1884—1885 



bites ; and thii'dly, that the period of incubation might vary from 

 a few days to several months. Clinical observation was reduced 

 to complete impotence ; perhaps experiments might throw some 

 light on the subject. 



Bouley had affirmed in April, 1870, that the germ of the evil 

 was localized in the saliva, and a new fact had seemed to support 

 this theory. On December 10, 1880, Pasteur was advised by 

 Professor Lannelongue that a five-year-old child, bitten on the 

 face a month before, had just been admitted into the Hopital 

 Trousseau. The unfortunate little patient presented all the 

 characteristics of hydrophobia : spasms, restlessness, shudders 

 at the least breath of air, an ardent thirst, accompanied with an 

 absolute impossibility of swallowing, convulsive movements, fits 

 of furious rage — not one symptom was absent. T1>q child died 

 after twenty-four hours of horrible suffering — suffocated by the 

 mucus which filled the mouth. Pasteur gathered some of that 

 mucus four hours after the child's death, and mixed it with 

 water ; he then inoculated this into some rabbits, which died in 

 less than thirty-six hours, and whose saliva, injected into other 

 rabbits, provoked an almost equally rapid death. Dr. Maurice 

 Ptaynaud, who had already declared that hydrophobia could be 

 transmitted to rabbits through the human saliva, and who had 

 also caused the death of some rabbits with the saliva of that 

 same child, thought himself justified in saying that those rabbits 

 had died of hydrophobia. 



Pasteur was slower in drawing conclusions. He had examined 

 with a microscope the blood of those rabbits which had died in 

 the laboratory, and had found in it a micro-organism; he had 

 cultivated this organism in veal broth, inoculated it into rabbits 

 and dogs, and, its virulence having manifested itself in these 

 animals, their blood had been found to contain that same 

 microbe. "But," added Pasteur at the meeting of the 

 Academy of Medicine (January 18, 1881), " I am absolutely ig- 

 norant of the connection there may be between this new disease 

 and hydrophobia." It was indeed a singular thing that the 

 deadly issue of this disease should occur so early, when the 

 incubation period of hydrophobia is usually so long. Was there 

 not some unknown microbe associated with the rabic saliva? 

 This query was followed by experiments made with the saliva 

 of children who had died of ordinary diseases, and even with 

 that of healthy adults. Thuillier, following up and studying 

 this saliva microbe and its special virulence with his usual 



