CHAPTER XVIII. 

 Hydrophobia. 



Pasteur's Experiments — Attempts to Demonstrate Micro-organisms — 

 Hydrophobia does not arise Spontaneously — Disease not Confined to 

 Man or Canine Animals — Pasteur's Early Experiments with Saliva 

 Unsuccessful — Successful Experiments — Symptoms of the Disease — 

 Position in which Virulent Material is Found — Different Animals 

 Differently Affected — Alteration of Virulence — Method of Preparing 

 Inoculation Material — Description of Experiments — Joseph Meister 

 the First Patient Treated — Method of Treatment now Adopted — 

 Treatment of Wolf Bites — The Time Factor in the Disease — Rationale 

 of Inoculation Method — Filtered Virus Non- Virulent — Method of 

 Inoculation — Description of Departments, Apparatus and Methods of 

 Working in the Pasteur Institute. 



By some it may be objected that in a work on micro-organ- 

 isms the subject of hydrophobia can scarcely be legitimately 

 considered. When it is remembered, however, that the 

 methods adopted and the principles involved in the study of 

 the production of this disease are in many respects the same 

 as those concerned in other diseases in which bacteria 

 undoubtedly play the part of causal agents, and when, too, 

 it is remembered that Pasteur's researches on the production 

 of immunity against the attack of this disease were carried 

 on under the full conviction that in hydrophobia the excit- 

 ing cause is a poison, the most probable source of which is a 

 vegetable organism, one has, I think, ample excuse for the 

 introduction of this subject. When further we take into 

 consideration the extreme interest of the subject, both from 

 a scientific and from a practical point of view, any remaining 

 objection should at once fall to the ground. To treat the 

 subject in a purely historical or chronological order, it would 

 be necessary, in the first instance, to describe Pasteur's experi- 

 ments ; but in order to clear the ground it may be well to 

 give a short resume of the attempts that have been made 

 to find, cultivate, and inoculate a specific organism that might 

 be causally associated with rabies. Pasteur, Chamberland, 



