p. 525 | Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 33.

Health and Temperance.

Pasteur's System.

PASTEUR'S system of inoculating for rabies is thus described by the New York correspondent of an Eastern paper:—

"One of the principles of the Pasteur theory is the well-known one that the human system can, by taking gradually increased doses of any poison, become so habituated or hardened to it as to be unaffected by it. To carry out this principle of the Pasteur method the patient who has received the rabid virus from a mad dog's bite, and which, if it is allowed to run its course, is liable to bring its victim to death through the terrible hydrophobia, is inoculated with virus of gradually increasing strength until he becomes so habituated to taking this kind of poison into his system that not only is the original virus received from the dog's bite rendered innocuous, but he can invite rabid dogs to bite him with impunity."

"How to dilute the virus is one of Professor Pasteur's discoveries, and it is at this work Dr. Mott, who spent several months with Pasteur, has been engaged for some time past. He brought with him from Paris a rabbit that had some poison flowing through his body. On his arrival in this country this rabbit died from hydrophobia, as was expected. Then some of the virus from his body was introduced into the brain of a live and healthy rabbit through a small hole drilled in his cranium. Then on the death of this last rabbit the operation was repeated to another, and so on, the virus becoming, by transmission from one rabbit to another, weaker and weaker, and the length of time required for the virus to show its effects on each rabbit becoming more and more extended in the same ratio. Virus from each rabbit is carefully labeled and preserved in sterilized jars for future use as medicine."

"The first patient treated in America was a boy who was first inoculated with virus after its transmission through fifteen rabbits. The operation is a simple and painless one, a mere abrasion of the skin of the left breast and a touch of the virus, as in vaccination. This operation was repeated once each day for ten days, the patient receiving on the last day virus ten degrees stronger than that first used. The system is thus gradually accustomed to the poison and the original rabies received from the dog is rendered harmless."