed to rabies were treated with "madstones." A madstone is not really a stone, but a hard deposit of calcium found inside the stomachs of deer--preferably from an albino deer. They are often described as similar in size and appearance to a large black walnut.
Madstones were rare and highly valued. Patients were brought to the owner of the stone since madstones were never loaned. President Abraham Lincoln had his son treated with a madstone. The stones were passed down from one generation to the next. Carroll County immigrant William Floyd Gibson brought his madstone from Virginia to Arkansas in 1868.
Some madstones became famous. Dr. James McAdams of White County paid $1,000 for his stone--which he claimed had successfully healed 41 victims by 1891.
Abby Burnett described the use of a madstone: "First, the stone would be soaked in warm milk, then applied to the bite. If it stuck, it was believed to be drawing out the poison, and when it fell off naturally the process was repeated until it no longer stuck to the wound." If the stone turned the milk to a green tint, it was believed to be working properly.
Madstones had no scientific impact on the development of rabies in humans, a fact which was recognized by many at the time. In 1904 the Green Forest Tribune in Carroll County accused those who used madstones of "deliberate murder."
It was the French who finally came up with a medical treatment for rabies. In 1885 Dr. Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine using infected rabbit tissue, and suddenly the ancient scourge could be controlled. However, it took a while for the treatment to reach Arkansas.
The first Arkansan to receive the Pasteur treatment was Elmer Hinkle, a 10-year-old boy from Batesville. In 1891 his father first took him to Searcy for a madstone treatment, then they went to New York City for Pasteur's injections. The boy survived.
The Pasteur treatment was not available locally until 1912 when Dr. Lloyd O. Thompson established a Pasteur Institute in Little Rock. The Little Rock facility closed after two years, but it was not long before injections were available through mail order and administered by local physicians.
Ultimately it was the systematic vaccination of dogs and cats which freed humans from the fear of rabies. However, rabies still remains a threat due to its prevalence among wild animals. In 1979 Arkansas led the nation in the number of rabies cases found in the wild, with 332 animals infected. The great bulk of the infected animals were skunks.
So far this year, only 12 cases of rabies have been confirmed involving seven skunks and five bats.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 05/28/2017