CHAPTER XII 

 1884—1885 



Amidst the various researches undertaken in his laboratory, 

 one study was placed by Pasteur above every other, one mystery 

 constantly haunted his mind — that of hydrophobia. When he 

 was received at the Acad^mie Francaise, Renan, hoping to pr 

 himself a prophet for once, said to him : " Humanity will owe 

 to you deliverance from a horrible disease and also from a sad 

 anomaly : I mean the distrust which we cannot help mingling 

 with the caresses of the animal in whom we see most of nature's 

 smiling benevolence." 



The two first mad dogs brought into the laboratory were 

 given to Pasteur, in 1880, by M. Bourrel, an old army veter- 

 inary surgeon who had long been trying to find a remedy for 

 hydrophobia. He had invented a preventive measure which 

 consisted in filing down the teeth of dogs, so that they should 

 not bite into the skin ; in 1874, he had written that vivisection 

 threw no light on that disease, the laws of which were " impene- 

 trable to science until now." It now occurred to him that, 

 perhaps, the investigators in the laboratory of the Ecole Nor- 

 male might be more successful than he had been in his kennels 

 in the Rue Fontaine-au-Roi. 



One of the two dogs he sent was suffering from what is called 

 dumb madneit : his jaw hung, half opened and paralyzed, his 

 tongue was covered with foam, and his eyes full of wistful 

 anguish ; the other made ferocious darts at anything held out 

 to him, with a rabid fury in his bloodshot eyes, and, in the 

 hallucinations of his delirium, gave vent to haunting, despairing 

 howls. 



Much confusion prevailed at that time regarding this disease, 

 its seat, its causes, and its remedy. Three things seemed posi- 

 tive : firstly, that the rabic virus was contained in the saliva of 

 the mad annuals ; secondly, that it was communicated through 



