A list has been published of no less than twenty-four
of M. Pasteur's patients who have died of hydrophobia after under- going his inoculations. Whether there are in existence any trustworthy statistics to show what proportion of the patients bitten by dogs suffering from rabies exhibit symptoms of hydrophobia within a given number of months after the bite, we do not know. We doubt very much whether the symptoms of true rabies in dogs have been thoroughly known till within the last few years, and still more whether trustworthy statistics of the average time of the incubation of hydrophobia are in existence. But for the time that M. Pasteur's treatment has lasted, we should think that twenty-four con- spicuous failures are quite sufficient to throw the very greatest doubt on the value of his method, quite apart from the question whether any method involving so deliberate and continuous an infliction of fearful sufferings on a great variety of different creatures, as M. Pasteur's method involves, could be justified even by the most brilliant and unmistakeable success.
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