he mightier spirits must always be in life.

AIMS AND OBJECTS OF THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE

If one chances to come to the institute in the later hours of the
morning he will perhaps be surprised to find a motley company of men,
women, and children, apparently of many nationalities and from varied
walks of life, gathered about one of the entrances or sauntering near
by. These are the most direct beneficiaries of the institution, the
unfortunate victims of the bites of rabid dogs, who have come here to
take the treatment which alone can give them immunity from the terrible
consequences of that mishap. Rabies, or hydrophobia as it is more
commonly termed with us, is well known to be an absolutely fatal malady,
there being no case on record of recovery from the disease once fully
established. Even the treatment which Pasteur developed and which is
here carried out cannot avail to save the victim in whom the active
symptoms of the malady are actually present. But, fortunately, the
disease is peculiarly slow in its onset, sometimes not manifesting
itself for weeks or months after the inoculation; and this delay, which
formerly was to the patient a period of fearful doubt and anxiety, now
suffices, happily, for the application of the protective inoculations
which enable the person otherwise doomed to resist the poison and go
unscathed. Thus it is that the persons who gather here each day to the
number of fifty, or even one hundred, have the appearance of and the
feelings of average health, though a large proportion of them bear in
their systems, on arrival, the germs of a disease that would bring them
speedily to a terrible end were it not that the genius of Pasteur had
found a way to give them immunity. The number of persons who have been
given the anti-rabic treatment here is more than twenty-five thousand.
To have given safety to such an army of unfortunates is, indeed, enough
merit for any single institution; but it must not be supposed that this
record is by any manner of means the full measure of the benefits which
the Institut Pasteur has conferred upon humanity. In point of fact, the
preparation and use of the anti-rabic serum is only one of many aims
of the institution, whose full scope is as wide as the entire domain of
contagious diseases. Pasteur's personal discoveries had demonstrated
the relation of certain lower organisms, notably the bacteria, to the
contagious diseases, and had shown the possibility of giving im