226 LOUIS PASTEUR 



tions were sent in for the benefit of this institution. 

 The long list of subscribers included workmen, 

 students, and poor women, as well as millionaires 

 and the members of royal families. To a great 

 extent the Pasteur Institute, as it came to be called, 

 was an expression of the interest and generosity of 

 the common people. Among the subscribers from 

 Alsace-Lorraine, Pasteur noted with peculiar emo- 

 tion the name of little Joseph Meister, who eleven 

 months before, received the first treatment for 

 rabies administered to a human being. 



The Pasteur Institute became a great research 

 institution which was devoted not only to the treat- 

 ment of increasing numbers of people bitten by 

 rabid animals, but also to carrying on investiga- 

 tions in bacteriology and the control of epidemic 

 diseases. The Institute since its foundation has 

 published in its annals the results of the treatment 

 for all of its cases of rabies. Up to 19 12 it had 

 treated over thirty thousand cases of rabies with a 

 mortality of less than one percent. The relatively 

 small percentage of failures include several cases in 

 which treatment was administered several days or 

 even some weeks after the bites were inflicted. 



In order to avoid sending persons over long dis- 

 tances to Paris, as was formerly done, branch in- 



