We may frankly say that we fear very much that
M. Pasteur's oyster° of inoculating by way of protection against attacks of rabies, has been shown by the Royal Commission appointed in 1886, to have a considerable efficacy,—for whether it has really saved from attacks of hydrophobia anybody actually bitten by a mad dog before the protective inoculation had been performed, is very questionable, and on the evidence which the Commission bring forward, a presumption of no very impressive kind. We say " we fear," not, of course, from any doubt of-the immeasurable benefit of-extinguishing such a plague as rabies in -dogs and hydrophobia in men, if it can be extinguished, but from a very painful sense of the enormous stimulus which the discovery of this protection, if it be a protection, will give to the devising of long series of terrible experiments en living animals, like unto those which have already been needed. for M. Pasteur's investigations and the investiga- tions of the experimenters who have tried to verify his results. The British Commission, after a year's careful exami- nation, has reported that a protective inoculation has certainly been discovered, so far as it is possible to make sure in so • short a period that the protection is durable. What appears certain is that while the greater number of unprotected animals bitten by mad dogs or cats, or inoculated with the virus of rabies, bave gone mad within a few days or weeks, not one animal so protected, and bitten by a mad dog or cat, or inoculated with the virus of rabies, has as yet exhibited any sign of illness.
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