VII.

Rabies Vaccine

Pasteur spent the rest of his life working on the causes of various diseases—including septicemia, cholera, diphtheria, fowl cholera, tuberculosis, and smallpox—and their prevention by means of vaccination. He is best known for his investigations concerning the prevention of rabies, otherwise known in humans as hydrophobia. After experimenting with the saliva of animals suffering from this disease, Pasteur concluded that the disease rests in the nerve centers of the body; when an extract from the spinal column of a rabid dog was injected into the bodies of healthy animals, symptoms of rabies were produced. By studying the tissues of infected animals, particularly rabbits, Pasteur was able to develop an attenuated form of the virus that could be used for inoculation.

In 1885, a young boy and his mother arrived at Pasteur’s laboratory; the boy had been bitten badly by a rabid dog, and Pasteur was urged to treat him with his new method. At the end of the treatment, which lasted ten days, the boy was being inoculated with the most potent rabies virus known; he recovered and remained healthy. Since that time, thousands of people have been saved from rabies by this treatment.

Pasteur’s research on rabies resulted, in 1888, in the founding of a special institute in Paris for the treatment of the disease. This became known as the Institut Pasteur, and it was directed by Pasteur himself until he died. (The institute still flourishes and is one of the most important centers in the world for the study of infectious diseases and other subjects related to microorganisms, including molecular genetics.) By the time of his death in Saint-Cloud on September 28, 1895, Pasteur had long since become a national hero and had been honored in many ways. He was given a state funeral at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and his body was placed in a permanent crypt in his institute.