368 BIOLOGY: GENERAL AND MEDICAL 



against the disease who was in no exceptional danger of 

 getting it, no use could be made of his method unless it 

 could be applied to those in imminent danger i.e., who 

 had already been bitten by mad dogs. A peculiarity of 

 the disease is its long incubation period, which varies 

 from one to several months. The thought occurred to 

 Pasteur that it might be possible to effect the immuni- 

 zation during the incubation period. This method was 

 tried with great hesitation upon a lad terribly bitten by a 

 mad dog. " The child, going to school by a little byroad, 

 had been attacked by a furious dog and thrown to the 

 ground. Too small to defend himself, he had only thought 

 of covering his face with his hands. A bricklayer, see- 

 ing the scene from a distance, arrived and succeeded in 

 beating off the dog with an iron bar; he picked up the 

 boy covered with blood and saliva. The dog went back 

 to his master, Theodore Vone, a grocer at Meissengatt, 

 whom he bit on the arm. Vone seized a gun and shot 

 the animal, whose stomach was found to be full of hay, 

 straw, pieces of wood, etc." This little boy, Joseph 

 Meister, was the first to receive the treatment, though it 

 was undertaken with great reluctance by Pasteur and 

 only upon the advice of Vulpian and Grancher. The 

 lad escaped hydrophobia and experienced no ill from 

 the treatment. Other opportunities for testing the 

 method were soon forthcoming, and it was soon evident 

 that a new triumph had been achieved, for in all those 

 cases that came to hand sufficiently early, the disease 

 was prevented and in no case was harm done. The 

 treatment is extremely simple. It consists in daily 

 injections of emulsions of spinal cord in physiological 

 salt solution, the cords being taken from rabbits inocu- 

 lated with the " fixed virus" and dried over calcium 

 chloride in sterile bottles. The first cord should have 

 dried about fourteen days, the next thirteen days, the 

 next twelve, and so on with modifications such as the 

 experience of the operator or the necessity of the case 

 may make desirable. The success of the method has 



