NATURE 



7i 



ll 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1888. 



T//E OPENING OF THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE. 

 " T T 7E cannot refrain from expressing some regret that 



V V the encouragement of scientific research should 

 be one of the things which they do better in France than 

 among ourselves." With these words, trenchant enough 

 if heeded by those in authority on whose ears they may 

 fall, the Times concludes a leader on the inauguration 

 of the Pasteur Institute by the President of the French 

 Republic. Such a ceremony naturally suggests two dis- 

 tinct points for consideration : (i) the object of the insti- 

 tution thus inaugurated ; (2) the interest attaching to the 

 ceremony. 



The Pasteur Institute is remarkable among all others 

 in being the best form of monument ever erected, and at 

 the same time in its being raised during the life-time of 

 the distinguished man of science, in whose honour and for 

 the furtherance of whose work it was designed. That the 

 debt which the community owes to M. Pasteur will never 

 be paid, nor even adequately acknowledged, needs no 

 insistance ; but we may be excused if we dwell upon this 

 point a little, for in the multifarious and different batta- 

 lions of the workers in the army of science there may 

 well be some whose particular work has not quite brought 

 home to them their obligation to him. 



The most remarkable characteristic of M. Pasteur's 

 work, the one which places it on so unique a pedestal, is 

 the fertility of its results in every direction. To have 

 elucidated at once the causation of most forms of 

 fermentation, and the causation of most forms of acute 

 febrile disease (this last leading to the infinitely precious 

 invention by Sir Joseph Lister of antiseptic surgery), is 

 on the chemico-biological side of natural science a feat of 

 as great abstract value and of greater immediately prac- 

 tical worth to the community than any one, or even two, of 

 the greatest epoch-making discoveries of physical science. 

 If it were not for the lamentable consequences of the 

 apathy with which the British public regard science and 

 its contributions to their health and wealth, it would be 

 sadly amusing to read, as anyone may do in even well- 

 founded prints, the lay opinion that M. Pasteur is 

 but a hydrophobia curer, and possibly a slightly 

 more successful one than McGovern, the Irish quack. 

 The flame of popular knowledge of current science 

 always burns most unsteadily, and any sensational wind 

 makes it flare for a short time, and then it sinks almost 

 extinguished. It has thus been with the most recent 

 work of M. Pasteur ; and so we find at the inauguration of 

 the Institute the wide subject of the chemico-biology of 

 disease processes was subordinated to the representation 

 of the existing condition of our knowledge of the treatment 

 of rabies. 



Although, considering the national importance of the 

 .L^eneral principles of M. Pasteur's work, this preponder- 

 ance of attention given to one subject may be regretted, 

 it nevertheless must be admitted that a specific instance 

 is more easily " understanded of the people," and may 

 consequently more energetically drive home the wedges 

 of scientific truth. To M. Grancher was most justly 

 ccorded the very agreeable task of expounding in a few 

 Vol. XXXIX. — No. 995. 



simple and unadorned sentences the results of the anti- 

 rabietic treatment of M. Pasteur. Though rabies, or 

 hydrophobia, has always occupied such a special position 

 in the public mind, this has not prevented the application 

 of the general principle of public ingratitude ; and we are 

 therefore in no wise surprised to find that the benefactor 

 who arose, and, at his own risk and cost, attempted to re- 

 move such an evil, should have been received with 

 calumny and misrepresentation. The consolation afforded 

 by the unerring verdict of time rarely comes — as in the 

 present case it fortunately has to M. Pasteur — before the 

 benefit-conferring Prometheus is past receiving it. 



M. Pasteur has always borne the monstrous attacks 

 made upon him with such dignity and composure, that 

 the summary by M. Grancher of the great works 

 suggested by him must have been an intense gratification 

 and recompense. 



Our sympathy with his pleasure is unfortunately alloyed 

 with regret that of recent years health has been denied 

 him for the perfect enjoyment of his renown. 



The announcement by M. Pasteur in 1885 (the year of 

 the epidemic of rabies in London) that he had not only 

 succeeded in rendering dogs refractory to rabies by 

 means of prophylactic inoculations, but had also with 

 the same material attempted, and apparently successfully? 

 the curative treatment of two human beings, marked 

 the commencement of a widespread application of his now 

 fairly well-known methods. 



From the first, M. Pasteur recognized the effect that 

 such an announcement would have upon the public 

 mind, and, in addition to forming a resolution only to 

 treat assured cases of rabies (a resolution he had ulti- 

 mately to abandon on the grounds of humanity), arranged 

 the facts of his work in such a manner as to provide for 

 complete statistical accuracy in his records. 



By his prescience we are thus placed in possession of 

 an overwhelming series of facts relating to persons 

 bitten by rabid animals. He arranged those who came 

 to him under these circumstances into three categories. 



I-n the first (Class A) he placed persons bitten by 

 animals indubitably proved to be rabid by the results of 

 inoculation from the spinal cord into normal animals. 



Secondly (Class B.), he grouped together those cases 

 in which the state of the animal, though not tested by 

 experiment, was nevertheless certified to have been rabies 

 by a veterinary surgeon. 



Finally, he constructed a third order (Class C.) in which 

 were collected those cases in which, owing to escape, &c., 

 of the dog or animal attacking, no precise information as 

 to its condition could be obtained, but only a presumptive 

 suspicion that it was rabid. 



Before we review the -figures derived from these three 

 classes of patients, it is important to gauge the character 

 of the statistics of the general mortality from the disease 

 with which they have to be compared. It is only since 

 special attention has been drawn to rabies through 

 M. Pasteur's work that trustworthy statistics have been 

 forthcoming. In former years estimates of various kinds 

 were from time to time prepared, but while some authors 

 took only cases of the most virulent kind, and con- 

 sequently obtained exceedingly high death-rates among 

 those bitten, others accumulated large numbers of in- 

 stances the details of which were most imperfectly 



E 



