ifov 36, 1886.} 



POOREST Ano STREAM. 



843 



iucubation drops to geven days, but though I have passed ou 

 the virus to as uaauy as ninety rabbits, I liavenot found that 

 the period of incubation falls below this. This series of ex- 

 periment, commenced in November, 1882, has now been 

 carried on for close upon three years "without interruption, 

 and without my once having recourse to other virus than 

 that of the rabbils which died in a state of rabies. It was 

 very easy, therefore, to have constantly at command, during 

 a long period of time, a rahical virus perfectly pure and not 

 varying in its properties. This 1 regard as tbe practical part 

 of the method. 



The marrow of these rabbits was ia every case rabical 

 throughout, and to a great degree of intensity. Upon de- 

 taching small portions of this marrow and suspending them 

 carefully ia a very drv atmosphere, the virulence gradually 

 fades away, the period which elapsed before the. virulence 

 has becom"e entirely extinct varying according to the thick- 

 ness of the particles and the exteriaal temperature. The 

 lower the temperature the longer the virus is maintained. 

 This is the scientific point of the method. These facts being 

 established, we come to the means of rendering a dog in- 

 capable of contracting rabies within a relatively short period 

 of time. You suspend every day, in a series of flasks, the 

 air of which is kept dry by fragments of potassium placed 

 in the bottom of the flask, a piece of marrow freshly taken 

 from a rabbit which has died of rabies contracted after an 

 incubation of seven days. Each day you also inoculate into 

 the dog a syringe full of bouillon, into which has been diluted 

 a small quantity of the marrow which has been longest in 

 the flasks, so as" to make sure of its being the least virulent. 

 Upon the following day you operate in the same way, but 

 with marrow rather fresher and more virulent, until at last 

 you get to the very virulent marrow which has only been in 

 the flask a day or two. The dog is in this way rendered in- 

 capable of contiacting rabies, and you can inoculate the 

 rabical virus under the" skin, or even into the surface of the 

 brain by trepanning, without rabies declaring itself. 



By the application of this method I had succeeded in ob- 

 taining fifty dogs of every age and breed, which were in- 

 capable of contracting hydrophobia, without having met 

 with a single failure, when, upon July 6 last, three persons 

 from Alsace called at my laboratory. Theodore Vone, a 

 grocer at Meissengalt, near Schlestadt, was one of them, and 

 he had been bitten two days before by his own dog, which 

 had gone mad. The second was Joseph Meister, a boy nine 

 years' of age, who had been bitten by the same dog on the 

 same dayT The dog had pinned him to the ground and 

 bitten him so badly about the hands, legs and thighs, that he 

 had great ditficulty in walking. He had been cauterized— 

 taut twelve hours after the accident— with phenic acid by 

 Dr. Weber, a local practitioner. The third person was 

 Joseph Meister's mother, who had not been bitten. Upon 

 making a post-mortem examination of the dog, which its 

 master had killed, the stomach was found to be full of hay, 

 straw and bits of wood. The dog was unquestionably mad, 

 and when the boy Meister was picked up he w^as covered 

 with foam and blood. M. Vone was badly bruised about the 

 arm. but he assured me that the dog's teeth had not gone 

 through his shh-t, so 1 told him that he might safely return 

 to his home, which he did the same day. But I kept Joseph 

 Meister and his mother at my laboratory, The sitting of the 

 iVcudemie de Medecine happened to take place that after- 

 noon, and 1 got our colleagues Drs. Vulpian and Graucher 

 to come and see the lad. There were no fewer than fourteen 

 wounds, and as we were all three agreed that he must al- 

 most inevitably be seized with hydrophobia, 1 resolved, after 

 communicating to them the result of my latest experiments, 

 to try the method which I had found so invariably successful 

 w ith my dogs. 



