RABIES 75 



December, 1880, he was experimenting with the 

 saliva of a child who had died in one of the Paris 

 hospitals of hydrophobia. He was experimenting, 

 also, with the saliva of rabid animals : he would be 

 off, at a moment's notice, to see a captive mad dog, 

 and would make his inoculations then and there. 

 Roux has told us of one of these experiments : 

 " The animal was a huge bull-dog, foaming at the 

 mouth and howling in its cage. All attempts to 

 get it to bite and thus infect a rabbit had failed. 

 6 But we must inoculate the rabbits with the saliva,' 

 said Pasteur. A noose was made and thrown, the 

 dog was caught and dragged to the bars of the 

 cage, and its jaws were tied half-open. It was 

 then held down on a table, while Pasteur, with a 

 fine glass tube between his lips, leaned over the 

 dog, and drew into the tube a few drops of the 

 saliva." 



/But these experiments with saliva were not 

 of much help to him. In the saliva of rabies, 

 and of many other diseases, and even in healthy 

 mouths, all sorts of germs are present 'tis an un- 

 weeded garden and, though his rabbits died after 

 inoculation with saliva, he could not prove, in 

 every case, that they had died of rabies. | Besides, 

 with the inoculation of saliva, the latent period of 

 the disease was quite indefinite : it might be some 



