Elsinore is but a short distance from Copenhagen, and no member of the Congress, especially among the English section, could have made up his mind to leave Denmark without visiting Hamlet’s home.

A Transport Company organized the visit to Elsinore for a day when the Congress had arranged to have a complete holiday. Five steamers, gay with flags, were provided for the thousand medical men and their families, and accomplished the two hours’ crossing to Elsinore on a lovely, clear day, with an absolutely calm sea. The scientific tourists landed at the foot of the old Kronborg Castle, ready for the lunch which was served out to them and which proved barely sufficient for their appetites; there was not quite enough bread for the Frenchmen, proverbially bread-eaters, and the water, running a little short, had to be supplemented with champagne.

Some of the visitors returned from a neighbouring wood, where they had been to see the stones of the supposed tomb of Hamlet, disappointed at having looked in vain for Ophelia’s stream and for the willow tree which heard her sing her last song, her hands full of flowers. Evidently this place was but an imaginary scenery given by Shakespeare to the drama which stands like a point of interrogation before the mystery of human life; but his life-giving art has for ever made of Elsinore the place where Hamlet lived and suffered.

Pasteur, to whom the Danish character, in its strength and simplicity, proved singularly attractive, remained in Copenhagen for some time after the Congress was over. He had much pleasure in visiting the Thorwaldsen Museum. Copenhagen, after showering honours on the great artist during his lifetime, has continued to worship him after his death. Every statue, every plaster cast, is preserved in that Museum with extraordinary care. Thorwaldsen himself lies in the midst of his works—his simple stone grave, covered with graceful ivy, is in one of the courtyards of the Museum.

Pasteur went on to Arbois from Copenhagen. The laboratory he had built there not being large enough to take in rabid dogs, he dictated from his study the experiments to be carried out in Paris; his carefully kept notebooks enabled him to know exactly how things were going on. His nephew, Adrien Loir, now a curator in the laboratory of Rue d’Ulm, had gladly given up his holidays and remained in Paris with the faithful Eugène Viala. This excellent assistant had come to Paris from Alais in 1871, at the request of Pasteur, who knew his family. Viala was then only twelve years old and could barely read and write. Pasteur sent him to an evening school and himself helped him with his studies; the boy was very intelligent and willing to learn. He became most useful to Pasteur, who, in 1885, was glad to let him undertake a great deal of the laboratory work, under the guidance of M. Roux; he was ultimately entrusted with all the trephining operations on dogs, rabbits, and guinea-pigs.

The letters written to him by Pasteur in 1884 show the exact point reached at that moment by the investigations on hydrophobia. Many people already thought those studies advanced enough to allow the method of treatment to be applied to man.

Pasteur wrote to Viala on September 19, “Tell M. Adrien (Loir) to send the following telegram: ‘Surgeon Symonds, Oxford, England. Operation on man still impossible. No possibility at present of sending attenuated virus.’ See MM. Bourrel and Béraud, procure a dog which has died of street-rabies, and use its medulla to inoculate a new monkey, two guinea-pigs and two rabbits.... I am afraid Nocard’s dog cannot have been rabid; even if you were sure that he was, you had better try those tests again.

“Since M. Bourrel says he has several mad dogs at present, you might take two couple of new dogs to his kennels; when he has a good biting dog, he can have a pair of our dogs bitten, after which you will treat one of them so as to make him refractory (carefully taking note of the time elapsed between the bites and the beginning of the treatment). Mind you keep notes of every new experiment undertaken, and write to me every other day at least.”

Pasteur pondered on the means of extinguishing hydrophobia or of merely diminishing its frequency. Could dogs be vaccinated? There are 100,000 dogs in Paris, about 2,500,000 more in the provinces: vaccination necessitates several preventive inoculations; innumerable kennels would have to be built for the purpose, to say nothing of the expense of keeping the dogs and of providing a trained staff capable of performing the difficult and dangerous operations. And, as M. Nocard truly remarked, where were rabbits to be found in sufficient number for the vaccine emulsions?

Optional vaccination did not seem more practicable; it could only be worked on a very restricted scale and was therefore of very little use in a general way.

The main question was the possibility of preventing hydrophobia from occurring in a human being, previously bitten by a rabid dog.

The Emperor of Brazil, who took the greatest interest in the doings of the Ecole Normale laboratory, having written to Pasteur asking when the preventive treatment could be applied to man, Pasteur answered as follows—

“September 22.

“Sire—Baron Itajuba, the Minister for Brazil, has handed me the letter which Your Majesty has done me the honour of writing on August 21. The Academy welcomed with unanimous sympathy your tribute to the memory of our illustrious colleague, M. Dumas; it will listen with similar pleasure to the words of regret which you desire me to express on the subject of M. Wurtz’s premature death.

“Your Majesty is kind enough to mention my studies on hydrophobia; they are making good and uninterrupted progress. I consider, however, that it will take me nearly two years more to bring them to a happy issue....

“What I want to do is to obtain prophylaxis of rabies after bites.

“Until now I have not dared to attempt anything on men, in spite of my own confidence in the result and the numerous opportunities afforded to me since my last reading at the Academy of Sciences. I fear too much that a failure might compromise the future, and I want first to accumulate successful cases on animals. Things in that direction are going very well indeed; I already have several examples of dogs made refractory after a rabietic bite. I take two dogs, cause them both to be bitten by a mad dog; I vaccinate the one and leave the other without any treatment: the latter dies and the first remains perfectly well.

“But even when I shall have multiplied examples of the prophylaxis of rabies in dogs, I think my hand will tremble when I go on to Mankind. It is here that the high and powerful initiative of the head of a State might intervene for the good of humanity. If I were a King, an Emperor, or even the President of a Republic, this is how I should exercise my right of pardoning criminals condemned to death. I should invite the counsel of a condemned man, on the eve of the day fixed for his execution, to choose between certain death and an experiment which would consist in several preventive inoculations of rabic virus, in order to make the subject’s constitution refractory to rabies. If he survived this experiment—and I am convinced that he would—his life would be saved and his punishment commuted to a lifelong surveillance, as a guarantee towards that society which had condemned him.

“All condemned men would accept these conditions, death being their only terror.

“This brings me to the question of cholera, of which Your Majesty also has the kindness to speak to me. Neither Dr. Koch nor Drs. Straus and Roux have succeeded in giving cholera to animals, and therefore great uncertainty prevails regarding the bacillus to which Dr. Koch attributes the causation of cholera. It ought to be possible to try and communicate cholera to criminals condemned to death, by the injection of cultures of that bacillus. When the disease declared itself, a test could be made of the remedies which are counselled as apparently most efficacious.

“I attach so much importance to these measures, that, if Your Majesty shared my views, I should willingly come to Rio Janeiro, notwithstanding my age and the state of my health, in order to undertake such studies on the prophylaxis of hydrophobia and the contagion of cholera and its remedies.

“I am, with profound respect, Your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant.”

