INOCULATION AGAINST HYDROPHOBIA. 291 



with more recent maiTows, separated from one another by, say, two 

 days of age, till we come at last to a very recent one, which has been 

 in the flask for only one or two days. The dog is then found to be 

 made proof against rabies. We can inoculate him under the skin, or 

 even, by trepanning, under the surface of the brain, without the disease 

 showing itself. 



By the application of this method I had succeeded in getting fifty 

 dogs, of various ages and races, proof against rabies without having 

 had a single failure, when, on the 6th of July last, three persons from 

 Alsace unexpectedly presented themselves at my laboratory : Theodore 

 Vone, a grocer of Meissengott, near Schelstadt, who had been bitten 

 in the arm on the 4th of July by his own dog, become mad ; Joseph 

 Meister, nine years of age, who had been bitten by the same dog at 

 eight o'clock in the morning of the same day, and who, thrown to the 

 ground by the dog, bore the marks of numerous bites on his hand, legs, 

 and thighs, some of them so deep as to make walking hard for him. 

 The more serious wounds had been cauterized only twelve hours after 

 the accident, or at eight o'clock in the evening of the same day, with 

 phenic acid, by Dr. Weber, of Ville ; the third person, who had not 

 been bitten, was the mother of Joseph Meister. 



At the autopsy of the dog, which had been killed by its master, we 

 found its stomach filled with hay, straw, and pieces of wood. It was 

 certainly mad. Joseph Meister had been picked up from under it 

 covered with froth and blood. M. Yone had marked bruises on his 

 arms, but he assured me that the dog's teeth had not gone through his 

 shirt. As he had nothing to fear, I told him he might go back to Al- 

 sace the same day, and he did so ; but I kept little Meister and his 

 mother. 



The weekly meeting of the Academy of Sciences took place on the 

 6th of July. I saw our associate, Dr. Vulpian, there, and told him 

 what had passed. He and Dr. Grancher, professor in the £cole de 

 Medecine, had the kindness to come and see little Joseph Meister at 

 once, and ascertain his condition and the number of his wounds, of 

 which there were no less than fourteen. The opinion of these two 

 physicians was that, in consequence of the severity and number of the 

 bites upon him, Joseph Meister was almost certain to have hydrophobia. 

 I then informed them of the new results which I had obtained in the 

 study of rabies since the address I had delivered at Copenhagen a year 

 previously. The death of this child seeming inevitable, I decided, not 

 without considerable and deep anxiety, as you may imagine, to try 

 upon him the method with which I had had constant success on dogs. 



It is true that my fifty dogs had not been bitten before I found 

 them to have been made proof against rabies. But I felt that I 

 might dismiss all anxiety on this point, because I had already ob- 

 tained a similar condition on a large number of dogs after they had 

 been bitten. 



