[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTiTOR."1
Six,—The following are the real facts about the points Mr.. Taylor raises in his second letter :- 1. It was notorious at Nottingham that Mr. Taylor dis- believed in the existence of rabies, and this was confirmed by his paper read to the Medical Society.
2. Mr. Taylor repeats in another form his misrepresenta- tion of the deaths from hydrophobia in France before the founding of the Pasteur Institute. I have only to repeat that the French Government admitted in the Chamber that till M. Pasteur's work drew attention to the subject, the figures were utterly unreliable.
3. Mr. Taylor's new " erroneous belief " that people die of a dread of the disease, for obvious reasons is not supported by a single piece of evidence.
4. Mr. Taylor says he "has no wish to depreciate the results" of M. Pasteur's labours. Your readers possibly do not know that in other points (scarcely any of them for good reasons medical), Mr. Taylor has during some years done all the little he could to depreciate M. Pasteur and his work. Moreover, his own letters are the best evidence of his candour- on this point.
5. Mr. Taylor, by carefully chosen language, first makes it appear as if, of the several thousands he has treated, M. Pasteur has lost 162 ; and secondly, he says that because deaths have occurred, M. Pasteur is powerless. Firstly, why does not Mr. Taylor. .honestly criticise my former correc- tions of his errors on this point; secondly, why does he not tell your readers that M. Pasteur has lost just one-half of the number he quotes ?—the remaining cases, if they occurred at all, happening in the practice of M. Pasteur's pupils in Russia and elsewhere. Your readers—bat, I fear, not Mr. Taylor—may like to know that these pupils have now attained the same success as M. Pasteur,—viz., the saving of thirteen out of fifteen persons certainly doomed to die of hydrophobia.
6. There have been no deaths caused by M. Pasteur's mode of treatment. The first two cases quoted by Mr. Taylor did not bear careful investigation made into them. The Italian cases are beside the question, as the physician in charge abandoned M. Pasteur's method for one of his own, with fatal consequences. Are we to give up the use of chloroform, morphia, &c., because some ignorant person makes a fatal mistake in a dose ?
7. As, like all others who simply ask for the privilege, I have overhauled M. Pasteur's books for myself, I can afford to smile at Mr. Taylor's repeated misrepresentation regarding the nature of the cases admitted into the Institute, inasmuch as he has made no such examination, nor does he apparently read the published records.
8. Spitzka's experiment was long ago shown in all medical journals to be an absurd falsity, inasmuch as he was not dealing with rabies at all, but with septicaemia.
9. Mr. Taylor has his reasons for depreciating the cer- tificates given by veterinarians ; but the profession will not suffer in consequence. I hope, Sir, I have earned by brevity insertion of the above.
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