240 LOUIS PASTEUR. 



' Take care,' they said to him, ' you are commit- 

 ting yourself without possibility of retreat. Your 

 experiments in the laboratory hardly authorise you to 

 attempt experiments like those at Melun.' 



* No doubt,' Pasteur answered, ' we have never 

 had in our experimental studies so many animals at 

 our disposition to inoculate ; but I have full confi- 

 dence. What has been already done in my laboratory 

 is to me a guarantee of what can be done.' 



And M. Bouley, confident also in the assurances 

 of his illustrious friend, and arranging to meet him, 

 to witness these audacious experiments, said to his 

 anxious colleagues, ' Fear nothing ; he will come back 

 triumphant.' 



The experiments began on May 5, 1881, at four 

 kilometers' distance from Melun, in a farm of the 

 commune of Pouilly-le-Fort, belonging to a veterinary 

 doctor, M. Rossignol, secretary-general of the Society 

 of Melun. At the desire of the Society of Agriculture, 

 a goat had been substituted for one of the twenty-five 

 sheep of the first lot. On the 5th of May they inocu- 

 lated, by means of the little syringe of Pravaz that 

 which is used in all hypodermic injections twenty- 

 four sheep, the goat, and six cows with five drops of 

 an attenuated splenic virus. Twelve days after, on 

 May 17, they reinoculated these thirty-one animals 

 with an attenuated virus, which was, however, 

 stronger than the preceding one. 



