There is undoubtedly a beautiful aspect of that idea of utilizing the fate of a criminal for the cause of Humanity. But in our modern laws no such liberty is left to Justice, which has no power to invent new punishments, or to enter into a bargain with a condemned criminal.
Before his departure from Arbois, Pasteur encountered fresh and unforeseen obstacles. The successful opposition of the inhabitants of Meudon had inspired those of St. Cloud, Ville d’Avray, Vaucresson, Marnes, and Garches with the idea of resisting in their turn the installation of Pasteur’s kennels at Villeneuve l’Etang. People spoke of public danger, of children exposed to meet ferocious rabid dogs wandering loose about the park, of popular Sundays spoilt, picnickers disturbed, etc., etc.
A former pupil of Pasteur’s at the Strasburg Faculty, M. Christen, now a Town Councillor at Vaucresson, warned Pasteur of all this excitement, adding that he personally was ready to do his best to calm the terrors of his townspeople.
Pasteur answered, thanking him for his efforts. “...I shall be back in Paris on October 24, and on the morning of the twenty-fifth and following days I shall be pleased to see any one desiring information on the subject.... But you may at once assure your frightened neighbours, Sir, that there will be no mad dogs at Villeneuve l’Etang, but only dogs made refractory to rabies. Not having enough room in my laboratory, I am actually obliged to quarter on various veterinary surgeons those dogs, which I should like to enclose in covered kennels, quite safely secured, you may be sure.”
Pasteur, writing about this to his son, could not help saying, “Months of fine weather have been wasted! This will keep my plans back almost a year.”
Little by little, in spite of the opposition which burst out now and again, calm was again re-established. French good sense and appreciation of great things got the better of the struggle; in January, 1885, Pasteur was able to go to Villeneuve l’Etang to superintend the arrangements. The old stables were turned into an immense kennel, paved with asphalte. A wide passage went from one end to the other, on each side of which accommodation for sixty dogs was arranged behind a double barrier of wire netting.
The subject of hydrophobia goes back to the remotest antiquity; one of Homer’s warriors calls Hector a mad dog. The supposed allusions to it to be found in Hippocrates are of the vaguest, but Aristotle is quite explicit when speaking of canine rabies and of its transmission from one animal to the other through bites. He gives expression, however, to the singular opinion that man is not subject to it. More than three hundred years later we come to Celsus, who describes this disease, unknown or unnoticed until then. “The patient,” said Celsus, “is tortured at the same time by thirst and by an invincible repulsion towards water.” He counselled cauterization of the wound with a red-hot iron and also with various caustics and corrosives.
Pliny the Elder, a worthy precursor of village quacks, recommended the livers of mad dogs as a cure; it was not a successful one. Galen, who opposed this, had a no less singular recipe, a compound of cray-fish eyes. Later, the shrine of St. Hubert in Belgium was credited with miraculous cures; this superstition is still extant.
Sea bathing, unknown in France until the reign of Louis XIV, became a fashionable cure for hydrophobia, Dieppe sands being supposed to offer wonderful curing properties.
In 1780 a prize was offered for the best method of treating hydrophobia, and won by a pamphlet entitled Dissertation sur la Rage, written by a surgeon-major of the name of Le Roux.