118 MICROBES AND HEALTH. 



"It would have been far better for the world if M. 

 Pasteur had never turned his attention to hydrophobia, 

 as his proceedings have done much harm, and it can 

 not be proved that his treatment has prevented the 

 disease in a single instance. Pasteurism has been the 

 cause of incalcuable suffering to animals, and an un- 

 reasonable panic among timid, nervous people all over 

 the civilized world, insomuch that some of them actu- 

 ally developed nervous symptoms simulating hydro- 

 phobia. 



"Besides all this mischief there is no doubt what- 

 ever that these idiotic inoculations (to borrow an adjec- 

 tive which Mr. Paget applies to the Buisson treatment) 

 have directly caused the deaths of many unfortunate 

 persons who were in no danger until they were induced 

 to resort to them. 



"The apparent success of the Pasteurian antirabic 

 treatment has been due to the circumstances that the 

 vast majority of the patients were in no danger of 

 hydrophobia, and that the fluid with which they were 

 inoculated was generally inert, and therefore harmless. 



"The Pasteurian antirabic has been condemned by 

 some very distinguished men, after prolonged and care- 

 ful investigation. The late Professor Peter, of Paris, 

 pronounced it to be altogether empirical and devoid of 

 scientific basis, and he delivered a crushing indictment 

 of it before the Paris Academy of Medicine, in which 

 he pointed out that several of Pasteur's patients had 

 died of a form of hydrophobia almost unknown hitherto 

 in the human subject, but very closely resembling the 

 disease produced by Pasteur in his laboratory rabbits. 



