A rabid debate in the 19th century

Known as hydrophobia in humans, or in dogs as rabies, this was a disease that was never too far from discussion in the newspapers of the 19th century. As recalled in a previous Times Past column from 2019, a man named McGovern discovered a cure for rabies in ancient days and his descendants happily reminded people that they had the cure first. In 1895, when much debate was going on in Cavan about treatments for hydrophobia, it was John Laurence McGovern who wrote to the editor of this newspaper who having considered it to be a’ respectable journal’, and in light of a leading article in a previous edition, had contributed a list of surnames of those he had cured and yet the editor failed to acknowledge what McGovern and his father and family before him could do. His offence made all the more upsetting when ‘another’ was held up as having the cure that only the McGoverns were celebrated for possessing. The offending paragraph, he asked to be withdrawn and the true facts reinstated. Mr McGovern’s letter was published on Saturday, October 26th, 1895, and may have brought him some consolation.

In September 1895, the House of Commons brought up the hydrophobic topic when Mr J.P. Farrell, MP for Cavan West, begged ‘to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland — whether his attention has been called to the death from hydrophobia, at Hyde, of a young man named Haywam, who had been previously treated for that disease at the Paris Pasteur Institute.’

Farrell then asked the Commons had they heard of the McGoverns of Glan who since the days of yore, or to be specific of Charles I when the Cavan family first began to knock hydrophobia on the head quicker than Domestos on germs. Some years earlier, in 1831, in the same parliament, Alderman Wood rose to ‘move for leave’ to introduce a Bill to prevent the spread of ‘canine madness’.

On 20 February 1886, the Spectator brought up the suggestion of ‘the vapour-bath treatment’ for hydrophobia and asked that people would not just run off to the Pasteur Institute every time a dog bit them, but that they’d try some of the alternative options for clearing the airways. The proponents of the exhalation treatment through a haze of vapour included Dr Buisson, Victor Meunier, Dr Dujardin Beaumetz, and Dr Dartigue and the magazine then suggested that Pateur’s vaccinations had no proven effect on the bitten. The true effect of an effective treatment could only be observed after rabies had fully taken a grip of its victim.

Hydrophobia killed people all over the world and in Ireland. In May 1864, the Cavan Observer informed readers of the tragic death of an eight-year-old boy named James Madden from Bunanonly, Co Westmeath, bitten by a rabid bulldog, a matter deplored, since the creature had already bitten two others. The farmer who kept the dog, and was bit by it, had refused to have it killed, knowing what it had done to the boy and others.

Cavan letters to CWN

In 1888, hydrophobia was the topic of a long-running series of letters to the editor at the Cavan Weekly News, drawing reaction and commentary from a variety of people. Always to the fore of local debate was one Rev Robert Leech, Rector of Drumlane, whose thoughts on the matter were heavily criticised by Dr Thompson, an Omagh man who stated: ‘I have smashed his (Leech’s) arguments, and his facts.’

Leech was having none of it and retorted with a tome of a letter. However, the Rev stayed in support of the McGovern (Magauran) family cure and informed Dr Thompson that in the Irish Times of January 24th, 1888, that ‘30 people near Carrigallen are under treatment by Magauran, having partaken of the flesh of a large pig bitten by a rabid dog.’ About 22 of the sick diners had eaten the spare ribs, referred to by the clergyman as an ‘unsavoury repast’.

Around twenty-four others who had also eaten the pig were under watch but had not ‘exhibited’ any symptoms, as far as Leech knew. The family and inhabitants at Carrigallen, thinking that the dog attack on the pig was harmless, had the pig butchered. Five weeks after the meal, a man named John Stewart became at first, ‘slightly heavy’ and then unwell, and soon could not look at any food or drink and developed a ‘burning pain’ in his stomach. Leech visited John Stewart, gathered much of the facts on the spot, and heard of the ‘frightful’ dreams experienced by the unfortunate person.

Mr A. Leslie Mease, MB, surgeon at the County Cavan Infirmary, wrote to the Weekly News praising the valuable letters of doctors Thompson and Buchanan, even though neither had any idea of the ‘absurd state of panic’ that lay in the neighbourhood. Monaghan’s Northern Standard, in September 1888, were less charitable about the ‘Cavan hydrophobia cure’, having re-published a report from the Medical Press, referring to ‘that quack’ Magauran, recently ‘brought as a curer of hydrophobia to public notice some time since by the writings of a weak-minded old clergyman in County Cavan, had the impudence to ask the guardians of the Armagh Union to pay him’ having attended on a boy bitten by a dog.

Not taking into account the Magauran family’s historically long held cure, they instead spoke out against any local government board making payment to an ‘uneducated and unqualified’ practitioner, regardless if the patient became well. No doubt, the Rev Leech was not too happy over the Monaghan newspaper’s published opinion of him. However, the British Medical Journal, in an earlier article on December 3rd, 1887, offered positive coverage of the McGovern cure and Rev Leech’s input in placing it before the world’s attention, even though the journal called it an alleged remedy.