A great wave of enthusiasm and generosity swept from one end of France to another and reached foreign countries. A newspaper of Milan, the Perseveranza, which had opened a subscription, collected 6,000 fr. in its first list. The Journal d’Alsace headed a propaganda in favour of this work, “sprung from Science and Charity.” It reminded its readers that Pasteur had occupied a professor’s chair in the former brilliant Faculty of Science of Strasburg, and that his first inoculation was made on an Alsatian boy, Joseph Meister. The newspaper intended to send the subscriptions to Pasteur with these words: “Offerings from Alsace-Lorraine to the Pasteur Institute.”
The war of 1870 still darkened the memories of nations. Amongst eager and numerous inventions of instruments of death and destruction, humanity breathed when fresh news came from the laboratory, where a continued struggle was taking place against diseases. The most mysterious, the most cruel of all was going to be reduced to impotence.
Yet the method was about to meet with a few more cases like Louise Pelletier’s; accidents would result, either from delay or from exceptionally serious wounds. Happy days were still in store for those who sowed doubt and hatred.
During the early part of March, Pasteur received nineteen Russians, coming from the province of Smolensk. They had been attacked by a rabid wolf and most of them had terrible wounds: one of them, a priest, had been surprised by the infuriated beast as he was going into church, his upper lip and right cheek had been torn off, his face was one gaping wound. Another, the youngest of them, had had the skin of his forehead torn off by the wolf’s teeth; other bites were like knife cuts. Five of these unhappy wretches were in such a condition that they had to be carried to the Hôtel Dieu Hospital as soon as they arrived.
The Russian doctor who had accompanied these mujiks related how the wolf had wandered for two days and two nights, tearing to pieces every one he met, and how he had finally been struck down with an axe by one of those he had bitten most severely.
Because of the gravity of the wounds, and in order to make up for the time lost by the Russians before they started, Pasteur decided on making two inoculations every day, one in the morning and one in the evening; the patients at the Hôtel Dieu could be inoculated upon at the hospital.
The fourteen others came every morning in their touloupes and fur caps, with their wounds bandaged, and joined without a word the motley groups awaiting treatment at the laboratory—an English family, a Basque peasant, a Hungarian in his national costume, etc., etc.
In the evening, the dumb and resigned band of mujiks came again to the laboratory door. They seemed led by Fate, heedless of the struggle between life and death of which they were the prize. “Pasteur” was the only French word they knew, and their set and melancholy faces brightened in his presence as with a ray of hope and gratitude.
Their condition was the more alarming that a whole fortnight had elapsed between their being bitten and the date of the first inoculations. Statistics were terrifying as to the results of wolf-bites, the average proportion of deaths being 82 per 100. General anxiety and excitement prevailed concerning the hapless Russians, and the news of the death of three of them produced an intense emotion.
Pasteur had unceasingly continued his visits to the Hôtel Dieu. He was overwhelmed with grief. His confidence in his method was in no wise shaken, the general results would not allow it. But questions of statistics were of little account in his eyes when he was the witness of a misfortune; his charity was not of that kind which is exhausted by collective generalities: each individual appealed to his heart. As he passed through the wards at the Hôtel Dieu, each patient in his bed inspired him with deep compassion. And that is why so many who only saw him pass, heard his voice, met his pitiful eyes resting on them, have preserved of him a memory such as the poor had of St. Vincent de Paul.