582 



NATURE 



{Oct, lo, 1889 



case similar to that of Jenner's vaccine, except that here the rela- 

 tion between the weak and the strong poison has become known 

 to us, whilst in Jenner's case it has lain concealed. This, then, 

 is the first triumph of experimental inquiry into the cause and 

 prevention of microbic disease, and this method of attenuation 

 is of great importance, because, as we shaU see, it is not con- 

 fined to the case of chicken cholera, but is applicable to other 

 diseases. 



And next I will speak of one which is a fatal scourge to 

 ■cattle, and is not unfrequently transmitted to man. It is called 

 anthrax, splenic fever, or woolsorters' disease. This plague, which 

 has proved fatal to millions of cattle, is also due to a microbe, 

 which can be cultivated like the rest, and the virus of which can 

 also be weakened or attenuated by a distinct treatment which I 

 will not here further specify. Now, what is the elife:t of inoculating 

 cattle or sheep with this weakened poison ? Does it act as a 

 preventive? That the answer is in the afhr native wa-i proved by 

 Pasteur by a cmvincing experiment. Five-and-twenty sheep, 

 chosen promiscuously nut of a fl jck of fifty, were thus inoculated 

 with the weak virus, then after a time all the fifty were trea ted 

 with the strong poison. The first half remiined healthy, all the 

 ■others died of anthrax. Since the discovery of this method, no 

 fewer than 1,700,003 sheep and about 90,000 oxen have thus 

 been inoculated, and last year 269,599 sheep and 34,464 oxen 

 were treated. The mortality which, before the introduction of 

 the preventive treatment, was in the case of sheep 10 per 

 ■cent., was, after the adoptio;i of the method, reduced to less 

 than I per cent. So that now the farmers in the stricken 

 districts have all adopted the process, and agricultural 

 insurance societies make the preventive inoculation a sine qtid 

 non for injuring cattle in those districts. This is, however, not 

 the end of this part of my story, for Pasteur can not only thus 

 'render the anthrax poison harmless, hut he has taught us how to 

 ■bring the highly virulent poison back again from the harmless 

 form. This may go to explain the varying strength of an attack 

 of infectious disease, one case being severe and another but 

 slight, due to the weakening or otherwise of the virus of the 

 active microbe. 



Last, but not least, I must refer to the most remarkable of all 

 Pasteur's researches, that on rabies and hydrophobia. Previous to 

 the year 1880, when Pasteur began his study of this disease, next 

 to nothing was known about its nature. It was invested with the 

 mysterious horror which often accompanies the working of secret 

 poisons, and the horror was rendered greater owing to the fact 

 that the development of the poison brought in by the bite or by 

 the lick of a mad dog mi^ht be deferred for months, and that, 

 if after that length of time the symptoms once make their appear- 

 ance, a painful death was inevitable. We knew indeed that the 

 virus was containelin the dog's saliva, but experiments made 

 upon the inoculation of the saliva had led to no definite results, 

 and we were entirely in the dark as to the action of the poison 

 until Pasteur's investigation. To begin with, he came to the 

 conclusion that the disease was one localized in the nerve-centres, 

 and to the nerve-centres he therefore looked as the seat of the 

 virus or of the microbe. And he proved by experiment that 

 this is the case, for a portion of the matter of the spinal column 

 •of a rabid dog, when injected into a healthy one, causes rabies 

 with a much greater degree of certainty and rapidity than does the 

 injection of the faliva. Here, then, we have one step in advance. 

 The disease is one of the nerve-centres, and, therefore, it only ex- 

 hibits itself when the nerve-centres are attacked. And this goes to 

 explain the varying times of incubation which the attack ex- 

 hibits. The virus has to travel up the spinal cord before the 

 symptoms can manifest themselves, and the length of time taken 

 over that journey depends on many circumstances. If this be 

 so, the period of incubation must be lessened if the virus is at 

 once introduced into the nerve-centres. This was also proved 

 to be the case, for dogs inoculated under the dura mater in- 

 variably became rabid within a period rarely exceeding eighteen 

 -days. 



Next came the question, Can this virus be weakened, as has 

 been proved possible with the former poisons ?. The difficulty in 

 ■this case was greater, inasmuch as all attempts to isolate or to 

 •cultivate the special microbe of rabies outside the animal body 

 had failed. But Pasteur's energy and foresight overcame this 

 ■difficulty, and a method was discovered by which this terrible 

 poison can so far be weakened as to lo;e its virulent character, 

 but yet remain potent enough, like the cases already quoted, to 

 ,act as a preventive ; and dogs which had thus been inoculated 

 were proved to be so perfectly protected, that they might be 



bitten with impunity by mad dogs, or inoculated harmlessly with 

 the most powerful rabic virus. 



