A cure afterall

After success in discovering pasteurization, my next greatest challenge was to find a cure to, perhaps, one of the most common disease in humans: rabies. I have heard that in London, the rabies disease was so widespread that the government gave local authorities to lock up and dispose any animals that where thought of having rabies. This is what initiated my work in 1880. I remember clearly when I was sitting in my home in 1882 when I began to ponder how this deadly disease has come to be. For anyone who has never heard of, or seen anyone with rabies, it is a deadly disease that can be received when bitten by an animal who is inflected. I took a different approach to finding a cure, I started my experiments with animals. I experimented with different animals; however, the fact that I could not understand the difference between rabies and other diseases bothered me. It took me several weeks and much research to tell the difference between the germs reaching the brain and the actual bitting. Nevertheless, although this problem has wasted much of my time, I have concluded that rabies is different from other diseases. This is because Rabies could be treated only after the victim has been bitten. 

     In 1885 when I was at Ecole Normale on rue d' Ulm, I tested out my vaccine on a nine year old boy by the name of Joseph Meister who had been bitten many times by a rabid dog. It was frightening for me because I did not know if the treatment would work, however, if the boy did not receive any treatment, he would have died shortly. I injected him with 13 doses of rabbit medulla homogenate, one every day, and it was clear that the vaccine was a success; Joseph survived the illness. Then three months later, another young shepherd, Jean-Baptiste Jupille, also bitten by a rabid dog, received the same treatment. As as before, he survived without any other side affects. Soon enough, on October 26, 1885, I showcased my treatment results to the French Academy of Sciences and two years later, established the Pasteur Institute in Paris so that others could continue my research.

source: http://www.pasteur.fr/ip/easysite/pasteur/en/press/press-kits/rabies/louis-pasteur-and-rabies-vaccination

http://www.zephyrus.co.uk/louispasteur.html
(picture): google images