These latter, it is true, had not been bitten before their 

 immunity from rabies had been ascertained, but they did 

 not cause me any anxiety, as I had already made several 

 dogs impervious to rabies after they had been bitten. 8o, at 



8 P. M. on July 6, sixty hours after he had been bitten, and 

 in the pre?ence of Drs'. Yulpian and Graucher, we inocula- 

 ted, beneath a fold made in the skin of the boy's right hypo- 

 chondrium, half asyringeful of marrow, taken from a rabbit 

 which died of rabies on .July 21, and since preserved (that is 

 to say, for fifteen days) in a flask, the air of which had been 

 kept dry. Upon the following days I made fresh inocula- 

 tions under the following conditions: 



July 7, at 9 A. M.— Marrow of fourteen days. 



July 7, at 6 P. M.— Marrow of twelve days. 



July 8, at 9 A. M.— Marrow of eleven days. 



July 8, at 6 P. M. — Marrow of nine days. 



July 9, at 11 A. M.— Marrow of eight days. 



July 10, at 11 A. M.— Marrow of seven days. 



July II, at 11 A. M. — Marrow of six days. 



July 12, at 11 A. M. — Marrow of five days. 



July 13, at 11 A. M. — Man-ow of four days. 



July 14, at 11 A. M. — Marrow of three days. 



July 15, at 11 A. M. — Marrow of two days. 



July 16, at 11 A. M.— Marrow of one day. 

 Thus I made thirteen inoculations in ten days, and, as I 

 shall presently show, a lesser number would have sufficed, 

 but in this, my first essay, I was obliged to exercise special 

 precautions. Two fresh rabbits were trepanned with the 

 various marrows, used so as to follow their degrees of viru- 

 lence. The result showed that the marrows of July 6. 7, 8, 



9 and 10 were not virulent, as they did not make the rabbits 

 go mad. The marrows of the next five days were all viru- 

 lent, and in gradually growine.- proportion. The rabies de- 

 clared itself after seven days' incubation in the case of the 

 rabbits inoculated upon July 15 and 16, after eight days in 

 those inoculated upon the i 3th and 13th, and after fifteen 

 days in those inoculated upon .the 11th. Thus, during the 

 last two days of his treatment I had inoculated Joseph Meis- 

 ter with the most virulent rabical virus, that of the dog re- 

 inforced by a number of passages from rabbit to rabbit — a 

 virus which communicates hydrophobia to dogs afler nine 

 or ten days' incubation. I was warranted in doing this by 

 the result of my experiments with the fifty dogs referred to 

 above. Whan the stage of immunity is reached, one can 

 safely inoculate the most violent virus, and in unlimited 

 quantities. Thus Joseph Meister escaped, not only the 

 hydrophobia which his wounds would doubtless have devel- 

 oped, but that which I inoculated him with to verify the 

 immunity due to the treatment — this being a more virulent 

 form of rabies than that of the ordinary stray dog. A very 

 virulent inoculation at the end has the further advantage of 

 lessening the period during which alarm is felt as to the re- 

 sults of having been bitten. If hydrophobia were going to 

 make its appearance, this would be hastened by the inocula- 

 tion of a virus stronger than that of the bite itself. By the 

 middle of August I felt pretty confident that the boy was 

 out of danger, and now, three months and three weeks 

 after the accident, his health is all that could be desired. 



What interpretation are we to place upon the new method 

 for preventing hydrophobia from following upon the bite of 

 a mad dog, which I have placed before you? 1 do not pro- 

 pose to go fully into that matter now, and will merely give 

 a few preliminary details which will explain the meaning of 

 the exi^criuients which I am canning on, with the object of 

 direct iug attention to what may lie the best interpretation of 

 them. Considering, upon the one hand, the gradual atten- 

 uation of the virus from the point at which it proves fatal, 

 ami the prophylactic lessons to be drawn from it, and upon 

 the other hand the influence of the air in effecting this atten- 

 uation, the first point which .strikes one is that the placing of 

 the rabical marrow in contact with the dry air gradually 

 diminishes and finally extinguishes the intensity of the viru- 

 lence of this marrow. The conclusion to which this would 

 point is that the true prophylactic method consists in em- 

 ploying first virus with no appreciable activity, then virus 

 with a very little strength, and so on to the most virulent. 

