How Pasteur Virus Is Made

HOW PASTEUR VIRUS IS MADE 

MANY GUINEA PIGS ARE USED FOR IT

The New Institute Must Prepare to Have It on Hand at All Times

A Pasteur institute must be ready at any and all times to receive a patient. Even though no mad dogs run amuck for months, the inoculations have to go on daily so as to keep the supply of virus always on hand and of just the right age to administer on an hour's notice. 

Prof. Frederick G. Novy, of the bacteriological laboratory, and the discoverer of benzozone, recently explained the method of treating persons suffering from the bite of mad dogs or other hydrophobia victims. As a preliminary he explained something about hydrophobia. 

"Persons who develop rabies have never been known to recover. They always die in a spasm. 

"But only about 20 percent of those bitten by mad dogs develop rabies.

"It takes from 13 days at the least to two months or more for the disease to develop the bite. Cases have been known to lie dormant for over a year after the bite and then develop and end in death.

"Dogs have been known to survive even the worst forms of rabies.

"Once a person is bitten, try and save the dogs life. If the dog does not develop rabies, then there is no cause for worry. And if the beast really has the rabies it is much more quickly discovered by penning him up alive than by killing him and then sending his brains to a laboratory there to have guinea pigs inoculated with it. A live dog should develop hydrophobia within a very few days. But a week or more must elapse before the guinea pigs inoculated will show any signs. To say the least, the avoidance of such needless delay will save the person bitten terrible anxiety. 

"As to the Pasteur treatment: Hydrophobia virus grows weaker with each day's aging. Guinea pig virus one day old would kill a mean; but that two weeks old will not harm. It has by that time lost its potency.

"So the patient, on first being received, is inoculated with virus that is 14 days old, in other words, it was taken from a guinea pig 14 days before. On the second day the patient gets a dose of 13-day-old hydrophobia virus third day, 12-day-old, and so on until the sufferer's system is able to stand virus only 2 days old. This treatment is kept up for three weeks.

"Then is there any surety that hydrophobia will not result? No. In spite of the Pasteur treatment the person bitten may come down a month, maybe a year afterward."

To make this human safeguard possible it is necessary, each day to inoculate small animals; keep them penned up until they go mad; and in this way secure the daily supply of hydrophobia virus.