208 LOUIS PASTEUR 



covery be verified by a Commission. Accordingly 

 one was appointed consisting of several of the fore- 

 most medical authorities in France and the Di- 

 rector of Agriculture. The Commission performed 

 many experiments according to the method of Pas- 

 teur, subjecting dozens of treated and untreated 

 dogs to the bites of rabid animals and to intra- 

 cranial inoculation, and finding that the treated 

 ones failed to develop hydrophobia, while those 

 that had not been previously protected generally 

 developed characteristic symptoms of the disease. 

 A report was drawn up substantiating Pasteur's 

 claims and recommending that further provisions 

 be made for more extensive experiments. 



Soon after the Commission reported favorably 

 upon his new discovery, a meeting of the Inter- 

 national Medical Congress was held at Copen- 

 hagen and Pasteur was chosen as a representative 

 of France and he was invited to read the first 

 paper. The presentation of the results of his ex- 

 periments on hydrophobia was followed with the 

 greatest interest. At that time he attacked the 

 doctrine of the spontaneous origin of hydrophobia. 

 As this doctrine was then widely held, Pasteur 

 thought it desirable to correct this erroneous 

 opinion. "No matter what the physiological or 