In other times, the right of pardon could be exercised in the form of a chance of life offered to a criminal lending himself to an experiment. Louis XVI, having admired a fire balloon rising above Versailles, thought of proposing to two condemned men that they should attempt to go up in one. But Pilâtre des Roziers, whose ambition it was to be the first aëronaut, was indignant at the thought that “vile criminals should be the first to rise up in the air.” He won his cause, and in November, 1783, he organized an ascent at the Muette which lasted twenty minutes.

In England, in the eighteenth century, before Jenner’s discovery, successful attempts had been made at the direct inoculation of small-pox. In some historical and medical Researches on Vaccine, published in 1803, Husson relates that the King of England, wishing to have the members of his family inoculated, began by having the method tried on six criminals condemned to death; they were all saved, and the Royal Family submitted to inoculation.

There is undoubtedly a beautiful aspect of that idea of utilizing the fate of a criminal for the cause of Humanity. But in our modern laws no such liberty is left to Justice, which has no power to invent new punishments, or to enter into a bargain with a condemned criminal.

Before his departure from Arbois, Pasteur encountered fresh and unforeseen obstacles. The successful opposition of the inhabitants of Meudon had inspired those of St. Cloud, Ville d’Avray, Vaucresson, Marnes, and Garches with the idea of resisting in their turn the installation of Pasteur’s kennels at Villeneuve l’Etang. People spoke of public danger, of children exposed to meet ferocious rabid dogs wandering loose about the park, of popular Sundays spoilt, picnickers disturbed, etc., etc.

A former pupil of Pasteur’s at the Strasburg Faculty, M. Christen, now a Town Councillor at Vaucresson, warned Pasteur of all this excitement, adding that he personally was ready to do his best to calm the terrors of his townspeople.

Pasteur answered, thanking him for his efforts. “...I shall be back in Paris on October 24, and on the morning of the twenty-fifth and following days I shall be pleased to see any one desiring information on the subject.... But you may at once assure your frightened neighbours, Sir, that there will be no mad dogs at Villeneuve l’Etang, but only dogs made refractory to rabies. Not having enough room in my laboratory, I am actually obliged to quarter on various veterinary surgeons those dogs, which I should like to enclose in covered kennels, quite safely secured, you may be sure.”

Pasteur, writing about this to his son, could not help saying, “Months of fine weather have been wasted! This will keep my plans back almost a year.”

Little by little, in spite of the opposition which burst out now and again, calm was again re-established. French good sense and appreciation of great things got the better of the struggle; in January, 1885, Pasteur was able to go to Villeneuve l’Etang to superintend the arrangements. The old stables were turned into an immense kennel, paved with asphalte. A wide passage went from one end to the other, on each side of which accommodation for sixty dogs was arranged behind a double barrier of wire netting.

The subject of hydrophobia goes back to the remotest antiquity; one of Homer’s warriors calls Hector a mad dog. The supposed allusions to it to be found in Hippocrates are of the vaguest, but Aristotle is quite explicit when speaking of canine rabies and of its transmission from one animal to the other through bites. He gives expression, however, to the singular opinion that man is not subject to it. More than three hundred years later we come to Celsus, who describes this disease, unknown or unnoticed until then. “The patient,” said Celsus, “is tortured at the same time by thirst and by an invincible repulsion towards water.” He counselled cauterization of the wound with a red-hot iron and also with various caustics and corrosives.

Pliny the Elder, a worthy precursor of village quacks, recommended the livers of mad dogs as a cure; it was not a successful one. Galen, who opposed this, had a no less singular recipe, a compound of cray-fish eyes. Later, the shrine of St. Hubert in Belgium was credited with miraculous cures; this superstition is still extant.

Sea bathing, unknown in France until the reign of Louis XIV, became a fashionable cure for hydrophobia, Dieppe sands being supposed to offer wonderful curing properties.

In 1780 a prize was offered for the best method of treating hydrophobia, and won by a pamphlet entitled Dissertation sur la Rage, written by a surgeon-major of the name of Le Roux.

This very sensible treatise concluded by recommending cauterization, now long forgotten, instead of the various quack remedies which had so long been in vogue, and the use of butter of antimony.

Le Roux did not allude in his paper to certain tenacious and cruel prejudices, which had caused several hydrophobic persons, or persons merely suspected of hydroprobia, to be killed like wild beasts, shot, poisoned, strangled, or suffocated.

It was supposed in some places that hydrophobia could be transmitted through the mere contact of the saliva or even by the breath of the victims; people who had been bitten were in terror of what might be done to them. A girl, bitten by a mad dog and taken to the Hôtel Dieu Hospital on May 8, 1780, begged that she might not be suffocated!

Those dreadful occurrences must have been only too frequent, for, in 1810, a philosopher asked the Government to enact a Bill in the following terms: “It is forbidden, under pain of death, to strangle, suffocate, bleed to death, or in any other way murder individuals suffering from rabies, hydrophobia, or any disease causing fits, convulsions, furious and dangerous madness; all necessary precautions against them being taken by families or public authorities.”

In 1819, newspapers related the death of an unfortunate hydrophobe, smothered between two mattresses; it was said à propos of this murder that “it is the doctor’s duty to repeat that this disease cannot be transmitted from man to man, and that there is therefore no danger in nursing hydrophobia patients.” Though old and fantastic remedies were still in vogue in remote country places, cauterization was the most frequently employed; if the wounds were somewhat deep, it was recommended to use long, sharp and pointed needles, and to push them well in, even if the wound was on the face.

One of Pasteur’s childish recollections (it happened in October, 1831) was the impression of terror produced throughout the Jura by the advent of a rabid wolf who went biting men and beasts on his way. Pasteur had seen an Arboisian of the name of Nicole being cauterized with a red-hot iron at the smithy near his father’s house. The persons who had been bitten on the hands and head succumbed to hydrophobia, some of them amidst horrible sufferings; there were eight victims in the immediate neighbourhood. Nicole was saved. For years the whole region remained in dread of that mad wolf.

The long period of incubation encouraged people to hope that some preventive means might be found, instead of the painful operation of cauterization; some doctors attempted inoculating another poison, a viper’s venom for instance, to neutralize the rabic virus—needless to say with fatal results. In 1852 a reward was promised by the Government to the finder of a remedy against hydrophobia; all the old quackeries came to light again, even Galen’s remedy of cray-fish eyes!

Bouchardat, who had to report to the Academy on these remedies, considered them of no value whatever; his conclusion was that cauterization was the only prophylactic treatment of hydrophobia.

Such was also Bouley’s opinion, eighteen years later, when he wrote that the object to keep in view was the quickest possible destruction of the tissues touched by rabietic saliva. Failing an iron heated to a light red heat, or the sprinkling of gunpowder over the wound and setting a match to it, he recommended caustics, such as nitric acid, sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, potassa fusa, butter of antimony, corrosive sublimate, and nitrate of silver.

Thus, after centuries had passed, and numberless remedies had been tried, no progress had been made, and nothing better had been found than cauterization, as indicated by Celsus in the first century.

As to the origin of rabies, it remained unknown and was erroneously attributed to divers causes. Spontaneity was still believed in. Bouley himself did not absolutely reject the idea of it, for he said in 1870: “In the immense majority of cases, this disease proceeds from contagion; out of 1,000 rabid dogs, 999 at least owe their condition to inoculation by a bite.”

