STUDIES ON RABIES 297 



a little, Pasteur immediately felt pity and lavished on 

 the victim consolation and encouragement which would 

 have been comical if it had not been touching. The 

 thought that the skull of a dog was to be perforated 

 was disagreeable to him; he desired intensely that the 

 experiment should be made, but he dreaded to see it 

 undertaken. I performed it one day in his absence; 

 the next day, when I told him that the intracranial 

 inoculation presented no difficulty, he was moved with 

 pity for the dog: 'Poor beast! His brain is without doubt 

 wounded. He must be paralyzed.' Without replying, 

 I went below to look for the animal and had him brought 

 into the laboratory. Pasteur did not love dogs; but 

 when he saw this one full of life, ferreting curiously 

 about everywhere, he showed the greatest satisfaction 

 and straightway lavished upon him the kindest 

 words. He felt an infinite liking for this dog which 

 had so well endured trepanning, and thus had put 

 to flight for the future all his scruples against it."^ 



The method was in reahty discovered. It was that 

 of making pure cultures in the organism. The dog 

 thus trepanned developed rabies in fourteen days, 

 and all the dogs treated in the same fashion behaved 

 similarly. It was now possible to make progress, and 

 from that moment everything went on as in the case 

 of chicken cholera and of anthrax.^ 



For these latter maladies the virulence can be varied 

 by changing the culture medium. Pasteur had hkewise 

 discovered, for chicken cholera as well as for anthrax 

 that the virulence varied with the transfer of the microbe 

 from one animal species to another, and we shall soon 



1 L'ffiuvre medicale de Pasteur, par M. le Dr. Roux, Agenda du chim- 

 iste, 1896. 



2 All the studies on rabies are summarized in Comptes rendus de 1' Acad- 

 emic des Sciences, beginning with ISSl. They were done in collaboration 

 with MM. Chamberland, Roux et Thuillier. 



