Excerpt from The Canadian Veterinary Record, Vol. 4: Jan. February, 1923

It may be of interest to record that the first human case which Pasteur ventured to treat was an Alsacian boy named Joseph Meister, in July, 1885. He had been badly bitten about the face and hands by a rabid dog, and had received no medical treatment whatsoever. Pasteur and his assistants decided, that from the nature of his wounds, it was practically certain that he would develop rabies, if he were not treated. No failure of an attempted cure could be worse that the crisis facing the boy if not inoculated. He was, therefore, unhesitating 1y given the treatment. N o unfavourable results followed, and the boy remained well, and as far as is known, lived to be an old man. Three months following in October 1885, Pasteur announced his accomplish ment to the Academy of Science in Paris. As soon as Pasteur's paper was published, the knowledge of his success became known in every country, and people who had been bitten by rabid dogs commenced to arrive from all parts of the world. The first case on this continent was in November 1885, when four children of workmen in Newark, N. J., were bitten by a rabid dog. There was no Pasteur treatment in the country, and little was known of its administration. The story was widely circulated in the press, and the New York Herald provided a fund for sending the children to Paris for treatment. The children were sent in charge of a Boston Veterinarian named Dr. Frank Billings and accompanying them was also Dr. H. M. Biggs who was at that time in charge of the Carnegie Laboratory.

Among Pasteur's greatest contributions to biological science were his studies in decomposition of organic substances due to micro organisms. These gave Lister the clue he sought in asepsis and made modern surgery possible. His investigations upon the cause of putre faction in beer, and the souring of wine, also the remedy for the blights that threatened to destroy the silk industries of France, have resulted in untold benefits to those enterprises.

The lives of thousands of cattle have been saved through Pasteur's protective vaccines against anthrax, by the discovery that attenuated spores of anthrax inoculated into susceptible animals, would confer an immunity against a virulent attack.

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