The final and certainly most famous success of Pasteur's research was the development of a vaccine against rabies or hydrophobia as it is also known. The disease has always had a hold on the public imagination and has been looked upon with horror. It evokes visions of "raging victims, bound and howling, or asphyxiated between two mattresses" (Duclaux). The treatments applied to victims were as horrible as the supposed symptoms: this included cauterizing the bite wounds with a red-hot poker. Actually very few persons die in any year from being bitten by a rabid dog or wolf. The symptoms of the disease are variable: onset may take weeks to months to develop if they develop at all. Nonetheless, Pasteur and his colleague Roux realized that conquest of rabies would be recognized as a great achievement to the world of science and to the public at large.Pasteur and Roux initially attempted to transfer infection by injecting healthy dogs with saliva from rabid animals. The results were variable and unpredictable. Later, recognizing that the active agent was in the spinal cord and brain, and because they were unable to detect a specific rabic microorganism, Pasteur and Roux applied extracts of rabid spinal cord directly to the brain of dogs. With this technique they could reproducibly produce rabies in the test animals in a few days.The goal was next to develop a vaccine that would provide protection to the subject before the rabic agent moved from the bite site to the spinal cord to the brain. This was achieved by injecting into test animals suspensions of spinal cord of rabid rabbits that were attenuated in strength by air drying over a 12-day period in the now-famous Roux Bottle. A strip of spinal cord was suspended from a hanger in the center of the bottle containing a hole at the top of the bottle and one on the lower side. Air entered from the bottom opening, passed over a drying agent and exited from the top. The longer the cord was dri...