Pasteur was anxious to uproot this fallacy, as also another very serious error, vigorously opposed by Bouley, by M. Nocard, and by another veterinary surgeon in a Manual on Rabies, published in 1882, and still as tenacious as most prejudices, viz., that the word hydrophobia is synonymous with rabies. The rabid dog is not hydrophobe, he does not abhor water. The word is applicable to rabid human beings, but is false concerning rabid dogs.

Many people in the country, constantly seeing Pasteur’s name associated with the word rabies, fancied that he was a consulting veterinary surgeon, and pestered him with letters full of questions. What was to be done to a dog whose manner seemed strange, though there was no evidence of a suspicious bite? Should he be shot? “No,” answered Pasteur, “shut him up securely, and he will soon die if he is really mad.” Some dog owners hesitated to destroy a dog manifestly bitten by a mad dog. “It is such a good dog!” “The law is absolute,” answered Pasteur; “every dog bitten by a mad dog must be destroyed at once.” And it irritated him that village mayors should close their eyes to the non-observance of the law, and thus contribute to a recrudescence of rabies.

Pasteur wasted his precious time answering all those letters. On March 28, 1885, he wrote to his friend Jules Vercel—

“Alas! we shall not be able to go to Arbois for Easter; I shall be busy for some time settling down, or rather settling my dogs down at Villeneuve l’Etang. I also have some new experiments on rabies on hand which will take some months. I am demonstrating this year that dogs can be vaccinated, or made refractory to rabies after they have been bitten by mad dogs.

“I have not yet dared to treat human beings after bites from rabid dogs; but the time is not far off, and I am much inclined to begin by myself—inoculating myself with rabies, and then arresting the consequences; for I am beginning to feel very sure of my results.”

Pasteur gave more details three days later, in a letter to his son, then Secretary of the French Embassy at the Quirinal—

“The experiments before the Rabies Commission were resumed on March 10; they are now being carried out, and the Commission has already held six sittings; the seventh will take place to-day.

“As I only submit to it results which I look upon as acquired, this gives me a surplus of work to do; for those control experiments are added to those I am now carrying out. For I am continuing my researches, trying to discover new principles, and hardening myself by habit and by increased conviction in order to attempt preventive inoculations on man after a bite.

“The Commission’s experiments have led to no result so far, for, as you know, weeks have to pass before any results occur. But no untoward incident has occurred up to now; and if all continues equally well, the Commission’s second report will be as favorable as that of last year, which left nothing to be desired.

“I am equally satisfied with my new experiments in this difficult study. Perhaps practical application on a large scale may not be far off....”

In May, everything at Villeneuve l’Etang was ready for the reception of sixty dogs. Fifty of them, already made refractory to bites or rabic inoculation, were successively accommodated in the immense kennel, where each had his cell and his experiment number. They had been made refractory by being inoculated with fragments of medulla, which had hung for a fortnight in a phial, and of which the virulence was extinguished, after which further inoculations had been made, gradually increasing in virulence until the highest degree of it had again been reached.

All those dogs, which were to be periodically taken back to Paris for inoculations or bite tests, in order to see what was the duration of the immunity conferred, were stray dogs picked up by the police. They were of various breeds, and showed every variety of character, some of them gentle and affectionate, others vicious and growling, some confiding, some shrinking, as if the recollection of chloroform and the laboratory was disagreeable to them. They showed some natural impatience of their enforced captivity, only interrupted by a short daily run. One of them, however, was promoted to the post of house-dog, and loosened every night; he excited much envy among his congeners. The dogs were very well cared for by a retired gendarme, an excellent man of the name of Pernin.

A lover of animals might have drawn an interesting contrast between the fate of those laboratory dogs, living and dying for the good of humanity, and that of the dogs buried in the neighbouring dogs’ cemetery at Bagatelle, founded by Sir Richard Wallace, the great English philanthropist. Here lay toy dogs, lap dogs, drawing-room dogs, cherished and coddled during their useless lives, and luxuriously buried after their useless deaths, while the dead bodies of the others went to the knacker’s yard.

Rabbit hutches and guinea-pig cages leaned against the dogs’ palace. Pasteur, having seen to the comfort of his animals, now thought of himself; it was frequently necessary that he should come to spend two or three days at Villeneuve l’Etang. The official architect thought of repairing part of the little palace of Villeneuve, which was in a very bad state of decay. But Pasteur preferred to have some rooms near the stables put into repair, which had formerly been used for non-commissioned officers of the Cent Gardes; there was less to do to them, and the position was convenient. The roof, windows, and doors were renovated, and some cheap paper hung on the walls inside. “This is certainly not luxurious!” exclaimed an astonished millionaire, who came to see Pasteur one day on his way to his own splendid villa at Marly.

On May 29 Pasteur wrote to his son—

“I thought I should have done with rabies by the end of April; I must postpone my hopes till the end of July. Yet I have not remained stationary; but, in these difficult studies, one is far from the goal as long as the last word, the last decisive proof is not acquired. What I aspire to is the possibility of treating a man after a bite with no fear of accidents.

“I have never had so many subjects of experiment on hand—sixty dogs at Villeneuve l’Etang, forty at Rollin, ten at Frégis’, fifteen at Bourrel’s, and I deplore having no more kennels at my disposal.

“What do you say of the Rue Pasteur in the large city of Lille? The news has given me very great pleasure.”

What Pasteur briefly called “Rollin” in this letter was the former Lycée Rollin, the old buildings of which had been transformed into outhouses for his laboratory. Large cages had been set up in the old courtyard, and the place was like a farm, with its population of hens, rabbits, and guinea-pigs.

Two series of experiments were being carried out on those 125 dogs. The first consisted in making dogs refractory to rabies by preventive inoculations; the second in preventing the onset of rabies in dogs bitten or subjected to inoculation.

CHAPTER XIII

1885—1888

Could that vaccinal substance associated with the rabic virus be isolated? In the meanwhile a main fact was acquired, that of preventive inoculation, since Pasteur was sure of his series of dogs rendered refractory to rabies after a bite. Months were going by without bringing an answer to the question “Why?” of the antirabic vaccination, as mysterious as the “Why?” of Jennerian vaccination.

On Monday, July 6, Pasteur saw a little Alsatian boy, Joseph Meister, enter his laboratory, accompanied by his mother. He was only nine years old, and had been bitten two days before by a mad dog at Meissengott, near Schlestadt.

The child, going alone to school by a little by-road, had been attacked by a furious dog and thrown to the ground. Too small to defend himself, he had only thought of covering his face with his hands. A bricklayer, seeing the scene from a distance, arrived, and succeeded in beating the dog off with an iron bar; he picked up the boy, covered with blood and saliva. The dog went back to his master, Théodore Vone, a grocer at Meissengott, whom he bit on the arm. Vone seized a gun and shot the animal, whose stomach was found to be full of hay, straw, pieces of wood, etc. When little Meister’s parents heard all these details they went, full of anxiety, to consult Dr. Weber, at Villé, that same evening. After cauterizing the wounds with carbolic, Dr. Weber advised Mme. Meister to start for Paris, where she could relate the facts to one who was not a physician, but who would be the best judge of what could be done in such a serious case. Théodore Vone, anxious on his own and on the child’s account, decided to come also.

