170 The Carnivora. 
usefully applied to an animal which has heen bitten by 
another of suspected or unknown character. 
All treatment when the disease has developed itself seems 
ineffectual. The Committee of the Paris Academy of Medicine 
began, in 1874, a series of experiments with various drugs, 
using pilocarpin three times, and in every case-the remedies 
hastened death by the violent convulsions they brought on. 
The conclusions of the Committee were thus summed up: 
(1) It has been experimentally demonstrated that cases of 
rabies may recover spontaneously. (2) Up to the present, no 
treatment has been proved to be anti-rabic, and cases of cure 
by this or that means may be attributed to the efforts of 
Nature. (3) All the means employed by the Committee since 
1874 (up to 1882), comprising principally injections of azotate 
of pilocarpin, have hastened, rather than retarded, the death 
of the subject. (4) Those dogs usually recovered which were 
left without treatment, as the medicines brought on violent 
fits; and there is an inclination among medical men to leave 
human beings thus attacked in perfect quiet, and only prac- 
tise experiments on animals. (5) Rabid people, left in the 
dark and kept quiet, are not subject to fits, unless they are 
brought on by excitement or ordinary medicines. 
The series of experiments by M. Pasteur, communicated to 
the Académie des Sciences on the 19th of May, 1884, were 
directed to the attenuation of the rabific virus with a view 
to its prophylactic agency, his previous notable discoveries* 
in a similar field of inquiry giving high value to his investi- 
gations. The principle on which he proceeded was that 
which is now well established for some contagious diseases 
—viz., that the virus becomes diminished in energy by its 
passage through one or more subjects. He accordingly trans- 
mitted the specific virus from the dog to the monkey, and 
from one monkey to another, constantly diminishing its 
active power; and then, on re-introducing this attenuated 
virus into the dog, rabbit, guinea pig, &c., found it main- 
tained its milder character. It did not then produce rabies 
