SEVERAL theories have been propounded at different times by Pasteur and others to account for the supposed effect of his anti-rabic inoculations, but so far without success.
Only a few weeks ago Dr. Ruffer, who as Secretary of the proposed “Institute for Preventive Medicine,” must be assumed to have every cause to be a keen advocate of Pasteur’s method, informed us (British Medical Journal, Oct. 14th, 1893) that “the cause of rabies has baffled even so great a genius as M. Pasteur,” and that “all attempts at cultivating its causative agent have failed even when conducted by the best men under the best possible conditions.”
From this it seems obvious that the Pasteurian treatment is not based on any scientific reasoning, but is purely empirical.
In spite of Pasteur’s own assertion (Address at Copenhagen, August, 1884) that “the experiments which are allowable on animals are criminal when we have to do with man,” we can only regard his treatment as a vast unjustifiable and cruel experiment not on animals only, but also on helpless and terrified human beings. Its claim to public approval rests not on scientific arguments but wholly on statistics; and those statistics, I shall presently show, have been kept in such a disorderly manner that they have no value at all. They illustrate only the fact that when the defence of vivisection is concerned no other consideration has any weight with a certain school, and that then literally, anything is “accurate enough for scientific purposes.”
So much is this the case that while on the strength of these statistics we have two opponents of the system—medical men, with special knowledge of the subject, saying, the one, that “Pasteur does not cure hydrophobia, he gives it;” the other that he regards this “so-called wonderful discovery as the most extraordinary delusion which has afflicted men of science for centuries;” we find on the other hand, two partisans of Pasteur, the one saying that Pasteur “saves fourteen out of fifteen persons doomed to die of the disease,” and the other telling us that Pasteur has saved “twelve thousand” lives.
The fact seems to be that the whole subject is still so much involved in obscurity that there are as yet no sufficient data on which statistics can reasonably be based.
Not only is the cause of rabies still unknown, but there is also no unanimity among experts even as to what are the essential symptoms. The symptoms of distemper have not unfrequently been taken for those of rabies, and while the presence of wood and other substances in the stomach of the dog has been accepted as sufficient evidence of madness by Pasteur and some of his adherents, competent authorities have only smiled at their inexperience and ignorance in making such an assumption.
Again there is no agreement yet among scientific men as to the number of persons who die after being bitten by rabid animals, The percentage varies between 5 and 15, according to taste and the theory to be supported, and the same authorities make different assumptions at different times.
Nor again is there any undisputed test by which to ascertain after death whether a dog has or has not been rabid. The Pasteurian test is to inoculate other animals with the spinal marrow of the dead animal. But we have the authority of the Veterinary Department of the Board of Agriculture, supported by experiments at the Brown Institution, for declining to accept this test. In the Report of the Board for 1889, p. 70, will be found a full account of the case of the 461 deer that died that year in Ickworth Park of a disease which Drs. Roy and Adami, both licensed vivisectors, pronounced on the strength of the inoculation test to be rabies, but which the Veterinary Department, after their own experiments, which gave different results, registered in their Report as “an affection, the true nature of which remains doubtful.” The method indeed of testing rabies by inoculation proves too much, for it points to the existence of such unparalleled numbers of rabid animals that common-sense rebels, and other experimenters have solved the difficulty by showing that inoculation in the same manner with other foreign substances produces similar symptoms.
The part played by terror which has been greatly augmented by Pasteur’s investigations and all their accompanying horrors, and which admittedly can cause symptoms of hydrophobia, is also an unknown quantity, and has been left altogether out of count. Here is what M. Dujardin-Beaumetz (himself a vivisector), said on the subject in his Report presented to the Académie de Médecine in 1889, as summarized in the Globe:—
“It is not the number of mad dogs which has increased, but the minds of people which have become affected by the dread of this dire affliction, and which, becoming overwrought by the numerous (real or fictitious) accounts published on the subject, have engendered what is now termed ‘nervous hydrophobia’—neither more nor less than the absolute result of fear. This form of hydrophobia is infinitely more dangerous than the other; it is calculated to have resulted in the deaths of four-fifths of those persons said to have died of rabies,” etc.