Pasteur reassured him; his clothes had wiped off the dog’s saliva, and his shirt-sleeve was intact. He might safely go back to Alsace, and he promptly did so.

Pasteur’s emotion was great at the sight of the fourteen wounds of the little boy, who suffered so much that he could hardly walk. What should he do for this child? could he risk the preventive treatment which had been constantly successful on his dogs? Pasteur was divided between his hopes and his scruples, painful in their acuteness. Before deciding on a course of action, he made arrangements for the comfort of this poor woman and her child, alone in Paris, and gave them an appointment for 5 o’clock, after the Institute meeting. He did not wish to attempt anything without having seen Vulpian and talked it over with him. Since the Rabies Commission had been constituted, Pasteur had formed a growing esteem for the great judgment of Vulpian, who, in his lectures on the general and comparative physiology of the nervous system, had already mentioned the profit to human clinics to be drawn from experimenting on animals.

His was a most prudent mind, always seeing all the aspects of a problem. The man was worthy of the scientist: he was absolutely straightforward, and of a discreet and active kindness. He was passionately fond of work, and had recourse to it when smitten by a deep sorrow.

Vulpian expressed the opinion that Pasteur’s experiments on dogs were sufficiently conclusive to authorize him to foresee the same success in human pathology. Why not try this treatment? added the professor, usually so reserved. Was there any other efficacious treatment against hydrophobia? If at least the cauterizations had been made with a red-hot iron! but what was the good of carbolic acid twelve hours after the accident. If the almost certain danger which threatened the boy were weighed against the chances of snatching him from death, Pasteur would see that it was more than a right, that it was a duty to apply antirabic inoculation to little Meister.

This was also the opinion of Dr. Grancher, whom Pasteur consulted. M. Grancher worked at the laboratory; he and Dr. Straus might claim to be the two first French physicians who took up the study of bacteriology; these novel studies fascinated him, and he was drawn to Pasteur by the deepest admiration and by a strong affection, which Pasteur thoroughly reciprocated.

Vulpian and M. Grancher examined little Meister in the evening, and, seeing the number of bites, some of which, on one hand especially, were very deep, they decided on performing the first inoculation immediately; the substance chosen was fourteen days old and had quite lost its virulence: it was to be followed by further inoculations gradually increasing in strength.

It was a very slight operation, a mere injection into the side (by means of a Pravaz syringe) of a few drops of a liquid prepared with some fragments of medulla oblongata. The child, who cried very much before the operation, soon dried his tears when he found the slight prick was all that he had to undergo.

Pasteur had had a bedroom comfortably arranged for the mother and child in the old Rollin College, and the little boy was very happy amidst the various animals—chickens, rabbits, white mice, guinea-pigs, etc.; he begged and easily obtained of Pasteur the life of several of the youngest of them.

“All is going well,” Pasteur wrote to his son-in-law on July 11: “the child sleeps well, has a good appetite, and the inoculated matter is absorbed into the system from one day to another without leaving a trace. It is true that I have not yet come to the test inoculations, which will take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. If the lad keeps well during the three following weeks, I think the experiment will be safe to succeed. I shall send the child and his mother back to Meissengott (near Schlestadt) in any case on August 1, giving these good people detailed instruction as to the observations they are to record for me. I shall make no statement before the end of the vacation.”

But, as the inoculations were becoming more virulent, Pasteur became a prey to anxiety: “My dear children,” wrote Mme. Pasteur, “your father has had another bad night; he is dreading the last inoculations on the child. And yet there can be no drawing back now! The boy continues in perfect health.”

Renewed hopes were expressed in the following letter from Pasteur—

“My dear René, I think great things are coming to pass. Joseph Meister has just left the laboratory. The three last inoculations have left some pink marks under the skin, gradually widening and not at all tender. There is some action, which is becoming more intense as we approach the final inoculation, which will take place on Thursday, July 16. The lad is very well this morning, and has slept well, though slightly restless; he has a good appetite and no feverishness. He had a slight hysterical attack yesterday.”

The letter ended with an affectionate invitation. “Perhaps one of the great medical facts of the century is going to take place; you would regret not having seen it!”

Pasteur was going through a succession of hopes, fears, anguish, and an ardent yearning to snatch little Meister from death; he could no longer work. At nights, feverish visions came to him of this child whom he had seen playing in the garden, suffocating in the mad struggles of hydrophobia, like the dying child he had seen at the Hôpital Trousseau in 1880. Vainly his experimental genius assured him that the virus of that most terrible of diseases was about to be vanquished, that humanity was about to be delivered from this dread horror—his human tenderness was stronger than all, his accustomed ready sympathy for the sufferings and anxieties of others was for the nonce centred in “the dear lad.”

The treatment lasted ten days; Meister was inoculated twelve times. The virulence of the medulla used was tested by trephinings on rabbits, and proved to be gradually stronger. Pasteur even inoculated on July 16, at 11 a.m., some medulla only one day old, bound to give hydrophobia to rabbits after only seven days’ incubation; it was the surest test of the immunity and preservation due to the treatment.

Cured from his wounds, delighted with all he saw, gaily running about as if he had been in his own Alsatian farm, little Meister, whose blue eyes now showed neither fear nor shyness, merrily received the last inoculation; in the evening, after claiming a kiss from “Dear Monsieur Pasteur,” as he called him, he went to bed and slept peacefully. Pasteur spent a terrible night of insomnia; in those slow dark hours of night when all vision is distorted, Pasteur, losing sight of the accumulation of experiments which guaranteed his success, imagined that the little boy would die.

The treatment being now completed, Pasteur left little Meister to the care of Dr. Grancher (the lad was not to return to Alsace until July 27) and consented to take a few days’ rest. He spent them with his daughter in a quiet, almost deserted country place in Burgundy, but without however finding much restfulness in the beautiful peaceful scenery; he lived in constant expectation of Dr. Grancher’s daily telegram or letter containing news of Joseph Meister.

By the time he went to the Jura, Pasteur’s fears had almost disappeared. He wrote from Arbois to his son August 3, 1885: “Very good news last night of the bitten lad. I am looking forward with great hopes to the time when I can draw a conclusion. It will be thirty-one days to-morrow since he was bitten.”

On August 20, six weeks before the new elections of Deputies, Léon Say, Pasteur’s colleague at the Académie Française, wrote to him that many Beauce agricultors were anxious to put his name down on the list of candidates, as a recognition of the services rendered by science. A few months before, Jules Simon had thought Pasteur might be elected as a Life Senator, but Pasteur had refused to be convinced. He now replied to Léon Say—

“Your proposal touches me very much and it would be agreeable to me to owe a Deputy’s mandate to electors, several of whom have applied the results of my investigations. But politics frighten me and I have already refused a candidature in the Jura and a seat in the Senate in the course of this year.

