EXPERIMENTS ON ANIMALS. 
101 
susceptible to glanders virus, and chronic cases in horses, in which 
the contagion is not strongly marked, if brought into contact with 
this animal develop a violent form of the disease, which is again 
transmitted in its aggravated form to horses. Often the only 
means of forming a diagnosis of this disease, especially in its 
chronic form, is by inoculation into healthy animals. The value 
of this diagnostic point cannot be over-estimated, and is alone 
worth all the experiments that have ever been made on animals; 
for as glanders is, as yet, incurable, the existence of a single case 
of unrecognized glanders endangers the life of every animal and 
man in the neighborhood. But if recognized early in its course, 
by the timely isolation or the destruction of the subject in which 
it appears, the loss of immense numbers may be saved. 
It has long been known through experiment that tuberculosis, 
or consumption in cattle, was not only contagious in cattle, but 
through means of their infected milk or flesh when used as food, 
was capable of transmission through numbers of species of ani¬ 
mals, among whom man does not escape, and the organism, which 
in all probability is the cause of this disease, has only recently 
been isolated. 
From analogy we may hope that proper cultivation of this 
virus will add another to the list of diseases which experiments on 
animals have placed under our control. 
The latest addition to the already long list of diseases which 
have been brought under control through experiments on ani¬ 
mals, promises to be the most valuable of all. In the Interna¬ 
tional Medical Congress, which was held this summer in Copen¬ 
hagen, Pasteur announced the results of the studies which he 
had been carrying on for the last four years, as to the possibility 
of preventing rabies. Every disease, and especially such a dis¬ 
ease as rabies, immediately makes one think of its cure ; but to 
set oneself forthwith to search for remedies is to expose oneself 
to what is only too often a fruitless labor. It is in a manner to 
trust to accident for advance. Better far is it in the first place 
to study the nature of the disease, its cause and development, 
with the hope of thereby discovering means of preventing it. The 
fact that the problem of rabies is no longer insoluble, is distinctly 
due to these methods. 
