also among these
thread-like bodies other organisms that were like small circular black
specks, or disks.

The next step in the work was to test the result by inoculating a well
animal with these bodies. Pasteur selected rabbits for his
experimentation. When the experiment was made, the inoculated rabbit
was presently attacked with the disease, and soon died in spasms. The
repetition of the experiment was attended with like results.

The philosopher next tried his established method of domesticating, or
attenuating, the poison. The spinal cord of a rabid dog was obtained,
and with this the first rabbit was inoculated. In about two weeks it
took hydrophobia. Hereupon the spinal cord was extracted, and the
second rabbit was inoculated; then the third; then the fourth, and so
on. It was observed, however, that at each stage the intensity of the
disease was in this way strangely increased; but the period of
inoculation became shorter and shorter.

It was next found that by preserving the spinal cords of the animals
that had died of the disease--by preserving them in dry tubes--the
poison gradually lost its power. At last the virus seemed to die
altogether. Then the experiment of inoculating against the disease was
begun. A dog was first inoculated with dead virus. No result followed.
Then he was inoculated with stale virus, and then with other virus not
so stale. It was found that by continuing this process the animal
might be rendered wholly insusceptible to the disease.

The next step was the human stage of experimentation. It was in July
of 1885 that Pasteur first employed his method on a human subject. A
boy had been bitten and lacerated by a rabid dog. The inoculation was
thought to prove successful. Soon afterward some bitten children were
taken from the United States to Paris, and were treated against the
expected appearance of hydrophobia. Others came from different parts
of the continent. Within fourteen months more than two thousand five
hundred subjects were treated, and it is claimed that the mortality
from hydrophobia was reduced to a small per cent of what it had been
before.

It should be said, however, that neither have the results arrived at
by Pasteur respecting the character of rabies been so clear, nor have
his experiments on subjects supposed to be poisoned with the disease
been so successful as in the case of other maladies. It remains,
nevertheless, to award to Louis Pasteur _the first rank_ am