virus; and three days subsequently more than two hundred persons assembled to witness the result. The "shout of admiration," mentioned by M. Radot, was a natural outburst under the circumstances. Of twenty-five sheep which had not been protected by vaccination, twenty-one were already dead, and the remaining ones were dying. The twenty-five vaccinated sheep, on the contrary, were "in full health and gayety." In the unvaccinated cows intense fever was produced, while the prostration was so great that they were unable to eat. Tumors were also formed at the points of inoculation. In the vaccinated cows no tumors were formed; they exhibited no fever, nor even an elevation of temperature, while their power of feeding was unimpaired. No wonder that "breeders of cattle overwhelmed Pasteur with applications for vaccine." At the end of 1881 close upon thirty-four thousand animals had been vaccinated, while the number rose in 1883 to nearly five hundred thousand.
M. Pasteur is now exactly sixty-two years of age; but his energy is unabated. At the end of this volume we are informed that he has already taken up and examined with success, as far as his experiments have reached, the terrible and mysterious disease of rabies or hydrophobia. Those who hold all communicable diseases to be of parasitic origin, include, of course, rabies among the number of those produced and propagated by a living contagium. From his first contact with the disease Pasteur showed his accustomed penetration. If we see a man mad, we at once refer his madness to the state of his brain. It is somewhat singular that in the face of this fact the virus of a mad dog should be referred to the animal's saliva. The saliva is, no doubt, infected, but Pasteur soon proved the real seat and empire of the disorder to be the nervous system.
The parasite of rabies had not been securely isolated when M. Radot finished his task. But last May, at the instance of M. Pasteur, a commission was appointed, by the Minister of Public Instruction in France, to examine and report upon the results which he had up to that time obtained. A preliminary report, issued to appease public impatience, reached me before I quitted Switzerland this year. It inspires the sure and certain hope that, as regards the attenuation of the rabic virus, and the rendering of an animal, by inoculation, proof against attack, the success of M. Pasteur is assured. The commission, though hitherto extremely active, is far from the end of its labors; but the results obtained so far may be thus summed up:
Of six dogs unprotected by vaccination, three succumbed to the bites of a dog in a furious state of madness.
Of eight unvaccinated dogs, six succumbed to the intravenous inoculation of rabic matter.
Of five unvaccinated dogs, all succumbed to inoculation, by trepanning, of the brain.
Finally, of three-and-twenty vaccinated dogs, not one was attacked
