THE PREVENTION OF HYDROPHOBIA. 665 



contradictions such as invariably take place with every new dis- 

 covery were found to occur, and especially for the reason that it 

 is not every bite by a rabid animal which gives rise to a fatal out- 

 burst of hydrophobia. Hence prejudiced people may pretend that 

 all the successful cases of treatment were cases in which the nat- 

 ural contagion of the disease had not taken effect. This specious 

 reasoning has gradually lost its force with the continually increas- 

 ing number of persons treated. To-day, and speaking solely for 

 the one anti-rabic laboratory of Paris, this total number exceeds 

 7,000, or exactly, up to the 31st of May, 1889, 6,950. Of these the 

 total number of deaths was only seventy- one. It is only by pal- 

 pable and willful misrepresentation that a number differing from 

 the above, and differing by more than double, has been published 

 by those who are systematic enemies of the method. In short, the 

 general mortality applicable to the whole of the operations is one 

 per cent, and if we subtract from the total number of deaths those 

 of persons in whom the symptoms of hydrophobia appeared a few 

 days after the treatment — that is to say, cases in which hydropho- 

 bia had burst out (often owing to delay in arrival) before the 

 curative process was completed — the general mortality is reduced 

 to 0'68 per cent. But let us for the present only consider the 

 facts relating to the English subjects whom we have treated in 

 Paris. Up to May 31, 1889, their total number was two hundred 

 and fourteen. Of these there have been five unsuccessful cases 

 after completion of the treatment and two more during treatment, 

 or a total mortality of 3'2 per cent, or more properly 2'3 per cent. 

 But the method of treatment has been continually undergoing 

 improvement, so that in 1888 and 1889, on a total of sixty-four 

 English persons bitten by mad dogs and treated in Paris, not a 

 single case has succumbed, although among these sixty-four there 

 were ten individuals bitten on the head and fifty-four bitten on 

 the limbs, often to a very serious extent. I have already said 

 that the Lord Mayor in his invitation has treated the subject in a 

 judicious manner, from the double point of view of prophylaxis 

 after the bite and of the extinction of the disease by administra- 

 tive measures. It is also my own profound conviction that a rig- 

 orous observance of simple police regulations would altogether 

 stamp out hydrophobia in a country like the British Isles. Why 

 am I so confident of this ? Because, in spite of an old-fashioned 

 and wide-spread prejudice, to which even science has sometimes 

 given a mistaken countenance, rabies is never spontaneous. It is 

 caused, without a single exception, by the bite of an animal 

 affected with the malady. It is needless to say that in the begin- 

 ning there must have been a first case of hydrophobia. This is 

 certain ; but to try to solve this problem is to raise uselessly the 

 question of the origin of life itself. It is sufficient for me here, in 



VOL. XXXV. — 42 



