Hair of the dog - origin of the phrase

[Synergist]

Having a drink to cure a hangover is known as “having a little hair of the dog that bit you.” I am not interested in knowing about the reputed hangover cure itself, just the phrase. Was there ever a widely held belief in the ingestion of dog hair as a dog bite treatment? Was it just for the pain or was it believed to cure, for example, rabies?

[Ice_Wolf]

From http://www.writersblock.ca/winter96/a-origin.htm

… how about the old “hair of the dog that bit you”? When you’ve tied one on at the bars one night and feel trampled by a herd of raging skunks the next morning, you don’t go for the “fur of the cat that bit you”. This particular chestnut goes back to those pesky Romans again. They felt that the best remedy for the after-effects of a dog bite was to salve the wound with the burnt hair of that dog. They even had a saying for it: similia similibus curantur, or “like cures like” (and just as an aside, let’s see a dog quote Latin). Based on this medical wisdom, it would make sense that drinking more of what you had the night before–the “hair of the dog”–would relieve the hangover.

[Synergist]

Thanks, Ice Wolf.