28 LOUIS PASTEUR. 



eases, hydrophobia, that he again attracted the public eye. His 

 experiments upon hydrophobia were, perhaps, the boldest in the 

 line of experimentation that had ever occurred, for here for the 

 first time in history laboratory experiments were transferred to the 

 human being. Hydrophobia had fascinated Pasteur for a long 

 time. Experimental work had shown him that the disease was 

 not a purely nervous excitation, as had been claimed, but that 

 there was an actual disease under this name. Experiments showed 

 him further that the disease bears every similarity to infectious 

 germ diseases, although neither he nor anyone else, even to the 

 present day, have succeeded in demonstrating the organism which 

 produces the diseases. Experiments upon dogs and rabbits in his 

 laboratory followed each other rapidly, and, with his usual genius, 

 he devised many a method of hastening the experiments, and of 

 rapidly teaching results which would normally take months. 



His success with other diseases made him ambitious also to 

 find a method of preventing this disease, and, while the methods 

 which he had used in fowl cholera and anthrax proved useless in 

 the case of hydrophobia, the same general line of work led him 

 finally to a method of inoculating animals which rendered them 

 immune against this disease. Not only so, but the same method, 

 when applied in a slightly different way, was found to be effica- 

 cious in warding off the disease in an animal which had been 

 previously inoculated therewith. He found himself able, with 

 certainty, to inoculate an animal with hydrophobia, and then, by 

 treating him with the various subdermic injections which he had 

 devised, prevent the appearance of the disease which would have 

 otherwise inevitably occurred. Laboratory experiments were a 

 success, and next, the bold step was taken of applying to mankind 

 laboratory methods, which had been hitherto tried upon animals 

 alone. A youth who had been severely bitten by an unquestion- 

 ably rabid dog was brought to him at his laboratory. The youth's 

 life was despaired of by the physicians, inasmuch as with certainty 

 he would develop hydrophobia. Under the circumstances Pasteur 

 felt justified in trying upon this youth the experiments that had 

 succeeded with dogs and rabbits. The experiment so far as could 

 be demonstrated was a success. The youth failed to develop this 

 disease. 



