“I am equally satisfied with my new experiments in this difficult study. Perhaps practical application on a large scale may not be far off....”
In May, everything at Villeneuve l’Etang was ready for the reception of sixty dogs. Fifty of them, already made refractory to bites or rabic inoculation, were successively accommodated in the immense kennel, where each had his cell and his experiment number. They had been made refractory by being inoculated with fragments of medulla, which had hung for a fortnight in a phial, and of which the virulence was extinguished, after which further inoculations had been made, gradually increasing in virulence until the highest degree of it had again been reached.
All those dogs, which were to be periodically taken back to Paris for inoculations or bite tests, in order to see what was the duration of the immunity conferred, were stray dogs picked up by the police. They were of various breeds, and showed every variety of character, some of them gentle and affectionate, others vicious and growling, some confiding, some shrinking, as if the recollection of chloroform and the laboratory was disagreeable to them. They showed some natural impatience of their enforced captivity, only interrupted by a short daily run. One of them, however, was promoted to the post of house-dog, and loosened every night; he excited much envy among his congeners. The dogs were very well cared for by a retired gendarme, an excellent man of the name of Pernin.
A lover of animals might have drawn an interesting contrast between the fate of those laboratory dogs, living and dying for the good of humanity, and that of the dogs buried in the neighbouring dogs’ cemetery at Bagatelle, founded by Sir Richard Wallace, the great English philanthropist. Here lay toy dogs, lap dogs, drawing-room dogs, cherished and coddled during their useless lives, and luxuriously buried after their useless deaths, while the dead bodies of the others went to the knacker’s yard.
Rabbit hutches and guinea-pig cages leaned against the dogs’ palace. Pasteur, having seen to the comfort of his animals, now thought of himself; it was frequently necessary that he should come to spend two or three days at Villeneuve l’Etang. The official architect thought of repairing part of the little palace of Villeneuve, which was in a very bad state of decay. But Pasteur preferred to have some rooms near the stables put into repair, which had formerly been used for non-commissioned officers of the Cent Gardes; there was less to do to them, and the position was convenient. The roof, windows, and doors were renovated, and some cheap paper hung on the walls inside. “This is certainly not luxurious!” exclaimed an astonished millionaire, who came to see Pasteur one day on his way to his own splendid villa at Marly.
On May 29 Pasteur wrote to his son—
“I thought I should have done with rabies by the end of April; I must postpone my hopes till the end of July. Yet I have not remained stationary; but, in these difficult studies, one is far from the goal as long as the last word, the last decisive proof is not acquired. What I aspire to is the possibility of treating a man after a bite with no fear of accidents.
“I have never had so many subjects of experiment on hand—sixty dogs at Villeneuve l’Etang, forty at Rollin, ten at Frégis’, fifteen at Bourrel’s, and I deplore having no more kennels at my disposal.
“What do you say of the Rue Pasteur in the large city of Lille? The news has given me very great pleasure.”
What Pasteur briefly called “Rollin” in this letter was the former Lycée Rollin, the old buildings of which had been transformed into outhouses for his laboratory. Large cages had been set up in the old courtyard, and the place was like a farm, with its population of hens, rabbits, and guinea-pigs.