from an Agricultural and Veterinary Point of View. 113 
<logs in ten — matter more virulent even than the poison of the 
rabid dog, because it had become intensified in its passage 
through the long series of rabbits. 
This extreme virulence, though it might give rise to the 
gravest apprehensions, so far as the safety of the unfortunate 
child was concerned, yet had the advantage of limiting the 
duration of these apprehensions ; as if it produced the disease 
at all, it must do so sooner than the ordinary dog virus 
would. But up to the time of writing this paper, the child 
remains unharmed — a living testimony to one of the most 
wonderful and valuable discoveries in medicine of this age, or 
perhaps of any time : a discovery vastly greater than Jenner's 
vaccination, great as that was. 
Commencing with the discovery and the mastery over the 
microbes which destroy the stability of simple organic com- 
pounds and cause fermentation, by consistent reasoning, per- 
sistent experimentation, and profound — almost instinctive — 
powers of discernment, Pasteur advanced step by step along the 
same path, until he controlled, we may say vanquished, that 
form of fermentation, also due to micro-organisms, which de- 
stroys the life of man and beast. The most intense virus intro- 
duced into the body, either naturally or experimentally, had no 
power whatever for mischief after his protective inoculations ; 
indeed, it seemed rather to consolidate and confirm the re- 
fractory condition with which these inoculations had endowed 
the individuals so protected. 
It may well be imagined that Pasteur's boldness in venturing 
from animals to mankind, in his attacks upon disease, startled 
the medical world and the public more than anything he had yet 
attempted, and this all the more when the malady he dared to 
grapple with was hydrophobia — the mere mention of which 
seems to conjure up feelings of dread and panic. By many, the 
successful issue of the inoculations which the first patient had 
undergone, and that of the large number of people submitted to 
them subsequently, was received as a sure guarantee of immu- 
nity, even after several days had elapsed since injury was in- 
flicted by rabid dogs. For Pasteur had proclaimed that, though 
a certain number of days (thirty) might have transpired after a 
person had presumably received infection from a mad dog, yet 
his attenuated virus, administered in the Avay described, antici- 
pated the action of the slower-operating poison, and neutralised 
it. But in dealing with this, the most uncertain and hitherto 
intractable of all maladies, it was perfectly reasonable that many 
who were not at all prejudiced against the wizard of the Rue 
d'Ulm, but were, on the contrary, his enthusiastic admirers, 
should hesitate before accepting this latest and grandest con- 
YOL. XXII. — S. S. I 
