Louis Pasteur: His Life and Labours

or three years all his efforts, as well as those of his pupils, have been concentrated, and this is Hydrophobia. Mysterious in its

possessed by the idea that the moral element could cause modifications in the symptoms and development of a malady in man, are not disposed to recognise the least assimilation between human diseases and those of the animal species. No doubt the emotional qualities, grave family cares, the terror of approaching death, the dread of the great unknown, may modify the course of the evil in man, may aggravate it, even hasten

ever, to attack a disease common both to men and animals-one in which experimentation, th

d with his lips the spout of a closed coffee pot, then suddenly started back-the throat contracted-a prey to such fury that he insulted the nursing sister who was attending on him. He was at the same time attacked by aerophobia to a prodigious degree. At a certain moment, the heel of one of his feet protruded from the

abbits. Did it not seem as if one had got hold of an inoculation of hydrophobia? Such was in fact the conclusion of Dr. Maurice Raynaud, who, having been informed, at the same time as Pasteur, of the illness of the child, had made, on his own account, some experiments on rabbits. His rabbits were dead. A

hose that were dead, and in those which were on the point of death, the presence of a special microbe, easily cultivable in a pure state and of which the successive cultures caused the death of other rabbits. Invariably, the same microbe appeared in the blood. As one or two days sufficed to cause death, hydrophobia could not have had time to make its appearance

r every twelve hours, the rabbits inoculated from the last cultures die as quickly as those inoculated from the first. Thuillier had had the patience to make, in this manner, eighty cultures in contact with air, and eighty cultures in a vacuum; the microbe of the saliva being both aerobic and anaerobic. The eightieth culture killed as quickly as the first. But by allowing the successive cultures to remain for some time in contact with the air, before passing from one culture to the following one, the virulence of the cultures becomes enfeebled. Thus, then, as in fowl cholera, attenuated cultures of the microbe can be obtained. Unlike what happens with cholera, however, the cultures of the microbe of the saliva, exposed to the contact of air, peris

ion in the study of this terrible problem was removed, yet these first researches were not m

substance of the brain or with the spinal marrow of rabid dogs; Pasteur, with due care as to purity, introduced under the skin of some rabbits and some dogs, divers parts of the brain of a dog which had died in a rabid state. Hydrophobia declared itself in both dogs and rabbits, with a duration of incubation about equal to that which followed the ordinary bite of a dog. Although it was necessary still to submit to this long uncertainty with regard to the incubation, one great result was obtained: hydrophobia could be inoculated with ot

after some days the symptoms of hydrophobia appeared. The animal became dejected and restless; it tossed its litter about, refused all nourishment. A doleful, sharp howling was the first indication of the rabic voice, which is but one long cry of suffering and appeal, mingled with barkings from hallucinations. The stomach became depraved; the dog swallowed hay and straw. It soon grew furious, agitated with violent convulsions; finally, after a last fit, it died. During all this time there was great rejoicing in the laboratory. They were at last in possession of a me

. If there exists a microbe of hydrophobia, its medium of cultivation in the body is, par excellence, the brain, the spinal marrow, and the nerves. It was also established that there were localisations of virus in certain parts of the mucous system, and that the very considerable differences of rabic symptoms which

ace of the brain, or to the surface of the spinal marrow; there it houses itself in particular spots, and, little by little, invades the nervous matter. This last wo

ed in the saliva of mad dogs, where, at all times since the disease was first known, it has been found to exist. When the first point attacked by the virus is the spinal marrow, or certa

rabic pulp, however, besides the granulations which are found in profusion in the healthy pulp, there seem to exist little grains of extreme minuteness, almost imperceptible even with the strongest microscopes. In the cephalo-rachidic liquid so limpid in appearance, it is possible with great attention to detect similar little grains.

ot so much the isolation of the microbe, as the find

phed to him, 'Attack at its height in poodle-dog and bull-dog. Come.' Pasteur invited me to accompany him, and we started, carrying six rabbits with us in a basket. The two dogs were rabid to the last degree. The bull dog especially, an enormous creature, howled and foamed in its cage. A bar of iron was held out to him: h

suffocating with fury, his eyes bloodshot, and his body convulsed with a violent spasm, was extended upon a table and held motionless, while Pasteur, leaning over his foaming head, at the distance of a finger's l

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