“I might be tempted perhaps, if I no longer felt active enough for my laboratory work. But I still feel equal to further researches, and on my return to Paris, I shall be organizing a ‘service’ against rabies which will absorb all my energies. I now possess a very perfect method of prophylaxis against that terrible disease, a method equally adapted to human beings and to dogs, and by which your much afflicted Department will be one of the first to benefit.

“Before my departure for Jura I dared to treat a poor little nine-year-old lad whose mother brought him to me from Alsace, where he had been attacked on the 4th ult., and bitten on the thighs, legs, and hand in such a manner that hydrophobia would have been inevitable. He remains in perfect health.”

Whilst many political speeches were being prepared, Pasteur was thinking over a literary speech. He had been requested by the Académie Française to welcome Joseph Bertrand, elected in place of J. B. Dumas—the eulogium of a scientist, spoken by one scientist, himself welcomed by another scientist. This was an unusual programme for the Académie Française, perhaps too unusual in the eyes of Pasteur, who did not think himself worthy of speaking in the name of the Académie. Such was his modesty; he forgot that amongst the savants who had been members of the Académie, several, such as Fontenelle, Cuvier, J. B. Dumas, etc., had published immortal pages, and that some extracts from his own works would one day become classical.

The vacation gave him time to read over the writings of his beloved teacher, and also to study the life and works of Joseph Bertrand, already his colleague at the Académie des Sciences.

Bertrand’s election had been simple and easy, like everything he had undertaken since his birth. It seemed as if a good fairy had leant over his cradle and whispered to him, “Thou shalt know many things, without having had to learn them.” It is a fact that he could read without having held a book in his hands. He was ill and in bed whilst his brother Alexander was being taught to read; he listened to the lessons and kept the various combinations of letters in his mind. When he became convalescent, his parents brought him a book of Natural History so that he might look at the pictures. He took the volume and read from it fluently; he was not five years old. He learnt the elements of geometry very much in the same way.

Pasteur in his speech thus described Joseph Bertrand’s childhood: “At ten years old you were already celebrated, and it was prophesied that you would pass at the head of the list into the Ecole Polytechnique and become a member of the Academy of Sciences? No one doubted this, not even yourself. You were indeed a child prodigy. Sometimes it amused you to hide in a class of higher mathematics, and when the Professor propounded a difficult problem that no one could solve, one of the students would triumphantly lift you in his arms, stand you on a chair so that you might reach the board, and you would then give the required solution with a calm assurance, in the midst of applause from the professors and pupils.”

Pasteur, whose every progress had been painfully acquired, admired the ease with which Bertrand had passed through the first stages of his career. At an age when marbles and india-rubber balls are usually an important interest, Bertrand walked merrily to the Jardin des Plantes to attend a course of lectures by Gay-Lussac. A few hours later, he might be seen at the Sorbonne, listening with interest to Saint Marc Girardin, the literary moralist. The next day, he would go to a lecture on Comparative Legislation; never was so young a child seen in such serious places. He borrowed as many books from the Institute library as Biot himself; he learnt whole passages by heart, merely by glancing at them. He became a doctor ès sciences at sixteen, and a Member of the Institute at thirty-four.

Besides his personal works—such as those on Analytic Mechanics, which place him in the very first rank—his teaching had been brought to bear during forty years on all branches of mathematics. Bertrand’s life, apparently so happy, had been saddened by the irreparable loss, during the Commune, of a great many precious notes, letters, and manuscripts, which had been burnt with the house where he had left them. Discouraged by this ruin of ten years’ work, he had given way to a tendency to writing slight popular articles, of high literary merit, instead of continuing his deeper scientific work. His eulogy of J. B. Dumas was not quite seriously enthusiastic enough to please Pasteur, who had a veritable cult for the memory of his old teacher, and who eagerly grasped this opportunity of speaking again of J. B. Dumas’ influence on himself, of his admirable scientific discoveries, and of his political duties, undertaken in the hope of being useful to Science, but often proving a source of disappointment.

Pasteur enjoyed looking back on the beloved memory of J. B. Dumas, as he sat preparing his speech in his study at Arbois, looking out on the familiar landscape of his childhood, where the progress of practical science was evidenced by the occasional passing, through the distant pine woods, of the white smoke of the Switzerland express.

When in his laboratory in Paris, Pasteur hated to be disturbed whilst making experiments or writing out notes of his work. Any visitor was unwelcome; one day that some one was attempting to force his way in, M. Roux was amused at seeing Pasteur—vexed at being disturbed and anxious not to pain the visitor—come out to say imploringly, “Oh! not now, please! I am too busy!”

“When Chamberland and I,” writes Dr. Roux, “were engaged in an interesting occupation, he mounted guard before us, and when, through the glazed doors, he saw people coming, he himself would go and meet them in order to send them away. He showed so artlessly that his sole thought was for the work, that no one ever could be offended.”

But, at Arbois, where he only spent his holidays, he did not exercise so much severity; any one could come in who liked. He received in the morning a constant stream of visitors, begging for advice, recommendations, interviews, etc.

“It is both comical and touching,” wrote M. Girard, a local journalist, “to see the opinion the vineyard labourers have of him. These good people have heard M. Pasteur’s name in connection with the diseases of wine, and they look upon him as a sort of wine doctor. If they notice a barrel of wine getting sour, they knock at the savant’s door, bottle in hand; this door is never closed to them. Peasants are not precise in their language; they do not know how to begin their explanations or how to finish them. M. Pasteur, ever calm and serious, listens to the very end, takes the bottle and studies it at his leisure. A week later, the wine is ‘cured.’”

He was consulted also on many other subjects—virus, silkworms, rabies, cholera, swine-fever, etc.; many took him for a physician. Whilst telling them of their mistake, he yet did everything he could for them.

During this summer of 1885, he had the melancholy joy of seeing a bust erected in the village of Monay to the memory of a beloved friend of his, J. J. Perraud, a great and inspired sculptor, who had died in 1876. Perraud, whose magnificent statue of Despair is now at the Louvre, had had a sad life, and, on his lonely death-bed (he was a widower, with no children), Pasteur’s tender sympathy had been an unspeakable comfort. Pasteur now took a leading part in the celebration of his friend’s fame, and was glad to speak to the assembled villagers at Monay of the great and disinterested artist who had been born in their midst.

On his return to Paris, Pasteur found himself obliged to hasten the organization of a “service” for the preventive treatment of hydrophobia after a bite. The Mayors of Villers-Farlay, in the Jura, wrote to him that, on October 14, a shepherd had been cruelly bitten by a rabid dog.

Six little shepherd boys were watching over their sheep in a meadow; suddenly they saw a large dog passing along the road, with hanging, foaming jaws.

