INOCULATION AGAINST HYDROPHOBIA. 295 



M. Pasteur replied that no experiments bearing on that point had 

 yet been made. 



On the 30th of October four other persons came from Arcachon to 

 place themselves under M. Pasteur's care ; so that, if success is gained 

 in these cases also, six demonstrations will have been obtained from 

 human subjects of the efficacy of the inoculation treatment. In an 

 interview with a correspondent of the London " Times," M. Pasteur 

 explained the philosophy of his treatment by stating that the virus 

 acted very slowly, and, while he was making the body refractory to it 

 by repeated inoculations, the virus deposited by the bite localized it- 

 self in the region of the wound. Whatever this region, that virus 

 becomes digested during the year and a half which he has found by 

 experiment the inoculation lasts, and will no longer exist in the body. 

 As the propagation of the virus, which has always an ascending tend- 

 ency and directs itself to the brain, takes place so slowly that the 

 minimum of the total inoculation with it is thirty days, the whole 

 question consists in inoculating the patient soon enough to prevent the 

 propagation of the virus through the wound from spreading. In the 

 case of Jupille, after the lapse of six days, the virus through the 

 wounds had not yet left the hands. Consequently, it had not yet pene- 

 trated into any of the regions where its presence causes an outbreak 

 of rabies. It will remain cooped up, till after some months it will 

 have been digested and expelled. 



There would be no need to dwell on the value of M. Pasteur's dis- 

 covery, the " Times " suggestively remarks, " were it not for the 

 strange perversity of those who will only see in the whole story a fresh 

 ground for attacking physiological experiment. Such people, as we 

 know from long experience, will lose all sight of the thousands and tens 

 of thousands of animals whom M. Pasteur liberates from the curse, and 

 of the multitudes of human beings freed from torture and death, when 

 they think of the twenty or fifty rabbits in his laboratory. They for- 

 get, in the contemplation of a few cases of immediate suffering, the 

 innumerable animals, friends of man, whom the discovery will set free. 

 With these excellent people it is impossible to argue ; but men whose 

 sympathies are wider and whose sight is truer than theirs will unite in 

 paying homage to the man who, if what he tells us is confinned, has 

 worked so patiently and so wisely to so noble and beneficent an end." 

 — Editor of " The Popular Science Monthly."] 



