Pasteur inoculating a man with the rabies virus. Chromolithograph.

Pasteur, seated on the left, is portrayed as inoculating the rabies virus into the stomach wall of a standing man who is supported behind by a doctor in a white coat. On the right is the next patient, a young girl, comforted by a nurse. The scene seems to have only the veracity of allegory, as the first rabies inoculations appear to have been made by the medical doctor J.J. Grancher in the presence of Pasteur who, as a chemist and not a physician, was not considered qualified to perform them