AN ATTACK ON PASTEUR'S WORK. Charged with Spreading Hydrophobia.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 204, 21 May 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

AN ATTACK ON PASTEUR'S WORK. Charged with Spreading Hydrophobia.

j London, March 27.— The French booksellers here advertise a new book which will interest, all of the American admhers of 1 Past-cur and his theory of hydrophobia. The book is entitled "M. Pasteur et la Rage." The author, Dr. Lutard, editor of (ho " Journal de Medicine de Paris," has from the very first contested the efficacy of M. Pattern I * method for preventing hydrophobia. In his preface Dr Lutaul goes fui the than he had done before, and dining the first year of the application of M. Pasteur's method it was inoffensive and ineffectual, but; UQW in its intensified form it has become dangerous He then proceeds as follows: ;c During the last two months of ISB6 the mortality among those who followed M. Pasteur's treatment became really disquieting. Eleven individuals died after presenting unubual symptoms, which resembled in a strange manner hydrophobia. A searching inquiry into these eleven cases of death made it impossible to keep silent any longer. Professor Peter mounted the tribune of the Academy of Medicine and did not hesitate to declaue that the new method of M. Pasteur was dangerous. Hydrophobia was not being cured at the Laboratory of the Ecole Normale ; it was being given.'' What Dr. Lutaid believes he has proved in his book is that the method proposed by M. Pasteur as a treatment against hydrophobia is cither ineffectual or dangerous. The volume i& of 438 pages, and is, throughout written in a tone of hostility towards M. Pasteur, At the end of Dr. Lutard's book he contests all of the statistics which have been given in proof of the excellence of \L Pasteur's method. Taking the year 1886, he gives the names and addresses and all the particular 1 ? concerning the deaths of twentytwo persons who died of hydrophobia after being treated against that disease by M. Pasteur. Adding to the*e seventeen other deaths from hydrophobia of persons who did not apply to M.Pasteur for treatment, shows that thirty-nine people in all died of that disease in France during 1 886. He adds that the annual average of those deaths in France being, according to Fardieu and Bronardel, 30 ; therefore in the year 1886, during which M. Pasteur's method has been applied, there have been nine deaths more than diningthe preceding years.