With new vaccine, scientist prevents rabies in boys, Science News Online (12/18/99) With new vaccine, scientist prevents rabies in boys By N. Seppa PARIS, October 1885-Scientist Louis Pasteur has stunned the French Academy of Medicine with the news that he has prevented two boys from contracting rabies. Since antiquity, the appearance of rabies symptoms has been a death sentence. The agony, hydrophobia, and madness it causes make rabies greatly feared here, even though only a few hundred people die of it in France each year. A 15-year-old shepherd, Jean-Baptiste Jupille of Villers-Farlay, nearly joined them this month. The boy was bitten several times while he fought and drowned a rabid dog that had attacked him and his fellow shepherds. Luckily, the mayor of Villers-Farlay had heard that Pasteur this summer had saved a 9-year-old boy, Joseph Meister, who was bitten repeatedly by a rabid dog. Starting 3 days after the dog attack, Pasteur and his colleagues injected young Meister 13 times over 10 days with rabid rabbits' nerve tissue that had been dried in a bottle with potash. The drying had weakened the tissue's virulence but left the material strong enough to awaken the boy's defenses against rabies, says Pasteur. By the time Jupille arrived in Paris, 6 days had elapsed since he was bitten. But injections with increasingly powerful vaccine over 2 weeks have worked, proving the Meister case was no fluke, the researchers report. Pasteur is hesitant to proclaim the treatment a sure bet, but some of his colleagues aren't so cautious. "I have no doubt that this treatment will always be successful if it is properly administered within a few days after a rabid bite," physician Alfred Vulpian told the academy. The inoculation derives from laboratory tests on animals that Pasteur began in 1880. He and his colleagues found that transferring brain matter from a rabid rabbit to a healthy one would infect the latter rather than immunize it. Pasteur and Emile Roux eventually devised a way to weaken, or attenuate, the invisible germ. Rabies research is precarious. In experiments to infect and inoculate laboratory animals such as dogs, Pasteur and his team keep a loaded revolver within reach as they work on the sleeping beasts. It isn't just for the animals but also for the researchers. "If a terrible accident were to happen to one of them, the more courageous of the others would have to put a bullet in [the injured person's] head," says Roux's niece Marie Cressac. If the reported treatment becomes routine, life in the laboratory could become much less tense. Pasteur's latest accomplishment comes at a time in life when most people reduce their workload. Even though he is 62 and partially paralyzed by a stroke, Pasteur continues to experiment as he has all his life. In his youth, Pasteur discovered properties of crystals, but he later studied bacteria. He found that these tiny microbes can cause disease and spoilage. Pasteur's knowledge of bacteria led to a heating process that kills microbes that spoil wine, beer, and milk. This process is being called pasteurization, in honor of the versatile scientist. He also debunked the theory of spontaneous generation-the ancient belief that living things could grow from naught. In other research, Pasteur found the microbe that was killing silkworm eggs and so saved the French silk industry from disaster. He cured chicken and swine diseases, devising a vaccine against anthrax. Until he did, French sheep farmers were losing up to 30 million francs a year to this disease. Pasteur turned to rabies in part to prove the principle of vaccination, which still has doubters even though English physician Edward Jenner 89 years ago showed that cowpox inoculates people against smallpox. Pasteur's aversion to rabies may also stem from an incident he witnessed as a child in the village of Arbois. When Pasteur was 9, a rabid wolf bit several people there. Neighbors rushed one man to a blacksmith's shop, where his wound was cauterized with a branding iron-killing the rabies before it could infect his body. Other bite victims were not so lucky. Despite his successes, Pasteur is not uniformly popular among the science elite. He can be harsh with his colleagues. For example, he once said of them, "One must not assume that an understanding of science is present in those who borrow its language." A close associate, Charles Nicolle, says Pasteur is "possessed of that indomitable temerity that a sacred delirium imparts to the genius."