 I will show hereafter that the facts do not uphold this view. 

 I will prove that the delay in the periods of incubation of 

 the rabies communicated, to do^ after dog to rabbits, as I said 

 above, to test the degree of virulence of the marrow dried 

 by contact with the air, are due to the impoverishment in 

 the quantity of the rabical vims contained in this marrow, 

 and not to its impoverishment in virulence. Can we admit 

 it possible that the inoculation of a virus of unvarying 

 virulence can secure immunity from rabies by administer- 

 ing it is small, but gradually increasing, quantities? This 

 is an interpretation of the facts of the nevy method 

 which I am studying experimentally. Another interpre- 

 tation may be placed upon the new method, which, though 

 startling at first, deserves the most .serious consideration, 

 because it is in harmony with certain known results exhib- 

 ited to us by the phenomena of life among certain lower 

 animals, notably among some of the pathogenic microbes. 

 Many microbes secm to give birth in their growth to matter 

 which has the properly of hindering their own development. 

 In the year 1880 I instituted researches in order to establish 

 that the microbe which produced poultry-cholera must pro- 

 duce a sort of anti-microbe which acted as a poison to it. 

 I failed to prove the presence of this, but 1 intend to resume 

 my researches, using this time only pure carbonic acid gas. 

 In the same way, the microbe which is found in some fevers 

 seems to be combated, and eventually neutralized, by a sub- 

 stance of its own creation, and M. Rouliu, Professor of the 

 Faculty of Lyons, has shown that the vegetation of the 

 fungus Aspergillus niger develops a substance which checks 

 its growth. 



The question, then, is whether the rabical virus may not 

 be formed of two distinct substances, and whether, side by 

 side with that which is living and capable of developing in 

 the nervous system, there is not another, not itself alive, but 

 having the faculty, when in sufficient proportion, of arrest- 

 ing the development of the first. This I will examine in 

 detail at a subsequent meeting. I need scarcely point out 

 that the most important, perhaps, of the questions now to 

 be solved, is that of the interval to be placed between the 

 time of being bitten and of commencing the treatment. In 

 the case of Joseph Meister it was two days and a half. On 

 Tuesday last, Oct. 20, I commenced, with the assistance of 

 Drs. Vulpian and Graucher, the treatment of a lad of fifteen, 

 who had been very badly bitten in both hands six days 

 before. The results of this treatment I will lay before you 

 as soon as it is completed. 



'^w?^ 0^^* 



Address all communications to the Forest and Stream PiMish- 

 ing Co. 



GAME NEAR NEW YORK. 



I TAKE so much enjoyment in reading of the pleasure trips 

 of others, that I feel as if we all ought to tell as much as 

 we can of our outings for each other's benefit. 



Both our senior and junior partners, though they take no 

 pleasure themselves in shooting, seem to think that if a man 

 wants to shoot', '"better let him shoot;" and so in the spring 

 or fall when I ask for a couple of days "to go shooting," the 

 invariable answer is, "Why, certainly, go by all means." I 

 go. 



Last Wednesday I took the train for Colchester, Conn., 

 a little town about twenty miles from the coast. Thursday 

 afternoon my friend M. called for me, and we drove out of 

 town about a mile to a little fallow spot, where M. had heard 

 of a flock of game. We put the dog in, and after roading a 

 long time he stood as prettily as one could wish. I said'to 

 M., "Let me go on and flush, for I have never shot at a 

 quail, and when I miss you can get in both barrels." This 

 was really the case, for I stood still and looked at the flying 

 birds while M. got in a neat double. We followed tliese 

 birds up, but they got into the densest brush they could find, 

 and though we put them up again, M. was not well enough 

 to work verj' hard, and so these were the only birds Ave got 

 that day. 



Friday we were out bright and early, drove over toward 

 Exeter to a place owned by a Mr. Hall, who "doesn't let 

 any one shoot on his land," We tried our best to persuade 

 Mr. H. for permission to shoot, but he said that he was pre- 

 serving his land for his sons to shoot on; and we couldn't 

 blame him. 



