THE RABBIT-PLAGUE IN AUSTRALIA. 97 



So it may be with the chicken-cholera in the colonies; but that 

 is only a remote chance, and — no one knows. 



" Lastly, is there any reason why we should endanger our 

 flocks, our green crops, the whole prosperity of the country, at a 

 word from M. Pasteur ? He is a man who has done brilliant 

 scientific work, especially in the diseases of silk-worms, the 

 diseases of wine, and the investigation of zymotic disease, but 

 who has the intensely French passion of pushing great ideas 

 farther than they will go. 



" A few brief references to his last great work, the cure of hydro- 

 phobia, will illustrate my meaning, and at the same time give us a 

 salutary caution as to believing too much of what we are vaguely 

 and grandiloquently told about his successes. He attenuates the 

 virus of mad dogs by passing it through the systems of a rabbit 

 and a monkey, and then injects with modified cultures, usually 

 from the monkey's brain, into men and dogs as a protective and 

 curative measure. For a year or two all went on well, and one 

 enthusiastic writer even declared that he had 'built' (upon mad 

 dogs) the ' eternal temple of his fame.' Centres for mad-dog 

 vaccination were established at Vienna, Buda-Pesth, and half-a- 

 dozen other towns ; and in March, 1886, we find from the 

 'Lancet' that 350 cases had been treated by M.Pasteur, and 

 that but one death had occurred, and that in a case recognised 

 as very serious from the beginning. On 15th May we find that 

 three persons more have died from one set alone. On 12th June 

 another is dead ; on 21st August a boy is dead; on 28th August 

 three more boys, two French and one English ; on 4th September 

 a patient dies; on 13th November another, and so on. Then at 

 the end of December the statistics of the Pasteur Institute for the 

 previous fourteen months are published, and we find that 31 

 of the patients are dead ; but it is conclusively proved to us in 

 the report by figures (which cannot lie) that during this period 

 M. Pasteur had saved the lives of 163 of his patients. This was 

 a truly great result, and would have excited much admiration, had 

 not Professor Peter, of the Hopital Necker, pointed out from the 

 vital statistics that the average mortality for the whole of France 

 before the discovery of the infallible cure was 30 per annum. And 

 to obtain this result, thousands of men and women, many never 

 bitten by rabid animals at all, have been inoculated with the virus 

 and are scattered all through France. 



ZOOLOGIST, THIRD SERIES, VOL. XX. MARCH, 1896. I 