By this account it appears that the deaths of four out of five of the recent victims of hydrophobia may be due directly to the originators and propagators of the scare which has been raised and fostered by the advocates of Pasteurism and vivisection.
Of the number of terrified creatures who have flocked to Paris, and who constitute the 12,000 lives “saved,” it is quite certain that a large proportion were never in any danger of contracting the disease. Mr. Horsley has told us that Pasteur deliberately inoculated persons to quiet their fears, who believed they had been bitten, but could give no satisfactory evidence of it, but Pasteur had no scruple apparently in allowing these cases to be included amongst the “saved.” Many cases it is known had never even been bitten by an animal at all, but some were only licked. To arrive at the truth about an alleged mad dog in one’s own immediate neighbourhood is a matter of no little difficulty; how then, when patients are coming daily from distant countries is it at all possible to get trustworthy information about each and every dog or wolf deemed to be mad by frightened and superstitious peasants?
Thus we see that:—
1. The cause of rabies is unknown.
2. The essential symptoms are not defined.
3. The percentage of deaths in cases without any treatment is uncertain.
4. There is no sure test by which to determine after death whether animals were or were not rabid.
5. The important element of Fear is indeterminable.
6. The individual cases are involved in obscurity.
And this is the foundation on which the statistics are based, which the vivisecting school are not ashamed to put forth as “scientific.” They degrade the word when they use it!
In addition to these unavoidable causes of error grave and culpable carelessness has been shown in matters where errors might have been avoided. For instance, the method of inoculation has been several times altered and modified, because deaths occurred where, according to the theory, cures should have been effected, and yet the numbers treated under the discarded method have been carried forward to swell the total of so-called cures.
Josef Meister, Pasteur’s first case, on the strength of which he was held justified in continuing his experimentation, and many others, were in this way “saved” by a method which was afterwards discontinued because found inefficacious; and they still help. to make the 12,000.
Again, we were at first told positively by Pasteur that his method would protect at any time before hydrophobia actually broke out; and at first all cases were reckoned as saved by the inoculations if they did not immediately die; until one day a patient did die, and then the excuse was that he had not come soon enough, and 36 days was said to be too long a time. This limit in due course broke down similarly by another inconvenient death, and a new limit, of 15 days, was invented; but still all the previous cases which had been “saved” under the false pretences were brought forward to make up the 12,000. As Dr. Dolan points out, Lord Doneraile, who put himself under treatment after a lapse of 11 days, was said to have come too late, but Madame Caressa, who subsequently was treated a year after being bitten, was claimed as a successful case.
It is inconceivable how men with any pretence to be scientific can allow themselves to be played with in this style by the Parisian chemist. The only explanation to be offered is that the credit of vivisection has been so closely connected with this system that they feel they must make it appear successful at all costs.
Again, in this wonderful hodge-podge of scientific credulity, inaccuracy, and misrepresentation, no attempt has ever been made to watch the fate of the inoculated persons after they have left Paris, and no one will ever know how many patients, nominally saved, have -returned home to die. A typical case occurred of a boy at Huddersfield who died of hydrophobia five years after being bitten and inoculated, which shows that no one is safe, at any rate for that period. He, of course, had been doing duty for five years on the list as a successful case, and who can tell how many more have been falsely reckoned in the same manner.
Statistics manipulated in this manner are instructive only as showing the demoralisation which inevitably pursues those who embark upon an immoral course.
The only data we have which gave any semblance of reliability are those furnished by the report of our Hydrophobia Commission issued in July, 1887; but to the discredit of English science it must sorrowfully be admitted that they are no less inaccurate and misleading than the foreign manipulations.
The compiler of the report admits at once that an exact numerical estimate (of Pasteur’s success) is not possible, for—
A. “The probability of hydrophobia occurring in persons bitten by dogs that were certainly rabid depends very much on the number and character of the bites—whether they are on the face or hands or other naked parts, or if they have been inflicted on parts covered with clothes their effect may depend on the texture of the clothes and the extent to which they are torn, and in all cases the amount of bleeding may affect the probability of absorption of virus.”
B. The probability of infection from bites may be affected by speedy cauterising or excision of the wounded parts, or by various washings or other methods of treatment.
