it are too lengthy to find a place in this short paper. Suffice it to 

 say, that of the cases treated annually by M. Pasteur, and which 

 average from fifteen hundred to two thousand, the mortality is only 

 1.16 per cent., a very strildug result, when we consider that without 

 treatment, the mortality among persons bitten by rabid animals 

 is from fifteen to twenty per cent. 



In my own opinion the element of uncertainty as to the 

 success of the treatment is very great, and few of us, I imagine, 

 would care to be inoculated with even attenuated rabic virus. It 

 is therefore a race, so to speak, between the strong and the 

 weakened poison, and the result necessarily depends greatly upon 

 the situation of the bite, and its proximity to the nerve centres. 

 The risk of infection from the bite of a rabid animal is of course 

 enormously greater if the person is bitten on a naked surface, 

 such as the face or hand, as the virus is almost sure to be wiped 

 off the tooth if the sufferer is bitten through the clothes. I should 

 like to mention, though it hardly belongs to the subject, that 

 common lunar caustic is not a good remedy, but that a strong 

 solution of corrosive sublimate, or even carbolic acid, is much 

 more effectual in destroying the germs of rabies. 



To M. Pasteur, among others, we are indebted for the know- 

 ledge that infectious disease is due not so much to the pre- 

 sence of the microbes themselves, as to specific poisons which 

 they generate in the system, and which are of the nature of 

 poisonous alkaloids or ptomaines. The chemical action produced 

 by these microbes in the system is analogous to the action of the 

 yeast ferment on beer or wine ; the method, however, in which 

 this action is produced is at present unknown. If the diphtheritic 

 bacilli, for example, are cultivated, the chemical poison which they 

 generate may be separated from the microbes themselves, and one 

 drop of this poison injected into an animal is as fatal in its results 

 as inoculation with the diphtheritic bacilli ; a conclusive proof 

 that it is the poison generated by the micro organism, and not the 

 microbe itself, which causes the disease. 



All micro organisms are classed under the generic terms bacteria, 

 microbes, and germs, and are of a vegetable nature, minute species 

 of fungi ; they consist of the plant itself or germ, and the seed or 

 spore, which latter is of an especially hardy character, and is far 

 more capable of resisting the action of germicides than the parent 

 germ. Germs are of a very elementary structure, propagated 

 either by means of spores or by a process called fission, that is to 

 say, the parent germ divides and forms two germs, which are again 

 capable of subdivision. The speed with which these germs mul- 

 tiply is truly marvellous, and is said to be at the rate of a hundred 

 thousand, or even more, in a single hour. It is estimated that the 



