PROTECTIVE INOCULATIONS. 



" It is evident that the intensive treatment is very successful in coping 

 with the worst cases, and that, instead of being- itself a source of death, as 

 asserted by those who gain notoriety and subsistence by villifying and mis- 

 representing scientific progress, it is a powerful agent in saving life." 



The following table is given by Horsely " as showing the contrast 

 between the old or simple treatment and the intensive treatment " : 



Simple Treatment, 1886. Intensive Treatment, 1888. 



Odessa 3.39 per cent. 0.64 per cent. 



Warsaw 4.1 0.0* " 



Moscow 8.2 f " 1.6 



* The figures include sixteen months' work, and thirty individuals bitten in the 

 face four by wolves. 



f This unusually high rate was found to be due to imperfections in the manner 

 of preparing the cords for the inoculation material. 



Perdrix (1890), in an analysis of the results obtained at the Pasteur 

 Institute in Paris, calls attention to the fact that the mortality among 

 those treated has diminished each year and ascribes this to improve- 

 ment in the method. He says : 



' ' At the outset it was difficult to know what formula to adopt for the 

 treatment of each particular case. Upon consulting the accounts of the bites 

 in persons who have died of hydrophobia notwithstanding the inoculations, 

 we have arrived at a more precise determination as to the treatment suitable 

 for each case, according to the gravity of the lesions. In the cases with seri- 

 ous wounds we inject larger quantities of the emulsion of cord and repeat the 

 inoculations with the most virulent material. For the bites upon the head, 

 which are especially dangerous, however slight their apparent gravity may 

 be, the treatment is more rapid, and, above all, more intensive that is to 

 say, the virulent cord is injected several times." 



The statistics arranged with reference to the location of the bite 

 are given by Perdrix as follows : 



Bitten upon the head, 684; died, 12 = 1.75 per cent. 

 ". hands, 4,396; " 9 = 0.2 

 " limbs, 2,839; " 5 = 0.17 



Other methods of making susceptible animals immune against 

 hydrophobia have been proposed and proved by experiment to be 

 successful. Thus Galtier in 1880-1881 claimed that the sheep and 

 the goat could be protected by intravenous injections of the virus of 

 rabies, and more recent experiments fully confirm this. Protopopoff 

 (1888) by injecting an emulsion of cord from a rabid animal into the 

 circulation of dogs succeeded in protecting them from hydrophobia 

 as a result of subsequent inoculation with virulent material upon the 

 surface of the brain. He injected into a vein, at intervals of three 

 days, one cubic centimetre of an emulsion of cord first of six days, 

 second of three days, third of one day. Roux had previously accom- 

 plished the same result by a single intravenous injection of a larger 