But yet another step. Would the preventive action of the 

 weakened virus hold good when it is inoculated even after the 

 bite .-' If so, it might he thus possible to save the lives of persons 

 bitten by mad dogs. Well, experiment has also proved this to be 

 true, for a number of dogs were bitten by mad ones, or were 

 inoculated under the sk viith rabic virus ; of these some were 

 subjected to the preventive cure and others not thus treated. Of 

 the first or protected series not one became mad, of the other, 

 or unprotected dogs, a large number died with all the character- 

 istic symptoms of the disease. But it was one thing to thus 

 experiment upon dogs, and quite another thing, as you may well 

 imagine, to subject human beings to so novel and perhaps dan- 

 gerous a treatment. Nevertheless, Pasteur was bold enough to 

 take this necessary step, and by so doing has earned the gratitude 

 of the human race. 



In front of the Pasteur Institute in Paris stands a statue 

 worked with consummate skill in bronze. It represents a French 

 shepherd boy engaged in a death struggle with a mad dog which 

 had been worrying his sheep. With his bare hands, and with 

 no weapon save his wooden sabot, the boy was successful in the 

 combat. He killed the dog, but was horribly bitten in the fight. 

 The group represents no mythical struggle ; the actual event 

 took place in October 1885 ; and this boy, Jupille, was the 

 second person to undergo the antirabic treatment, which 

 proved perfectly successful, for he remained perfectly healthy, 

 and his heroic deed and its consequences have become historic. 

 " C'est le premier pas qui route," and as soon as the first man 

 had been successfully treated, others similarly situated gladly 

 availed themselves of Pasteur's genernis ofifer to treat them 

 gratuitously. And as soon as this cure became generally known, 

 crowds of persons of all ages, stations, and countries, all bitten 

 by rabid animals, visited every day Pasteur's laboratory in the 

 Rue d'Ulm, which, from being one in which quiet scientific re- 

 searches were carried on, came to resemble the out-patient de- 

 partment of a great hospital. There I saw the French peasant, 

 the Russian inoujik (suffering from the terrible bites of rabid 

 wolves), the swarthy Arab, the English policeman, with women 

 too and children of every age, in all perhaps a hundred patients. 

 All were there undergoing the careful and kindly treatment, 

 which was to insure them against a horrible death. Such a 

 sight will not be easily forgotten. By degrees this wonderful 

 cure for so deadly a disease attracted the attention of men of 

 science throughout the civilized world. The French nation 

 raised a monument to the discoverer better than any statue, in 

 the shape of the " Pasteur Institute" — an institution devoted to 

 carrying out in practice this anti-rabic treatment, with labora- 

 tories and every other convenience for extending by research our 

 knowledge of the preventive treatment of infectious disease. 



For, be it remembered, we are only at the beginning of these 

 things, and what has been done is only an inkling of what is 

 to come. Since 1885, twenty anti-rabic institutions have been 

 established in various parts of the world, including Naples, 

 Palermo, Ode^sa, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Rio Janeiro, 

 Buenos Ayres,.and Havannah. 



We in England have also taken our share, though a small one, 

 in this work. In 1885 I moved in the House of Commons for a 

 Committee to investigate and report on Pasteur's anti-rabic 

 method of treatment. This Committee consisted of trusted and 

 well-known English men of science and physicians — Sir James 

 Paget, Sir Joseph Lister, Drs. Burdon Sanderson, Lauder 

 Brunton, Quain, Fleming, and myself, with Prof. Victor 

 Horsley as secretary. We examined the whole subject, in- 

 vestigated the details of a number of cases, repeated Pasteur's 

 experiments on animals, discussed the published statistics, and 

 arrived unanimously at the opinion that Pasteur was justified in 

 his conclusions, and that his anti-rabic treatment had conferred 

 a great and lasting benefit on mankind. Since then His Royal 

 Highness the Prince of Wales, who always takes a vivid interest 

 in questions affecting the well-being of the people, has visited 

 the Pasteur Institute, and has expressed himself strongly in 

 favour of a movement, started by the present Lord Mayor of 

 London, for showing to Pasteur, by a substantial grant to his 

 Institute, our gratitude for what he has done to relieve upwards 

 of 250 of our countrymen who have undergone treatment at his 

 hands, and likewise to enable poor persons who have been 

 bitten, to undertake the journey to Paris, and the sojourn there 

 necessary for their treatment. This lasts about a fortnight, it is 

 nearly painless, and no single case of illness, much less of 



