Xll 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
had by this means been reduced from ten per cent, to less than 
one per cent., and insurance offices refused to issue policies on 
animals not so treated. 
In 1880 Pasteur devoted bis attention to rabies. This, though 
often called madness, was not so in the sense of a loss of mental 
power, but was rather of the same nature as the delirium attending 
fever. Pasteur found that the spinal cord of rabbits inoculated 
with rabies was highly poisonous immediately after death, but that 
in about a fortnight it gradually became harmless. After a bite 
by a rabid animal the disease generally took some considerable time 
to develop itself, the virus having to reach a nervous centre, and it 
was thus possible for the artificially prepared virus to out-race it, 
by the animal’s daily inoculation with an attenuated virus from 
a rabbit, beginning with an almost harmless preparation and 
leading up to a dose which, had the animal not been prepared 
by the previous treatment, must have been fatal. It was then safe 
against the effect of the bite. But he must be a bold man who 
would first attempt this experiment upon a human being. In 
front of the Pasteur Institute in Paris there is a bronze statue of a 
shepherd boy fighting a rabid dog. This was no fancy picture, but 
a representation of an actual fact. In July, 1885, a flock under 
the care of a shepherd in Alsace was attacked by a rabid dog, and 
the boy ultimately killed it with his sabot , but was dreadfully 
bitten on the face and head in the fight. This boy and his mother 
came up to Paris, and the mother implored M. Pasteur to treat her 
son with the inoculation which had had such beneficial effects 
among dogs. M. Pasteur was not a surgeon but a chemist, and he 
called in the best medical aid, but the case was regarded as hope¬ 
less. The experiment was however made, and with complete success, 
for the boy has entirely recovered and is still alive. Since then 
7,000 persons had been treated at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, 
and there are no less than twenty such institutions in exist¬ 
ence, chiefly in Europe and America. The success of the smaller 
institutions is rather remarkable. The usual mortality among 
persons bitten and not treated according to the system, is about 
14 per cent., whilst of those who have undergone treatment, it 
is about 1 per cent. Of those bitten in the face and head, 80 per 
cent, died, but, at the Paris Institute, only 4 per cent. At Odessa, 
in 1888, 364 patients were treated, and the death rate was 0*83 
per cent. At Palermo 109 were treated and not one died, and at 
the Warsaw Institute, of 370 patients proved to have been bitten 
by rabid dogs, not one had died. In Paris, in 1887, 350 persons 
were bitten, and 306 persons were treated, of whom three died. 
Eorty-four declined treatment; of these seven died, showing a 
mortality 15 times as great. Of course it was hardly to be ex¬ 
pected that every case would be equally successful. The virus 
from a bite would often take a strong hold of a patient, and if any 
delay took place before administering the antidote, a nerve centre 
might be attacked before the remedy had time to work. It was a 
remarkable thing that though they had attained this success, the 
