PASTEUR.

Otago Witness, Issue 1892, 15 May 1890, Page 36

PASTEUR.

A VISIT 16 THE FAMOUS ANTI-HYDRO-

PHOBIA INSTITUTE.

Mrs Brewer has an article in the Sunday Magazine describing a visit to the Pasteur Institute. The building is new, large, and handsome, standing in the Rue Dutot, running out of the Boulevard Vaugirard, and for this street we made our way one fine clear morning, arriving there about a quarter to 11. Among the ordinary buildings of the rue there was no mistaking the institute, which looksj like a hospital. It stands in its own extensive grounds, and between it and the road is a bronze statue of

A DOG ATTACKING A MAN.

Outside the lodge, as we enter, sit three Orientals in their picturesque robes, their usual quiet, dignified demeanour apparently undisturbed by the knowledge that they are there as patients. Several cabs are standing outside the gates awaiting the patients they have brought from various parts of Paris, and people are rapidly approaching, for at 11 the roll will be read and the work of the day begin. The operator is not Mons. Pasteur, he being enly a chemist and not a doctor ; indeed, he does little else now than superintend and give instructions. On tho table are a number of glasses containing the solution for inoculation, varying in strength ; No. I being the mildest, and X being the strongest and more virulent than the

SALIVA OF A MAD DOG.

Bach glass is labelled with a number and its strength, so that there can be no mistake in administering it. The virus in these glasses is obtained from the marrow of hydrophobic rabbits, and this dissolved in veal broth at a certain temperature furnishes a curative and preservative for inoculation. Mons. Pasteur is engaged at the present time in discovering some equally potent virus

WITHOUT USING BABBITS, and, seeing how much he has done, we may hope even for this. The clock strikes 11. The clerk at the door calls out one by one the names as they occur in his book, and whether it be the first or twentieth time of inoculation. As he speaks, the patient so called passes through, from the waiting room and goes close up to the operator, having so arranged the dress that without tbe slightest indelicacy or a moment'? delay, a few inches of both sides of the abdomen are laid bare. On the first five days the patient is inoculated on both sides, after this

ON ONE SIDE ONLT.

The parts bared are painted oi washed by the operator, who, when this is done, takes a of the flesh between his finger and Xumb, and with the other hand receives the inoculating tube from his assistant, which Aas already been filled with the virus. It is «, pretty little instrument, like a syringe, ■with sharp needles at the point. These are pressed slantingly under the skin, and then the operator, by a slight pressure on the top, injects the solution. This is done without the passing of a word ; it does not take more than a minute. In like manner one after the other comes up till all have been operated upon, and by half-past 12 all is over. As the patients pass out of this room they go to the other side of the corridor to get the wound which had been inflicted by the mad dog dressed. This ia the routine of the place. •