We went down to a patch of brush and briers across the 

 road from Mr. H.'s place, and I guess we must have put up 

 forty birds; but the brush was so dense and the mud and 

 water so deep that it made bad work for both dogs and gun- 

 ners. After a fruitless hunt in this place and putting up a 

 couple of flocks of grouse, we took horse and buggy again 

 and drove over to Backwoods Swamp. Here we put up 

 several flocks of quail, each of us getting some; and in fol- 

 lowing one broken flock we scared up a flock of about ten 

 black ducks, which, as we were loaded with No. 9 chilled, 

 we had to let fly harmlessly away. 



Saturday was a gala day. We hunted in a patch of woods 

 near the town and got several quad, a couple of woodcock 

 and three grouse. I can well understand now why I had 

 little shivers run down my back when I read for thefiftieth 

 time Mr. Hammond's story of tbe "One Eyed Grouse of 

 Maple Run," I didn't know till I had shot at them. 



I had a good deal to combat with, for brace shooting was 

 an unknown quantity to me, and a bird with a noise still 

 stranger. However, I "got on to them" at last and next 

 summer will find me up in Colchester for the middle two 

 weeks in October with dog and gun ready to "do or die." 

 After hunting the last mentioned spot, we walked all around 



tlie country, stopping at each likely place and shooting, add- 

 ing to our bag some squirrels. We took lunch at the house 

 of a farmer over to Hebron woods. The lady of the house 

 brought a loaf of new warm bread and a quart pan of milk 

 and bade us help ourselves. We did and when I offered her 

 fifty cents for our generous lunch she wanted to give me back 

 all but twelve cents for the milk, and when I pressed her to 

 keep it, took it under protest, .still thinking she had cheated us. 



We hunted after lunch with no luck till we came back to 

 the first patch we had hunted in the morning and then we 

 struck a large flock of quail and one of grouse. Forsaking 

 the quail we turned our attentions to the grouse and spent 

 a delightful time till nightfall after them, adding several 

 more to our bag. 



Should any of your readers have a chance to go to Col- 

 chester, let them seek a Mr. Metcalfe, who lives out toward 

 Westchester, and who will show them the game and the 

 country and a good dog. Any one at the po.st-office will 

 direct you to his house. This dog is rather a strange one, 

 part red Irish and part spaniel, and he is very staunch. We 

 used, tlirough the kindness of Mr. Brand, a son of Grouse- 

 dale, owned by Mr. Buckingham, of Norwich. A better 

 dog than Prince Brand never was hunted over. F, L. K. 

 New York, Nov. 17. 



MY FIRST PRAIRIE CHICKEN. 



1?R0M time to time some correspondent of roRE.ST .\jjd 

 Stream gives a sketch, of his first successful shot at 

 some desired game; and the recital is always interesting, for 

 on the part of the reader, as well as of the writer, pleasant 

 memories are revived. IIow di,sliu( lly and pleasantly I 

 remember my first shot at a prairie chicken, tbough it oc- 

 cured eight years ago. 



I had arrived in Minnesota only a few weeks previously, 

 and temporarily was making my home near the village of 

 Sauk Rapids. Quite frequently prairie chickens and other 

 small game could be seen from the windows of my room, 

 and like the old guard at Waterloo, I longed to be up and. 

 at 'em, but for three years I had been an almost helpless 

 invalid, and a walk of three or four rods, even with assist- 

 ance, was a tremendous undertaking. 



Finally, after I had fumed and fretted, for several days, my 

 wife found for me a light, siuglebarrel breechloading gun, and 

 together we went hunting. Our progress was slow, and far 

 from warlike or even alarming. Mrs. L. carried the gun, 

 and with my left hand on her shoulder, my right grasping 

 a cane, 1 could make from two to four rods at a pull. 

