Richard Metcalfe, Hydropathist : the man and his work / by an old patient.

Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Richard Metcalfe, Hydropathist : the man and his work / by an old patient. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    33/190 (page 27)
    “ Thirdly, a careful comparison of these symptoms with those of other rabbits, caused to be bitten by a dog undoubtedly rabid.” After a speech made by Pasteur in the French Academy On the method of preventing the development of hydrophobia after a bite,” M. Jules Guerin objected that “ according to the prophylactic method followed hy Pasteur in his experiments, nothing more nor less is introduced into the animal system than artificial rabies, and that his treatment is preventive merely ot the effects of this artificial disease, and except that it opposes the development pf the malady that itself has produced, can have no preventive power whatever.” To the best of my knowledge, neither Pasteur nor any one else has ever seen a rabbit suffering from genuine bona fide rabies, namely rabies induced by the bite of a really mad dog. So small an animal as the rabbit, even if it did get bitten, would probably die at once from the effects of the bite itself, before there could be time for any inoculation of rabic virus. This being so, Pasteur has no grounds whatever for assuming that the artificial disease induced by him in rabbits is veritable rabies. If, indeed, he were able to compare the symptoms produced by the artificial disease with those resulting from the real disease, as he can do in the case of the dog, it would be a different thing, but he cannot draw any real analogy from a disease, the symptoms of which he has never witnessed. It is true that Pasteur tested his rabic rabbit-virus by inoculating dogs with it, but it is doubtful whether the disease thus induced in the dog is. as he is presumed to believe, veritable rabies, and not some disease of the brain or spinal-cord, as lias been asserted by competent authorities to be the case. How can we tell but that any organic matter introduced under the surface of a dog’s brain might produce similar effects? We have abundant evidence that such is the case with regard to rabbits. It is a pity that when Pasteur was making experiments on rabbits with human saliva, he did not also make similar experiments on dogs — the disease he was investigating being one that more often attacks the dog than any other animal. He might then have compared the symptoms of the malady thus produced with those of the disease obtained in dogs by inoculating them with the cerebral matter of so called rabid rabbits, and it is probable that in all these cases he would have obtained - not rabies, but - “ a new malady,” this being the title given by him to the disease he produced in rabbits when, during his earliest researches in hydrophobia in 1880, he inoculated some of those animals with human saliva, obtained, firstly from the corpse of a child who had died from hydrophobia, secondly from the bodies ot children who had died from ordinary diseases, and thirdly from a healthy human being. It appears to me that before we can justify Pasteur’s inocula- tions of the human being with rabic virus, we must consider what