CHAPTER XLII 



RABIES AND 

 ITS CONTROL 



Keystone View Co. 

 Jupille battling with a mad dog. 



Keystone View Co. 

 Interior of Pasteur Institute, 

 Paris. 



How did Louis Pasteur control rabies f Why does rabies still ex- 

 ist f What advice did Louis Pasteur give to medical students ? 



History of rabies. Rabies or hydrophobia is a very ancient 

 disease. People termed it hydrophobia because a person bitten 

 by a mad dog develops a fever and a thirst ; yet the attempt to 

 drink water produces such painful convulsions that he develops a 

 dread of water. Aristotle thought that man was not subject to 

 rabies. Pliny the Elder recommended the livers of mad dogs as 

 a cure. Galen advised a compound of crayfish eyes. Sea bathing 

 was thought to exert a curative power. In 1780, in France, a 

 prize was offered to the person who could give the best method for 

 treating rabies. It was won by a surgeon-major who recom- 

 mended cauterization or the burning of the infected area with red- 

 hot irons. 



Rabies was one of the dread diseases of the past. People were 

 so terrified of victims that had been bitten by mad dogs or wolves 

 that they frequently strangled or suffocated them. They were 

 afraid of contagion in nursing a case of rabies, since all knew that 

 rabies meant certain death. A law was passed in France in 1810 

 prohibiting the murdering of people suffering from rabies. 



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