 When we saw a squirrel, by resting the gun over my wife's 

 back I could sometimes succeed in knocking it over. On 

 our third outing, as we approached a fence, why, whirr 

 went seven prairie chickens. Snatching the gun from my 

 wife, excitement lending me a fictitious strength, I singled 

 out two of the birds flying close together and pulled trigger, 

 bringing down both of them. Seating ourselves upon a grassy 

 hillock we admired their plumage, estimated their weight, 

 and I think we were .slightly childish in our delight. Both 

 before and since I have made many far more successful 

 shots, have lined the sights on great, hulking brain, and 

 tumbled over the lordly buck, but never did shot of mine 

 afford more sincere pleasure than that which gave me my 

 first prairie chicken. J. Fkmik Locke. 



PiLLSBURT, Mirni. . 



DEER AND PANTHERS. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



In his article of Nov. 5 "J." says that "it is safe to say 

 that panthers never go back to feed on a cold carcass." Now 

 according to my judgment they do sometimes take a cold 

 meal in that way, or leave things in such shape as to convey 

 that impression. A circumstance came under my observa- 

 tion once, while fishing in the Adirondack region, that led 

 me to believe that they would sometimes return to a deer 

 after having killed it. 



About the middle of May, 1882, a small party, myself in- 

 cluded, was fishing for trout on Jock's Lake Outlet. Three 

 of us were working our way up the stream, when Orrin, 

 who is ever on the lookout for signs, discovered among the 

 stones on the bank of the stream a little tuft of hair, attached 

 to a piece of hide perhaps as large as one of our "stove lid" 

 dollars. "Aha!" he said, "some deer has been scrambhng 

 around among these rocks and knocked ofl' a piece of skin." 

 A few feet further on was more hair, and then some blood 

 was found scattered around," which gave evidence of a 

 struggle. Our curiosity was by thiis time thoroughly 

 aroused, and, looking still further, we discovered the carcass 

 of a deer lying among the boulders which form a part of the 

 bed of the stream. We thought it had lain there not more 

 than eight or ten hours. The throat was partly eaten out, 

 the entrails were out and gone, and a small piece was eaten, 

 out of one hindquarter. "Panther's work," was the ver- 

 dict of the three jurors. A trout supper was of far more 

 importance than a dead deer, and we proceeded iqDstream. 

 We had gone only a short distance, however, when Orrin 

 saw the varmint, stretched out at full length upon a fallen 

 tree that projected from the bank a few feet above the water. 

 When he saw us he immediately gathered up and disap- 

 peared in the underbrush. We were unarmed, not deeming 

 it necessary to carry rifles and rods both where the fish were 

 so scarce we could not get them with rods alone. In a 

 couple of hours we returned, disgusted with the idea of fish- 

 ing until there should be more evidetice of fish in the creek. 

 We stopped to look at the deer, and found that something 

 had been eating it in our absence. The cavity in the throat 

 was much enlarged, especially toward the head, and the 

 mutilated hindquarter was nearly all gone, Weofcom'se 

 laid it to the panther, supposing that we had disturbed him 

 in his afternoon nap upon the log, and he had gone back to 

 the deer for another meal. While we were inspecting the 

 scene a large patch of moss dropped from a spruce tree, 

 striking the ground within three or four feet of me; this 

 impressed us very forcibly with the notion that we had dis- 

 turbed him the second tim.e and he had gone up the tree, 

 although the foliage was so dense we could not see tiim. 

 We made up our minds, however, that, like Lane, we 

 "didn't care to stay in that place any longer." Two miles 

 from camp was far enough away for three lone fishermen, 

 with no weapons of defense but an 8oz. fly-rod and an empty 

 creel. Now, I cannot say for certain that the panther 

 returned to the deer, but appearances indicated it, as he was 

 the only hving animal we saw that day ; and the probabih- 

 ties are that if we had been hunting for panthers we would 

 not have seen him. I am always willing to give the devil 

 his due, and if a panther will only finish his work and eat 

 cold venison when he has it, I believe in giving him credit 

 for it. Will, 



