One hundred years ago
M. Pasteur is said to have discovered a cure for hydrophobia in the shape of an inoculation with the marrow of rabbits which have died of the disease. Looking to the report of Professor Koch on the result of inoculating for splenic fever, which, when tried on a large scale, he found to be more destructive to the animals inoculated, through the general weakness induced by the inoc- ulation, than the splenic fever itself, we should be very cautious as to accepting M. Pasteur's discovery as unfolded by himself to the Academy of Medicine at Paris on Tuesday. But further, in the accounts of the two cases which M. Pasteur is said to have cured, as trans- mitted to this country by the Times correspondent, no evidence at all is given that either of the patients had shown a single symptom of hydropho- bia. All that is asserted is that they were bitten, and badly bitten, by a hydropho- bic dog. Now, considering how very long the virus of hydrophobia remains latent, not unfrequently even never showing itself at all, we should not regard these so-called cures as even prima facie plausible, unless the genuine symptoms of hydrophobia had been exhibited by these patients.
Spectator, 31 October 1885
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