Perhaps the most interesting of Pasteur's investigations con cerned the curative and preventive treatment of hydrophobia in man and of rabies in dogs. After prolonged experiments with in oculations of saliva from infected beings, he came to the conclu sion that the virus had its seat in the nerve centres, and demon strated that a portion of the matter of the spinal column of a rabid dog when injected into the body of a healthy animal produced the symptoms of rabies. By further work on the dried tissues of in fected animals and the effect of time and temperature on these tissues, he was able to obtain a weakened form of the bacillus which could be used for inoculation. On July 6, 1885, Pasteur was bold enough to inoculate a human being, a child who had been badly bitten by an infected dog. The experiment was so success ful that by Nov. 1888 the Institut Pasteur was founded. Thou sands suffering from hydrophobia have been treated there and the mortality from this disease has been reduced to less than %. (See HYDROPHOBIA.) At the inauguration of the institute, Pasteur closed his oration with the following words : "Two opposing laws seem to me now in contest. The one, a law of blood and death, opening out each day new modes of destruction, forces nations to be always ready for the battle. The other, a law of peace, work and health, whose only aim is to de liver man from the calamities which beset him. The one seeks
violent conquests, the other the relief of mankind. The one places a single life above all victories, the other sacrifices hundreds of thousands of lives to the ambition of a single individual. The law of which we are the instruments strives even through the carnage to cure the wounds due to the law of war. Treatment by our antiseptic methods may preserve the lives of thousands of soldiers. Which of these two laws will prevail, God only knows. But of this we may be sure, that science, in obeying the law of humanity, will always labour to enlarge the frontiers of life." Rich in years and in honours, this simple and devout Catholic, this great human benefactor, whose scientific acumen and pro found sagacity enabled him to solve the problems of the world of the infinitely small (as he called it), passed quietly away near St. Cloud on Sept. 28, 1895.
See Oeuvres de Pasteur, ed. by P. Vallery-Radot, 2 vols. (1922) ; Rene Vallery-Radot, Vie de Pasteur, Eng. trans. by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire (1919) ; L. Descour, Pasteur and his work, Eng. trans. by A. F. Wedd (1922) and E. Duclaux, Pasteur, the History of a Mind, Eng. trans. by E. F. Smith (Philadelphia, 192o).