“A mad dog!” they exclaimed. The dog, seeing the children, left the road and charged them; they ran away shrieking, but the eldest of them, J. B. Jupille, fourteen years of age, bravely turned back in order to protect the flight of his comrades. Armed with his whip, he confronted the infuriated animal, who flew at him and seized his left hand. Jupille, wrestling with the dog, succeeded in kneeling on him, and forcing its jaws open in order to disengage his left hand; in so doing, his right hand was seriously bitten in its turn; finally, having been able to get hold of the animal by the neck, Jupille called to his little brother to pick up his whip, which had fallen during the struggle, and securely fastened the dog’s jaws with the lash. He then took his wooden sabot, with which he battered the dog’s head, after which, in order to be sure that it could do no further harm, he dragged the body down to a little stream in the meadow, and held the head under water for several minutes. Death being now certain, and all danger removed from his comrades, Jupille returned to Villers-Farlay.

Whilst the boy’s wounds were being bandaged, the dog’s carcase was fetched, and a necropsy took place the next day. The two veterinary surgeons who examined the body had not the slightest hesitation in declaring that the dog was rabid.

The Mayor of Villers-Farlay, who had been to see Pasteur during the summer, wrote to tell him that this lad would die a victim of his own courage unless the new treatment intervened. The answer came immediately: Pasteur declared that, after five years’ study, he had succeeded in making dogs refractory to rabies, even six or eight days after being bitten; that he had only once yet applied his method to a human being, but that once with success, in the case of little Meister, and that, if Jupille’s family consented, the boy might be sent to him. “I shall keep him near me in a room of my laboratory; he will be watched and need not go to bed; he will merely receive a daily prick, not more painful than a pin-prick.”

The family, on hearing this letter, came to an immediate decision; but, between the day when he was bitten and Jupille’s arrival in Paris, six whole days had elapsed, whilst in Meister’s case there had only been two and a half!

Yet, however great were Pasteur’s fears for the life of this tall lad, who seemed quite surprised when congratulated on his courageous conduct, they were not what they had been in the first instance—he felt much greater confidence.

A few days later, on October 26, Pasteur in a statement at the Academy of Sciences described the treatment followed for Meister. Three months and three days had passed, and the child remained perfectly well. Then he spoke of his new attempt. Vulpian rose—

“The Academy will not be surprised,” he said, “if, as a member of the Medical and Surgical Section, I ask to be allowed to express the feelings of admiration inspired in me by M. Pasteur’s statement. I feel certain that those feelings will be shared by the whole of the medical profession.

“Hydrophobia, that dread disease against which all therapeutic measures had hitherto failed, has at last found a remedy. M. Pasteur, who has been preceded by no one in this path, has been led by a series of investigations unceasingly carried on for several years, to create a method of treatment, by means of which the development of hydrophobia can infallibly be prevented in a patient recently bitten by a rabid dog. I say infallibly, because, after what I have seen in M. Pasteur’s laboratory, I do not doubt the constant success of this treatment when it is put into full practice a few days only after a rabic bite.

“It is now necessary to see about organizing an installation for the treatment of hydrophobia by M. Pasteur’s method. Every person bitten by a rabid dog must be given the opportunity of benefiting by this great discovery, which will seal the fame of our illustrious colleague and bring glory to our whole country.”

Pasteur had ended his reading by a touching description of Jupille’s action, leaving the Assembly under the impression of that boy of fourteen, sacrificing himself to save his companions. An Academician, Baron Larrey, whose authority was rendered all the greater by his calmness, dignity, and moderation, rose to speak. After acknowledging the importance of Pasteur’s discovery, Larrey continued, “The sudden inspiration, agility and courage, with which the ferocious dog was muzzled, and thus made incapable of committing further injury to bystanders, ... such an act of bravery deserves to be rewarded. I therefore have the honour of begging the Académie des Sciences to recommend to the Académie Française this young shepherd, who, by giving such a generous example of courage and devotion, has well deserved a Montyon prize.”

Bouley, then chairman of the Academy, rose to speak in his turn—

“We are entitled to say that the date of the present meeting will remain for ever memorable in the history of medicine, and glorious for French science; for it is that of one of the greatest steps ever accomplished in the medical order of things—a progress realized by the discovery of an efficacious means of preventive treatment for a disease, the incurable nature of which was a legacy handed down by one century to another. From this day, humanity is armed with a means of fighting the fatal disease of hydrophobia and of preventing its onset. It is to M. Pasteur that we owe this, and we could not feel too much admiration or too much gratitude for the efforts on his part which have led to such a magnificent result....”

Five years previously, Bouley, in the annual combined public meeting of the five Academies, had proclaimed his enthusiasm for the discovery of the vaccination of anthrax. But on hearing him again on this October day, in 1885, his colleagues could not but be painfully struck by the change in him; his voice was weak, his face thin and pale. He was dying of an affection of the heart, and quite aware of it, but he was sustained by a wonderful energy, and ready to forget his sufferings in his joy at the thought that the sum of human sorrows would be diminished by Pasteur’s victory. He went to the Académie de Médecine the next day to enjoy the echo of the great sitting of the Académie des Sciences. He died on November 29.

The chairman of the Academy of Medicine, M. Jules Bergeron, applauded Pasteur’s statement all the more that he too had publicly deplored (in 1862) the impotence of medical science in the presence of this cruel disease.

But while M. Bergeron shared the admiration felt by Vulpian and Dr. Grancher for the experiments which had transformed the rabic virus into its own vaccine, other medical men were divided into several categories: some were full of enthusiasm, others reserved their opinion, many were sceptical, and a few even positively hostile.

As soon as Pasteur’s paper was published, people bitten by rabid dogs began to arrive from all sides to the laboratory. The “service” of hydrophobia became the chief business of the day. Every morning was spent by Eugène Viala in preparing the fragments of marrow used for inoculations: in a little room permanently kept at a temperature of 20° to 23° C., stood rows of sterilized flasks, their tubular openings closed by plugs of cotton-wool. Each flask contained a rabic marrow, hanging from the stopper by a thread and gradually drying up by the action of some fragments of caustic potash lying at the bottom of the flask. Viala cut those marrows into small pieces by means of scissors previously put through a flame, and placed them in small sterilized glasses; he then added a few drops of veal broth and pounded the mixture with a glass rod. The vaccinal liquid was now ready; each glass was covered with a paper cover, and bore the date of the medulla used, the earliest of which was fourteen days old. For each patient under treatment from a certain date, there was a whole series of little glasses. Pasteur always attended these operations personally.

In the large hall of the laboratory, Pasteur’s collaborators, Messrs. Chamberland and Roux, carried on investigations into contagious diseases under the master’s directions; the place was full of flasks, pipets, phials, containing culture broths. Etienne Wasserzug, another curator, hardly more than a boy, fresh from the Ecole Normale, where his bright intelligence and affectionate heart had made him very popular, translated (for he knew the English, German, Italian, Hungarian and Spanish languages, and was awaiting a favourable opportunity of learning Russian) the letters which arrived from all parts of the world; he also entertained foreign scientists. Pasteur had in him a most valuable interpreter. Physicians came from all parts of the world asking to be allowed to study the details of the method. One morning, Dr. Grancher found Pasteur listening to a physician who was gravely and solemnly holding forth his objections to microbian doctrines, and in particular to the treatment of hydrophobia. Pasteur having heard this long monologue, rose and said, “Sir, your language is not very intelligible to me. I am not a physician and do not desire to be one. Never speak to me of your dogma of morbid spontaneity. I am a chemist; I carry out experiments and I try to understand what they teach me. What do you think, doctor?” he added, turning to M. Grancher. The latter smilingly answered that the hour for inoculations had struck. They took place at eleven, in Pasteur’s study; he, standing by the open door, called out the names of the patients. The date and circumstances of the bites and the veterinary surgeon’s certificate were entered in a register, and the patients were divided into series according to the degree of virulence which was to be inoculated on each day of the period of treatment.