C. The bites of different species of animals, and even of different dogs, are probably for various reasons unequally dangerous.
He might also have added that the question whether the dog has previously bitten other persons or things is a matter of importance.
Of the 90 cases selected for investigation by the English Committee, 66, or more than two-thirds, were from one cause or another thrown out, but of course we never found that they were removed from the total number of cures either by Pasteur or his English partisans. The remaining 24 cases were said to have been bitten by dogs “undoubtedly rabid,” but the evidence upon which the opinion was based was not given, and we were in fact told that in one instance “the veterinary would not give a positive opinion;” and in another, the case of the child Tattersall, from Halifax, in which it is stated that the dog was “certified to be rabid by the veterinary surgeon,” we know from other sources that the dog ran away after biting the child and was never examined by any veterinary surgeon at all.
The Committee said they “believed” that eight of these cases would have died, but as they give no reason for such a convenient belief, we can only conclude that the wish was father to the thought. As the cases were all subject to the influences mentioned above, which have a modifying effect on the virus, there would be nothing surprising in their all escaping the malady without the intervention of Pasteur’s injections at all, and the Report proved nothing but the imaginative nature of the statistics on which the whole fabric has been based. Two sentences, however, in the Report deserve to be remembered:—
Ist. “Deaths have occurred under conditions which have suggested that they were due to the inoculations rather than to the infection from the rabid animal.”
2nd. To prevent hydrophobia “Police regulations would suffice if they could be rigidly enforced.”
In Pasteur’s last Annual Report, for the year 1892, he claims that four deaths only occurred amongst 1,790 patients treated.
Now, a list has been published elsewhere, giving particulars of 17 fatal cases during the same period, which probably represents a part only of those who have died and will die. How does Pasteur get rid of these? Some he quietly ignores; with others he employs an ingenious device; thus: If A. is inoculated in 1890 and dies, say in 1892, he is reckoned as a case cured in 1890, because he was inoculated in that year, and he is not reckoned as a death in 1892, because his case belonged to 1890. We instance the cases of Beale, Hayden, and Lindley. It is pitiful to have to expose such devices in a man whom we would like to be able to honour for the good work he did before he adopted the vivisectional method. Pasteur does indeed admit to seven deaths during the year, but three he crosses off because they died within a fortnight of the termination of the treatment. This singular Protective Inoculation apparently needs a fortnight to incubate before it begins to protect!
Mark the result of this new limitation of Pasteur’s. It is ingenious, and makes him quite safe for the future. It is well known that the result of a bite, if fatal, shows itself in most cases within four or five weeks. Now Pasteur’s patients cannot generally get to him till several days after being bitten, his treatment takes about a fort-night more, and he cannot recognise their deaths if they occur within a fortnight of the end of the treatment. In this way he tides over the critical time, and renders himself safe during the most dangerous period. With a syringe filled with nothing stronger than clean water, and with the same limitations of time, it is difficult to see how anyone could help getting a similar percentage of “saved” lives. Also this fortnight allows time for the cases to be scattered over the world, and the subsequent deaths stand little chance of being chronicled, and if chronicled they are never noticed, at any rate by M. Pasteur.
The Medical Press (October 18th), in commenting on Pasteur’s Report, pithily remarks that since the beginning of the treatment in 1886, “Pasteur has treated 12,782 cases, of which probably the 12,000 were imaginative.”
Amid the mass of slipshod statistics which will be a permanent monument of the uncertainty of the vivisectional method and the inaccuracy of its advocates, three facts stand out undisputed and indisputable:—I. That while in France rabies thrives and mad dogs apparently abound, in Germany, the country which from the first has steadily set its face against Pasteur and his methods, the death-rate from hydrophobia is so small that the disease may be said to be hardly known in the country. 2. That in England the deaths from the disease in the five years before Pasteurism were 153, and in the five years after, when many patients were sent to Pasteur, 159. (See Registrar-General 51st Report, Table XV.) 3. That of Pasteur’s patients who ought to have been saved if there had been any foundation for his theories, a list of 258 fatal cases has been compiled, several of whom have admittedly died—not from the bite, but from the so-called “protective” inoculations.
Ernest Bell
The Anti-Vivisection Question, 1896, pp. 285-292