80 PASTEUR AND AFTER PASTEUR 



By May, 1885, more than 100 dogs, beside other 

 animals, were under observation, at Villeneuve or 

 elsewhere. Experiments, control-experiments, dogs 

 immunised before infection, dogs immunised after 

 infection the whole method proved again and 

 again, we might say now, proved so plainly that 

 more experimenting would be worse than useless 

 then, on Monday morning, July 6, 1885, an 

 Alsatian woman brought her child, Joseph Meister, 

 to the Rue d'Ulm. He had been attacked, two 

 days before, by a dog, thrown down, bitten in 

 fourteen places, worst on the hands, and found 

 covered with the dog's saliva and his own blood. 

 The dog had then attacked its own master, and 

 been shot : and its body had shown evidence of 

 rabies. The child's wounds had not been carbolised 

 until twelve hours after they had been inflicted. 

 He had been sent to Pasteur by Dr. Weber, of 

 Ville. He could hardly walk for pain : he was nine 

 years old. Pasteur immediately took a room in 

 Paris for him and his mother : that evening, he and 



goes on to suggest that criminals, condemned to death, should 

 be allowed to choose, on the eve of their execution, between 

 being hanged and being experimented on, for the discovery 

 of a preventive or curative treatment of rabies or cholera. 

 The proposal is open to criticism : but none of us, surely, if 

 he knew for certain that he must be hanged to-morrow, 

 would refuse to-day this good prospect of life, unless he were 

 sincerely desirous of death. 



