NA rURE 



\Nov. 5, T885 



Experience has shown that it cannot be mechanically 

 removed b}' any surgical operation, nor chemically 

 neutralised or destroyed by any drug. The only promis- 

 ing path of investigation is to seek for some method of 

 forestalling the action of the virus by rendering the 

 organism unfit for its action, as patriots have ravaged 

 their fields and burnt their towns to save their country 

 from an invading army. 



By this method Jenner robbed small-pox of most of 

 its terror and almost all its danger, so that where Jen- 

 nerian vaccination is thoroughly carried out, as in the 

 German army and in Ireland, small-pox is practically 

 extinct. 



Pasteur's method of dealing with hydrophobia is avow- 

 edly based on the practice of vaccination ; but it is not 

 the mere introduction of the poison in a way that makes 

 its effects less dangerous, like the inoculation of small-pox 

 practised in the last century. Nor is it exactly analogous 

 to Jenner's vaccination, although that term is appropriated 

 by Pasteur himself. For in vaccination an allied disease 

 (or possibly small-pox itself, greatly modified by long 

 transmission through other organisms) is inoculated. In 

 either case the course and symptoms of cow-pox are dis- 

 tinct from those of the more serious disease against 

 which it protects. But in the case of hydrophobia, as in 

 that of " chicken-plague " and anthrax, the poison of the 

 same disease is transmitted through a succession of 

 ■' bearers " until it is so modified that it maybe safely 

 inoculated, and thus the altered virus protects from that 

 which is unmodified. 



The " bearers " chosen for these experiments were rab- 

 bits. The test of the result was made, not upon human 

 beings but upon dogs, for M. Pasteur is a philanthropist 

 first and a zoophilist after. Fifty dogs were inoculated 

 with modified virus obtained from the bodies ' of rabbits 

 which had themselves been affected with rabies by inocu- 

 lation. Would a dog thus inoculated show the ordinary 

 symptoms of the disease? Would it, if bitten by a rabid 

 dog, or designedly inoculated with the unmodified venom 

 of rabies, be protected ? Would it, if infected with the 

 modified virus after such direct inoculation, still be safe 

 from its effects ? The results have, so far, proved the 

 affirmative to each of these questions. None of the 

 " vaccinated " dogs showed signs of the dreaded disease. 

 Then came two cases of human beings bitten by mad 

 dogs who were sent up to M. Pasteur in Paris from their 

 homes in Alsace. One of them, a grocer named Vone 

 (? Wohn), had escaped without rupture of the skin, and 

 was sent home with the comfortable assurance that he 

 had never been infected with the disease. The other, a 

 boy of nine years old, had been terribly worried on the 

 4th of last July ; not only bitten in parts covered by his 

 clothes but also on the hands. He was rescued covered 

 with foam, and bleeding from no less than fourteen 

 wounds. There was no question that the dog was 

 mad, and in all human probability this child, Joseph 

 Meister, was doomed to a certain and horrible death. 

 Such was the opinion of the eminent pathologist, M. 

 Vulpian, and he was supported in this judgment by Dr. 

 Grancher. 



Under these circumstances M. Pasteur felt himself 

 justified in applying the means to this suffering fellow- 



' Not ill! m>rroM-. as the 'I'iiiics states, but the spinal cord, inoclle ij>inierc. ' 



creature, which had already proved efficacious in the 

 case of brutes.^ 



The inoculations were made with a subcutaneous 

 needle, began on the 7th, and were concluded on the 16th 

 of July. "Control experiments" were "made with the 

 same injections upon rabbits, and proved that the virus 

 was active. Moreover, since the effects of the modified 

 virus, when introduced into an unprotected animal, are 

 rapid and severe, and its period of incubation extremely 

 short, the result of the attempt to rescue the child from a 

 horrible death would soon be apparent. If he had died 

 of hydrophobia, it would probably have been within a 

 month. If he survived this period there was every reason 

 to hope that he would be as much protected against its 

 future manifestation as the dogs which had been tested 

 before. 



Joseph Meister was in perfect health at the end of 

 August, at the end of September, and at the end of 

 October. M. Pasteur believes that he is safe from 

 hydrophobia for the rest of his life. 



If similar cases should be followed by similar results, 

 medical science has for the first tiine a method of com- 

 bating a frightful and incurable disease.' But beyond 

 this, by inoculating dogs, as infants should be vaccinated, 

 they will be rendered insusceptible to rabies. Any mad 

 dog will be destroyed, and the dogs he has bitten will 

 escape. Thus the disease may, it is hoped, be extirpated 

 altogether. 



These, however, are but hopes ; at present the whole 

 question is sub judice. Other competent observers must 

 repeat the experiments, and every result must be sub- 

 mitted to searching criticism. This is no slight on 

 M. Pasteur, it is only worthy respect to his genius and 

 his skill. For the credentials of the champion who has 

 undertaken the task of ridding the world of tliis horrible 

 plague of hydrophobia are well known. 



M. Louis Pasteur won his spurs as a chemist. It was 

 his discovery of remarkable forms of crystallisation of 

 racemic acid which first made his name known, and 

 which gave M. Renan the opportunity for the exquisite 

 raillery with which the man of letters welcomed the man 

 of science to the Academy. 



In dealing with the disease of silk-worms in the south 

 of France, Pasteur first handled a physiological problem, 

 and his thoroughness of research, fertility of resource, 

 and felicity in experiments ended in the best result — 

 practical success as the result of strictly scientific in- 

 vestigation. 



Pasteur subsequently investigated the so-called cholera 

 of domestic fowls, and by the method of " attenuated " 

 inoculation has succeeded in protecting them from a 

 destructive epidemic. 



His far larger and more important work on the pre- 

 vention of splenic fever {c/iarbon or anthrax), the most 

 destructive plague among cattle, has had important and 

 useful results. It has in all probability sived countless 

 multitudes of sheep and oxen in France. In Algeria the 

 results were less satisfactory, and also in Hungary. On 

 the other hand Dr. Roy found the method valuable in La 



'Lai 



ii-t de 



2t enfant paraissant inevitable, je me decidai, non sans de 

 et cruelles inquietudes, on doit bien le penser, a tenter sur Joseph 

 :erj la niethode qui m'avait constamment reussi chez les chiens " 

 ptis Reitdtis de I'Acadcmie des Sciences, October 26. 1885). 

 >ne other patient, a shepherd boy, who was bittentwhile gallantly attack- 

 rabid dog, has been inoculated, and ih; result is to be seen. 



