1884—1885 4051 



tor tiis execution, to choose between certain death and aa 

 experiment which would consist in several preventive inocula> 

 tions of rabic virus, in order to make the subject's constitution 

 refractory to rabies. If he survived this experiment — and I 

 am convinced that he would — his life would be saved and his 

 punishment commuted to a lifelong surveillance, as a guarantee 

 towards that society which had condemned him. 



**A11 condemned men would accept these conditions, death 

 being their only terror. 



"This brings me to the question of cholera, of which Youi* 

 Majesty also has the kindness to speak to me. Neither Dr. 

 Koch nor Drs. Straus and Roux have succeeded in giving 

 cholera to animals, and therefore great uncertainty prevails 

 regarding the bacillus to which Dr. Koch attributes the causa- 

 tion of cholera. It ought to be possible to try and communicate 

 cholera to criminals condemned to death, by the injection of 

 cultures of that bacillus. When the disease declared itself, a 

 test could be made of the remedies which are counselled as 

 apparently most efficacious. 



*'I attach so much importance to these measures, that, if 

 Your Majesty shared my views, I should willingly come to 

 Rio Janeiro, notwithstanding my age and the state of my 

 health, in order to undertake such studies on the prophylaxis 

 of hydrophobia and the contagion of cholera and its remedies. 



''I am, with profound respect. Your Majesty's humble and 

 obedient servant." 



In other times, the right of pardon could be exercised in 

 the form of a chance of life offered to a criminal lending him- 

 self to an experiment. Louis XVI, having admired a fire 

 balloon rising above Versailles, thought of proposing to two 

 condemned men that they should attempt to go up in one. 

 But Pilatre des Roziers, whose ambition it was to be the first 

 aeronaut, was indignant at the thought that ''vile criminals 

 should be the first to rise up in the air." He won his cause, 

 and in November, 1783, he organized an ascent at the Muette 

 which lasted twenty minutes. 



In England, in the eighteenth century, before Jenner's dis- 

 covery, successful attempts had been made at the direct 

 inoculation of small-pox. In some historical and medical 

 BesearcJies on Vaccine, published in 1803, Husson relates that 

 the King of England, wishing to have the members of his 

 family inoculated, began by having the method tried on six 



