3i 8 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



told him to go that night by the mail. So he went, 

 informing his wife that business had called him to 

 Paris, and that he should be obliged to remain there 

 for ten days, not choosing to tell her of the cause of 

 his decision. I may add that he suffered no evil 

 effects. 



In all treatment of disease there is a certain risk of 

 failure. Prior to the introduction of Pasteur's method, 

 the rate of mortality was about 15 per cent. It is 

 now, as I have stated, less than i per cent. ; that is to 

 say, out of 200 persons bitten in various ways, through 

 the clothing, on the hands, or on the face, by rabid 

 animals, about 30 were found to die before Pasteur's 

 discovery, whilst if these 200 persons are treated 

 according to his method, the probability is that only 

 one will succumb. At the commencement of the 

 practical working of Pasteur's method, a large number 

 of Russian peasants who had been worried by rabid 

 wolves came to Paris, and I went to the hospital to see 

 them. It was a horrible sight. Some of their faces 

 were almost eaten away by the wolves, and the worst 

 cases had a fatal end. They had been sent from the 

 remote parts of the Empire to Paris, and by that time 

 the virus had taken such a hold upon them that in 

 many cases cure was impossible. 



I once saw in Manchester a case of hydrophobia at 

 the Royal Infirmary, but this was before Pasteur's 

 time. It was a dreadful sight. My friend and former 

 pupil, the eminent Manchester surgeon, the late Mr. 

 Collier, who at that time was the house-surgeon and 

 had the case under his care, told me that some few 

 years ago he had been treating a similar case when, 

 in administering some anaesthetic, he incautiously 

 placed his thumb in the patient's mouth, who bit it 

 through the nail. It is more easy to imagine than to 



