But, as the inoculations were becoming more virulent, Pasteur became a prey to anxiety: “My dear children,” wrote Mme. Pasteur, “your father has had another bad night; he is dreading the last inoculations on the child. And yet there can be no drawing back now! The boy continues in perfect health.”
Renewed hopes were expressed in the following letter from Pasteur—
“My dear René, I think great things are coming to pass. Joseph Meister has just left the laboratory. The three last inoculations have left some pink marks under the skin, gradually widening and not at all tender. There is some action, which is becoming more intense as we approach the final inoculation, which will take place on Thursday, July 16. The lad is very well this morning, and has slept well, though slightly restless; he has a good appetite and no feverishness. He had a slight hysterical attack yesterday.”
The letter ended with an affectionate invitation. “Perhaps one of the great medical facts of the century is going to take place; you would regret not having seen it!”
Pasteur was going through a succession of hopes, fears, anguish, and an ardent yearning to snatch little Meister from death; he could no longer work. At nights, feverish visions came to him of this child whom he had seen playing in the garden, suffocating in the mad struggles of hydrophobia, like the dying child he had seen at the Hôpital Trousseau in 1880. Vainly his experimental genius assured him that the virus of that most terrible of diseases was about to be vanquished, that humanity was about to be delivered from this dread horror—his human tenderness was stronger than all, his accustomed ready sympathy for the sufferings and anxieties of others was for the nonce centred in “the dear lad.”
The treatment lasted ten days; Meister was inoculated twelve times. The virulence of the medulla used was tested by trephinings on rabbits, and proved to be gradually stronger. Pasteur even inoculated on July 16, at 11 a.m., some medulla only one day old, bound to give hydrophobia to rabbits after only seven days’ incubation; it was the surest test of the immunity and preservation due to the treatment.
Cured from his wounds, delighted with all he saw, gaily running about as if he had been in his own Alsatian farm, little Meister, whose blue eyes now showed neither fear nor shyness, merrily received the last inoculation; in the evening, after claiming a kiss from “Dear Monsieur Pasteur,” as he called him, he went to bed and slept peacefully. Pasteur spent a terrible night of insomnia; in those slow dark hours of night when all vision is distorted, Pasteur, losing sight of the accumulation of experiments which guaranteed his success, imagined that the little boy would die.
The treatment being now completed, Pasteur left little Meister to the care of Dr. Grancher (the lad was not to return to Alsace until July 27) and consented to take a few days’ rest. He spent them with his daughter in a quiet, almost deserted country place in Burgundy, but without however finding much restfulness in the beautiful peaceful scenery; he lived in constant expectation of Dr. Grancher’s daily telegram or letter containing news of Joseph Meister.
By the time he went to the Jura, Pasteur’s fears had almost disappeared. He wrote from Arbois to his son August 3, 1885: “Very good news last night of the bitten lad. I am looking forward with great hopes to the time when I can draw a conclusion. It will be thirty-one days to-morrow since he was bitten.”
On August 20, six weeks before the new elections of Deputies, Léon Say, Pasteur’s colleague at the Académie Française, wrote to him that many Beauce agricultors were anxious to put his name down on the list of candidates, as a recognition of the services rendered by science. A few months before, Jules Simon had thought Pasteur might be elected as a Life Senator, but Pasteur had refused to be convinced. He now replied to Léon Say—