2023-12-03 16:36:04
Par Laurent REBOURS
Published on Dec 3, 23 at 5:36 p.m. See my news Follow News Chartres
Find on Actu Chartres, every Sunday, a Eurelian chronicle of History and stories proposed by Alain Denizet. Professor, historian, writer from Eure-et-Loir, he has been bringing together all of his chronicles for years on his website.
August 1, 1829, facing rabies.
The August 22, 1829the prefect of Eure-et-Loir seeks help from the mayor of Chartres regarding the widow Benoit, a humble day laborer from Voves…
Would it be possible to ” put her in the hospice and put her in a private room to know her condition and give her the care that her position would seem to require? » The “position” of this six months pregnant woman is not trivial. Her husband, aged 22, died “ following several outbursts of rage ».
Two days later, the mayor of Chartres – relieved? – offers a polite refusal to the prefect. No rooms are available.
Bitten on the cheek by a small basset hound
The story of the Benoit couple concentrates questions and hauntings associated with rage – we then say hydrophobie – sixty years before Pasteur’s vaccine.
Back to the point: how did Benoit contract rabies ? To the mayor of Voves who is investigating at the request of the prefect, his parents reveal that their son “ had been bitten regarding seven months ago [1] [en février 1829] by a small basset hound on the cheek while playing with him, that the same day he was hunting with this same dog in the woods of Genonville. The next day, the dog disappeared. Word spread that he had left in a rage ».
Very worried, the young man asked the Voves veterinarian for advice, for whom he was doing masonry. The latter asked him if the dog had eaten following attacking him. As Benoit nodded, the veterinarian “told him that there was nothing to fear”.
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And Benoît marries Marie-Louise
A man bitten by a rabid dog (©DR)
It was with peace of mind that Benoit married Marie-Louise Garnier on May 19, 1829, seven years his senior, and three months pregnant.
Benoit therefore did not receive no care following his cheek was grabbed by the basset hound’s fangs. However, certain treatments were deemed effective provided they were promptly administered. According to The Messenger of the Chambers of June 28, 1829it was necessary to “wash the bite with a solution of chloride of soda or lime” or “apply a red-hot iron to the wound”.
As to Political journal of the Aube department of July 8, 1829, he reported a method proven in England: “Cover the bitten place with as much gunpowder as it would take to prime a gun, set it on fire. »
The first signs of illness and sudden death
On July 30, Benoit reported the first signs of the disease. On August 1, he died at his home, victim of a devastating deathcommon to all cases of rabies.
The Chartres police commissioner provides two details regarding his clinical condition: on the one hand, “the bed sheets were soiled with foam that he had thrown on them while lying down”; on the other hand, he was visibly very agitated since his sister made him drink from a bottle “during the moments when he was calm [2] ».
Anxiety, spasms, difficulty swallowing and hydrophobia (hence the bottle), Benoit presents the usual symptoms [3]. Even if in similar cases, some practitioners saw the effects of a hallucination, tetanus or even epilepsy… Bosquillon (1744-1814) even believed that patients did not die of rabies, but of the terror that she inspired [4].
“Forced to bleed and suffocate him”
“Forced to stifle him.” Benoit was called Lenfant. Extract from the report of the Chartres police commissioner to the prefect. AD, 4 M 204 bis. (©DR)
The relatives of the madman accompanied his Calvary and did everything to save him. His sister and parents come to assist him at his home. On August 1, trying everything, his wife and an uncle carter transported him to Chartres to “consult a doctor”. No result. Then the convoy leaves for Voves.
The horror of the last moments is recorded in a few words in the letter from the police commissioner to the prefect: “We were obliged to bleed this unfortunate man from all four limbs and to suffocate him followingwards. »
Bleeding to remove the “venom”
Why the bloodletting? Some doctors believed that the saliva of the contaminated animal contained a venom that passed into the blood [5]. Bloodletting was therefore ideal in order to purge the “bad blood”.
Why, above all, suffocate the enraged individual? In case of fury, Antoine Portal (1742-1832) recommended “tying the sick in their beds” but added “how cruel it would be to suffocate them as has been done for several centuries”.
However, this practice, writes the historian Jean Théodorides, survived in the countryside until the time of Pasteur [6]. It was regarding shortening the sufferingbut also to protect once morest outbursts of violence and possible transmission, the subject of the police commissioner’s concerns.
His wife had “something haggard in her eyesight”
First vaccination once morest rabies. Little Meister in the foreground, Pasteur in the second. L’Illustration, November 7, 1885. Coll. personal. (©DR)
Indeed the Benoit woman did not leave her husband during illness. However, witnesses note “that she has something haggard in her eyesight”.
Of future child “we fear that when he is born he will bring the germ of rabies [7] “. As for the patient’s sister and parents, they were in contact with his saliva, the first for having “brought the bottle to his mouth” in order to clear it by “blowing into it”; the latter because they had “the imprudence to sleep in the same sheets which were still soiled by their son’s foam”.
Reassuring this little world as well as “the people of the country” was an urgent necessity. In a letter from August 30, 1829the mayor of Voves notified the prefect that the situation was under control.
They were given treatment similar to the circumstances and at the moment they are calm and without worry according to Vaucoret’s report. [l’officier de santé].
Mayor of VovesAugust 30, 1829
We know nothing regarding this treatment other than that it was… necessarily ineffective.
Epilogue and decisive turning point on July 6, 1885. Pasteur successfully vaccinates young Joseph Meister, bitten by a rabid dog[8]. In mainland France, the last two cases recorded date from 1924 and 2019. But worldwide, the disease causes around fifty thousand deaths per year, mainly in Asia and Africa.
Marks
[1] The incubation period for rabies is usually two to three months, but can range from a week to a year.
[2] Letter to the prefect, August 22, 1829. AD, 4 M 204 bis.
[3] We now know that the rabies virus infects the nervous system and disrupts neurons, particularly those which regulate cardiac activity or breathing.
[4] However, at the same time, other scientists demonstrated that there was such a thing as transmissible rabies.
[5] Boissier de Sauvages (1706-1767) in his Dissertation on rabies.
[6] Jean Théodorides, Rage in France in the 18th century, p. 112 www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr
[7] Born on November 5, 1829, Marie-Rosine Benoit died on January 12, 1830.
[8] Today, we still do not know how to cure rabies. Only anti-rabies vaccination, carried out immediately following the bite, can definitely prevent the onset of rabies.
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