3i8 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov., 1895. 



persons bitten by rabid animals has been variously estimated at from 

 5 to 50 per cent. : Horsley's estimate of 15 per cent, for those bitten 

 by rabid dogs is one which is generally accepted, but we have no 

 evidence as to the mortality among those bitten by animals proved 

 to be rabid by exact pathological test. In the statistics furnished by 

 the Institut Pasteur the cases are grouped according as the animal 

 inflicting the bite was proved to be rabid, merely certified as such, or 

 only suspected. An unbiassed survey of the results of the Pasteur 

 treatment shows a very marked decrease in the mortality — viz., to 

 something like i per cent. This is an enormous advance on any 

 other method of treatment, but it is in harmony with the experimental 

 evidence on dogs, and there appears no reason to doubt the substantial 

 accuracy of the figures. It is probable enough that further advances 

 will be made, and it may be that this method will be replaced by 

 others : indeed, attempts are already on foot to apply the system of 

 serum therapeutics to rabies. Meanwhile, there can be little doubt 

 that Pasteur's method has been the means of saving many lives from 

 a particularly painful and horrible death. 



Such are the direct clinical results of Pasteur's work : into 

 all the indirect results it is not possible to enter here. As we have 

 already said, he laid the foundations on which modern bacteriology 

 has been built up, and it follows that, although the building has been 

 done mainly by others, some share in the credit for the revolution 

 which bacteriology is effecting in every department of medicine and 

 surgery should be assigned to him. The system of antiseptic surgery 

 in particular may be instanced as originating, in the hands of Lister 

 and others, as a fairly direct outcome of his teachings. The results 

 of this system, now almost universally adopted, have been enormously 

 to diminish surgical mortality, and to render safe and possible 

 operations which were previously beyond the dreams of the surgeon. 

 Midwifery, too, has felt Pasteur's influence, in the largely decreased 

 mortality which has followed the introduction of a strictly antiseptic 

 line of treatment. Preventive medicine has gained a sanction which 

 it never had before, and which has placed it on a firmer and surer 

 basis. And all this has been the outcome of the broad and brilliant 

 generalisations which Pasteur laid down, as the result of minute and 

 patient experiment in pure science. 



F. W. Andrewes. 