Pasteur took a personal interest in each of his patients, helping those who were poor and illiterate to find suitable lodgings in the great capital. Children especially inspired him with a loving solicitude. But his pity was mingled with terror, when, on November 9, a little girl of ten was brought to him who had been severely bitten on the head by a mountain dog, on October 3, thirty-seven days before!! The wound was still suppurating. He said to himself, “This is a hopeless case: hydrophobia is no doubt about to appear immediately; it is much too late for the preventive treatment to have the least chance of success. Should I not, in the scientific interest of the method, refuse to treat this child? If the issue is fatal, all those who have already been treated will be frightened, and many bitten persons, discouraged from coming to the laboratory, may succumb to the disease!” These thoughts rapidly crossed Pasteur’s mind. But he found himself unable to resist his compassion for the father and mother, begging him to try and save their child.

After the treatment was over, Louise Pelletier had returned to school, when fits of breathlessness appeared, soon followed by convulsive spasms; she could swallow nothing. Pasteur hastened to her side when these symptoms began, and new inoculations were attempted. On December 2, there was a respite of a few hours, moments of calm which inspired Pasteur with the vain hope that she might yet be saved. This delusion was a short-lived one. After attending Bouley’s funeral, his heart full of sorrow, Pasteur spent the day by little Louise’s bedside, in her parents’ rooms in the Rue Dauphine. He could not tear himself away; she herself, full of affection for him, gasped out a desire that he should not go away, that he should stay with her! She felt for his hand between two spasms. Pasteur shared the grief of the father and mother. When all hope had to be abandoned: “I did so wish I could have saved your little one!” he said. And as he came down the staircase, he burst into tears.

He was obliged, a few days later, to preside at the reception of Joseph Bertrand at the Académie Française; his sad feelings little in harmony with the occasion. He read in a mournful and troubled voice the speech he had prepared during his peaceful and happy holidays at Arbois. Henry Houssaye, reporting on this ceremony in the Journal des Débats, wrote, “M. Pasteur ended his speech amidst a torrent of applause, he received a veritable ovation. He seemed unaccountably moved. How can M. Pasteur, who has received every mark of admiration, every supreme honour, whose name is consecrated by universal renown, still be touched by anything save the discoveries of his powerful genius?” People did not realize that Pasteur’s thoughts were far away from himself and from his brilliant discovery. He was thinking of Dumas, his master, of Bouley, his faithful friend and colleague, and of the child he had been unable to snatch from the jaws of death; his mind was not with the living, but with the dead.

A telegram from New York having announced that four children, bitten by rabid dogs, were starting for Paris, many adversaries who had heard of Louise Pelletier’s death were saying triumphantly that, if those children’s parents had known of her fate, they would have spared them so long and useless a journey.

The four little Americans belonged to workmen’s families and were sent to Paris by means of a public subscription opened in the columns of the New York Herald; they were accompanied by a doctor and by the mother of the youngest of them, a boy only five years old. After the first inoculation, this little boy, astonished at the insignificant prick, could not help saying, “Is this all we have come such a long journey for?” The children were received with enthusiasm on their return to New York, and were asked “many questions about the great man who had taken such care of them.”

A letter dated from that time (January 14, 1886) shows that Pasteur yet found time for kindness, in the midst of his world-famed occupations.

“My dear Jupille, I have received your letters, and I am much pleased with the news you give me of your health. Mme. Pasteur thanks you for remembering her. She, and every one at the laboratory, join with me in wishing that you may keep well and improve as much as possible in reading, writing and arithmetic. Your writing is already much better than it was, but you should take some pains with your spelling. Where do you go to school? Who teaches you? Do you work at home as much as you might? You know that Joseph Meister, who was first to be vaccinated, often writes to me; well, I think he is improving more quickly than you are, though he is only ten years old. So, mind you take pains, do not waste your time with other boys, and listen to the advice of your teachers, and of your father and mother. Remember me to M. Perrot, the Mayor of Villers-Farlay. Perhaps, without him, you would have become ill, and to be ill of hydrophobia means inevitable death; therefore you owe him much gratitude. Good-bye. Keep well.”

Pasteur’s solicitude did not confine itself to his two first patients, Joseph Meister and the fearless Jupille, but was extended to all those who had come under his care; his kindness was like a living flame. The very little ones who then only saw in him a “kind gentleman” bending over them understood later in life, when recalling the sweet smile lighting up his serious face, that Science, thus understood, unites moral with intellectual grandeur.

Good, like evil, is infectious; Pasteur’s science and devotion inspired an act of generosity which was to be followed by many others. He received a visit from one of his colleagues at the Académie Française, Edouard Hervé, who looked upon journalism as a great responsibility and as a school of mutual respect between adversaries. He was bringing to Pasteur, from the Comte de Laubespin, a generous philanthropist, a sum of 40,000 fr. destined to meet the expenses necessitated by the organization of the hydrophobia treatment. Pasteur, when questioned by Hervé, answered that his intention was to found a model establishment in Paris, supported by donations and international subscriptions, without having recourse to the State. But he added that he wanted to wait a little longer until the success of the treatment was undoubted. Statistics came to support it; Bouley, who had been entrusted with an official inquiry on the subject under the Empire, had found that the proportion of deaths after bites from rabid dogs had been 40 per 100, 320 cases having been watched. The proportion often was greater still: whilst Joseph Meister was under Pasteur’s care, five persons were bitten by a rabid dog on the Pantin Road, near Paris, and every one of them succumbed to hydrophobia.

Pasteur, instead of referring to Bouley’s statistics, preferred to adopt those of M. Leblanc, a veterinary surgeon and a member of the Academy of Medicine, who had for a long time been head of the sanitary department of the Préfecture de Police. These statistics only gave a proportion of deaths of 16 per 100, and had been carefully and accurately kept.

On March 1, he was able to affirm, before the Academy, that the new method had given proofs of its merit, for, out of 350 persons treated, only one death had taken place, that of the little Pelletier. He concluded thus—

“It may be seen, by comparison with the most rigorous statistics, that a very large number of persons have already been saved from death.

“The prophylaxis of hydrophobia after a bite is established.

“It is advisable to create a vaccinal institute against hydrophobia.”

The Academy of Sciences appointed a Commission who unanimously adopted the suggestion that an establishment for the preventive treatment of hydrophobia after a bite should be created in Paris, under the name of Institut Pasteur. A subscription was about to be opened in France and abroad. The spending of the funds would be directed by a special Committee.

