M. Pasteur and other French savants have lately been devoting special
attention to hydrophobia. The great authority on germs has, in fact,
definitely announced that he does not intend to rest until he has made
known the exact nature and life-history of this terrible disease, and
discovered a means of preventing or curing it. The most curious result
yet attained in this direction, however, has been announced by Professor
V. Galtier, of the Lyons Veterinary School. This inquirer has found, in
the first place, that if the virus of rabies be injected into the veins
of a sheep, the animal does not subsequently exhibit any symptoms of
hydrophobia. This in itself would be a sufficiently curious result
to justify attention, though its importance, except as confirmatory
testimony, becomes less striking when it is remembered that M. Pasteur
has lately shown that the special _nidus_ of the disease appears to be
the nervous tissue, and particularly the ganglionic centers. But there
is this further curious consequence: sheep who have thus been treated
through the blood, and who are afterwards inoculated in the ordinary
way through the cellular tissue, as if by a bite, are proof against
the disease. It is as though the injection into the veins acted as a
vaccine. Twenty sheep were experimented upon; ten only were treated to
the venous injection, and then all were inoculated through the cellular
tissue. The ten which had been first "vaccinated" continue alive and
well; they have not even shown any adverse symptoms. The other ten have
all died of rabies. It remains to say why M. Galtier experimented
upon sheep, and not upon dogs and cats, which usually communicate the
disease. The incubation of the disease is much more rapid and less
capricious in the sheep than in the dog or in man, and hence M. Galtier
was able to get his results more certainly within a short period. Having
succeeded so far, he is now justified in undertaking the more protracted
series of observations which experiments upon the canine species will
involve; and this he proposes to do. Experiments of this nature are not
without a serious risk, and admiration is almost equally due to the
courage and the intelligence of the experimentalist. But what will the
anti-vaccinator say?--_Pall Mall Gazette_.
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