HYDROPHOBIA. 315 



the injection of blood or of saliva, and the blood 

 of the animal inoculated contains a microscopic 

 organism having very curious properties. Dogs 

 inoculated with the " new disease " fall sick im- 

 mediately, and usually die in a few days, without 

 manifesting any of the true symptoms of hydro- 

 phobia. Rabbits inoculated from mad dogs have 

 a variable period of incubation, so that the disease 

 in question cannot be identical with hydrophobia. 

 Pasteur, then, did not commit the error of de- 

 scribing this "new disease" as hydrophobia, but 

 he made the erroneous assumption that the saliva 

 of the child was virulent because it had died of 

 hydrophobia, whereas the writer has shown that 

 the same infectious disease results from the injec- 

 tion into the subcutaneous connective tissue of 

 rabbits of normal human saliva. This fact was 

 first disclosed by an experimental injection of 

 0.5 c.c. of my own saliva, made in New Orleans, 

 La., September 29th, 1880, nearly three months 

 prior to the death of the child from which Pasteur 

 obtained saliva for his experiments ; and my first 

 experiments in New Orleans were followed by 

 many others made in Philadelphia during the 

 month of January, 1881, and in Baltimore during 

 the months of June and July of the same year. 



Pasteur soon became convinced that the microbe 

 of his " new disease " had nothing to do with 

 hydrophobia, and he has recently 1 communicated 

 additional facts of the greatest importance bearing 



1 Comptes rendus, XCV. pp. 1187-1192. 