A great wave of enthusiasm and generosity swept from one end of France to another and reached foreign countries. A newspaper of Milan, the Perseveranza, which had opened a subscription, collected 6,000 fr. in its first list. The Journal d’Alsace headed a propaganda in favour of this work, “sprung from Science and Charity.” It reminded its readers that Pasteur had occupied a professor’s chair in the former brilliant Faculty of Science of Strasburg, and that his first inoculation was made on an Alsatian boy, Joseph Meister. The newspaper intended to send the subscriptions to Pasteur with these words: “Offerings from Alsace-Lorraine to the Pasteur Institute.”

The war of 1870 still darkened the memories of nations. Amongst eager and numerous inventions of instruments of death and destruction, humanity breathed when fresh news came from the laboratory, where a continued struggle was taking place against diseases. The most mysterious, the most cruel of all was going to be reduced to impotence.

Yet the method was about to meet with a few more cases like Louise Pelletier’s; accidents would result, either from delay or from exceptionally serious wounds. Happy days were still in store for those who sowed doubt and hatred.

During the early part of March, Pasteur received nineteen Russians, coming from the province of Smolensk. They had been attacked by a rabid wolf and most of them had terrible wounds: one of them, a priest, had been surprised by the infuriated beast as he was going into church, his upper lip and right cheek had been torn off, his face was one gaping wound. Another, the youngest of them, had had the skin of his forehead torn off by the wolf’s teeth; other bites were like knife cuts. Five of these unhappy wretches were in such a condition that they had to be carried to the Hôtel Dieu Hospital as soon as they arrived.

The Russian doctor who had accompanied these mujiks related how the wolf had wandered for two days and two nights, tearing to pieces every one he met, and how he had finally been struck down with an axe by one of those he had bitten most severely.

Because of the gravity of the wounds, and in order to make up for the time lost by the Russians before they started, Pasteur decided on making two inoculations every day, one in the morning and one in the evening; the patients at the Hôtel Dieu could be inoculated upon at the hospital.

The fourteen others came every morning in their touloupes and fur caps, with their wounds bandaged, and joined without a word the motley groups awaiting treatment at the laboratory—an English family, a Basque peasant, a Hungarian in his national costume, etc., etc.

In the evening, the dumb and resigned band of mujiks came again to the laboratory door. They seemed led by Fate, heedless of the struggle between life and death of which they were the prize. “Pasteur” was the only French word they knew, and their set and melancholy faces brightened in his presence as with a ray of hope and gratitude.

Their condition was the more alarming that a whole fortnight had elapsed between their being bitten and the date of the first inoculations. Statistics were terrifying as to the results of wolf-bites, the average proportion of deaths being 82 per 100. General anxiety and excitement prevailed concerning the hapless Russians, and the news of the death of three of them produced an intense emotion.

Pasteur had unceasingly continued his visits to the Hôtel Dieu. He was overwhelmed with grief. His confidence in his method was in no wise shaken, the general results would not allow it. But questions of statistics were of little account in his eyes when he was the witness of a misfortune; his charity was not of that kind which is exhausted by collective generalities: each individual appealed to his heart. As he passed through the wards at the Hôtel Dieu, each patient in his bed inspired him with deep compassion. And that is why so many who only saw him pass, heard his voice, met his pitiful eyes resting on them, have preserved of him a memory such as the poor had of St. Vincent de Paul.

“The other Russians are keeping well so far,” declared Pasteur at the Academy sitting of April 12, 1886. Whilst certain opponents in France continued to discuss the three deaths and apparently saw nought but those failures, the return of the sixteen survivors was greeted with an almost religious emotion. Other Russians had come before them and were saved, and the Tsar, knowing these things, desired his brother, the Grand Duke Vladimir, to bring to Pasteur an imperial gift, the Cross of the Order of St. Anne of Russia, in diamonds. He did more, he gave 100,000 fr. in aid of the proposed Pasteur Institute.

In April, 1886, the English Government, seeing the practical results of the method for the prophylaxis of hydrophobia, appointed a Commission to study and verify the facts. Sir James Paget was the president of it, and the other members were:—Dr. Lauder-Brunton, Mr. Fleming, Sir Joseph Lister, Dr. Quain, Sir Henry Roscoe, Professor Burdon Sanderson, and Mr. Victor Horsley, secretary. The résumé of the programme was as follows—

Development of the rabic virus in the medulla oblongata of animals dying of rabies.

Transmission of this virus by subdural or subcutaneous inoculation.

Intensification of this virus by successive passages from rabbit to rabbit.

Possibility either of protecting healthy animals from ulterior bites from rabid animals, or of preventing the onset of rabies in animals already bitten, by means of vaccinal inoculations.

Applications of this method to man and value of its results.

Burdon Sanderson and Horsley came to Paris, and two rabbits, inoculated on by Pasteur, were taken to England; a series of experiments was to be begun on them, and an inquiry was to take place afterwards concerning patients treated both in France and in England. Pasteur, who lost his temper at prejudices and ill-timed levity, approved and solicited inquiry and careful examination.

Long lists of subscribers appeared in the Journal Officiel—millionaires, poor workmen, students, women, etc. A great festival was organized at the Trocadéro in favour of the Pasteur Institute; the greatest artistes offered their services. Coquelin recited verses written for the occasion which excited loud applause from the immense audience. Gounod, who had conducted his Ave Maria, turned round after the closing bars, and, in an impulse of heartfelt enthusiasm, kissed both his hands to the savant.

In the evening at a banquet, Pasteur thanked his colleagues and the organizers of this incomparable performance. “Was it not,” he said, “a touching sight, that of those immortal composers, those great charmers of fortunate humanity coming to the assistance of those who wish to study and to serve suffering humanity? And you too come, great artistes, great actors, like so many generals re-entering the ranks to give greater vigour to a common feeling. I cannot easily describe what I felt. Dare I confess that I was hearing most of you for the first time? I do not think I have spent more than ten evenings of my whole life at a theatre. But I can have no regrets now that you have given me, in a few hours’ interval, as in an exquisite synthesis, the feelings that so many others scatter over several months, or rather several years.”

A few days later, the subscription from Alsace-Lorraine brought in 43,000 fr. Pasteur received it with grateful emotion, and was pleased and touched to find the name of little Joseph Meister among the list of private subscribers. It was now eleven months since he had been bitten so cruelly by the dog, whose rabic condition had immediately been recognized by the German authorities. Pasteur ever kept a corner of his heart for the boy who had caused him such anxiety.

Pasteur’s name was now familiar to all those who were trying to benefit humanity; his presence at charitable gatherings was considered as a happy omen, and he was asked to preside on many such occasions. He was ever ready with his help and sympathy, speaking in public, answering letters from private individuals, giving wholesome advice to young people who came to him for it, and doing nothing by halves. If he found the time, even during that period when the study of rabies was absorbing him, to undertake so many things and to achieve so many tasks, he owed it to Mme. Pasteur, who watched over his peace, keeping him safe from intrusions and interruptions. This retired, almost recluse life, enabled him to complete many works, a few of which would have sufficed to make several scientists celebrated.