October 2013 Auction Ends Tuesday, October 29th, 5pm Pacific
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Louis Pasteur handwritten document on rabies, against which Pasteur developed the first vaccine. Pasteur's note to himself in French translates in part, "…Death (by dog bite) 16 days after the bite. If it is true as I believe that I have given proof of it, the bites of a rabid wolf are more often deadly than those of the dog. This must be attributed to the nature of the bites and their location and not to the fact that the inoculation may encounter a different form of virus in a violent dog, one should expect to see bites of dogs as terrible as those of the wolf…The most shocking example was given to us in the beginning of September 1886. On the 4th of September, a child came to our laboratory, brought there by her father from Palermo. She was bitten on the eye by a dog 14 days ago. Their trip to Paris from Palermo had taken 6 days. At her arrival, the poor kid had full-blown rabies. Therefore the incubation period would have only been a maximum of 19 days. Dr. Roux [Pasteur's famous colleague], from whom they requested the treatment for rabies, deemed it useless to subject her to the standard precautionary inoculations. Having knowledge of the remarkable results that Dr. Coqu of Nancy had obtained from hypodermic injection to reduce tetanus, Dr. Roux, with the help of Dr. Chantemesse [one of Pasteur's assistants] used this procedure for the little Italian girl and succeeded at calming down the spasms. But the rabies still followed its course and the unfortunate child died the 6th of September in the morning 16 days after she was bitten…The autopsy which took place the next morning allowed us to inoculate, the 77th [possibly meaning the 77th round of trials], some rabbits by trepanation [skull surgery] the bulb and the nerves of the eye which were infected…" Undated medical manuscript was written circa September 1886 or later. Runs 2pp. Near fine.
Louis Pasteur Handwritten Medical Notes Discussing the Case of a Young Girl Infected with Rabies Whom He Tried to Save -- "…bitten…by a dog…the poor kid had full-blown rabies…"
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