TEE LIFE-WORK OF PASTEUR. 



243 



that would make sick, but not kill. Hens were inoculated -with this, 

 and then, after having recovered from its effects, with virus of full 

 power. It made them sick, but they recovered. A preventive of hen- 

 cholera had been found. In the experiments upon the feasibility of 

 applying a similar remedy to carbuncular diseases, it was necessary 

 to ascertain whether or not animals, which had once been stricken 

 with the disease, were exempt from liability to a second attack. The 

 investigator was met at once by the formidable difficulty that no ani- 

 mals were known to have recovered from a first attack, to serve as sub- 

 jects for trial. A fortunate accident in the failure of another investi- 

 gator's exi^eriment gave M. Pasteur a few cows that had survived the 

 disease. They were inoculated with virus of the strongest intensity, 

 and were not affected. It was demonstrated, then, that the disease 

 would not return. M. Pasteur now cultivated an attenuated carbuncle- 

 virus, and, having satisfied himself that vaccination with it was effect- 

 ive, declared himself ready for a public test-experiment. Announcing 

 his success to his friends, he exclaimed in patriotic self-forgetfulness, 

 " I should never have been able to console myself, if such a discovery 

 as I and my assistants have just made had not been a French discov- 

 ery ! " 



Twenty-four sheep, a goat, and six cows were vaccinated, while 

 twenty-five sheep and four cows were held in reserve, unvaccinated, 

 for further experiment. After time had been given for the vaccination 

 to produce its effect, all of the animals, sixty in number, were inocu- 

 lated with undiluted virus. Forty-eight hours afterward, more than 

 two hundred persons met in the pasture to witness the effect. Twenty- 

 one of the unvaccinated sheep and the goat were dead, and two more 

 of the sheep were dying, while the last one died the same evening ; 

 the unvaccinated cows were suffering severely from fever and oedema. 

 The vaccinated sheep were all well and lively, and the vaccinated 

 cows had neither tumor nor fever of any kind, and were feeding 

 quietly. Vaccination is now employed regularly in French pastures ; 

 five hundred thousand cases of its application had been registered at 

 the end of 1883 ; and the mortality from carbuncle has been reduced 

 ten times. 



There is no need to follow M. Pasteur in his further researches in 

 the roiiget of pork, in boils, in puerperal fever, in all of which, with 

 other maladies, he has applied the same methods with the same exact- 

 ness that have characterized all his work. His laboratory at the £cole 

 Normale is a collection of animals to be experimented upon — mice, 

 rabbits, Guinea-pigs, pigeons, and other suitable subjects, with the dogs 

 upon which he is now studying hydrophobia most prominent. There 

 is nothing cruel in his work. His inoculations are painless, except as 

 the sickness they induce is a pain, and the suffering they cause is aS 

 nothing compared with that which they are destined to save. On this 

 subject he himself has remarked in one of his lectures : "I could never 



