The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1886-01-09
M. Pasteur and Hydrophobia.

The laboratory of NJ. Pasteur at Paris
has become the objective point of pilgrim
ages from all parts of globe, his reported
discovery or rather contriyance, of a pre-
ventive and remedy for hydrophobia having
given him a unique position among the
worlds great physicians. The exact limits
of his power over the terrible disease pro-
duced in the human subject by the bite of
certain rabid animals are not yet perhaps
aseertained, but it is hardly open to dispute
that his three years of study of hydropho-
bia have been productive of very promising
results. 1t is perhaps safe to go beyond
this, and to concede that NJ. Pasteur's in
oculations with portions of nervous matter
taken from animals suffering from rabies
have been followed by results that bear
comparison with the benefits that accrue
from inoculations with vaccine virus. Hy-
drophobia is caused by specific poison,
which, it is thought, may develop spontan-
eously in the dog and some other animals,
but not in man. The bite of mad dog is
the usual origin of the disease in man,
though the cat, wolf and fox may also trans
nit it. The fluids of the mouth are COM
monty supposed to be the chief source of
the poison, but according to NJ. Pasteur, it
is concentrated chiefly in the nervous sys-
TEN. The flesh is not, it appears, affected.
A veterinarian recently stated to Mortified
Partisan audience that he had a hundred
times eaten the uncooked flesh of rabid
COWS and horses without bad results. Not
all ours of eccentric demeanor are to be
thought mad. The animal affected by
hydrophobia is shy and irritable, refuses
food, eats bits of straw, paper, &C., suffer
ing apparently from hallucination. He
may or may not avoid water. 1t is only
by confning and watching a suspected ami
NAL that the owner can be sure whether it
suffers from hydrophobia Or from some
other of the many ills to which our pets are
subject. The symptoms of hydrophobia
usually exhibit themselves in from thirty
to forty days after the bite; intervals of
six months or year are rare and doubtful.
Prompt cauterization of the wound may at
times prevent the development of the dis
ease, but once developed, it is almost sure
to prove fatal. By exposing portions of
the brain or spinal cord of a rabid animal
to dried air, the minute creatures to whose
activity the disease is supposed to be due
lose their vigor to some extent, and with
this weakened virus NJ. Pasteur makes his
first incubation, increasing the strength of
the virus with each successive inoculation.
The last inoculations are made with virus
whose strength has been artifcially increas-
ed by "cultivation." This cultivation con-
sists in inoculating rabbit with particle
Of the spinal cord of mad dog, and when,
after fifteen days, this rabbit dies of hy-
drophobia, sixty other rabbits are in sue
cession inoculated, one from another, until,
as the virus becomes stronger, the sixtieth
rabbit dies on the seventh day. A man
iuoculated with the weakest virus would not
be protected, but after having been gradu-
ally prepared by incubation with cultiva-
tions of increasing degrees of potency until
the sixtieth has been reached, he at length,
it is held, arrives at state in which he is
proof against the virus of the ordinary mad
dog. Such at least is the theory. The
experience of the four children recently
sent over to Paris from Newark, N. j., will
90 far to show whether it is well founded.