“The question of spontaneous generation I will not attempt to treat here as it would require special discussion. The experiments of M. Pasteur have only shown that under the experimental conditions with which he surrounded himself, conditions which were far from natural, he did not detect any spontaneous organisation of matter. Moreover, all those who have devoted themselves to science, with the sole aim of seeking the truth, as G. Bernard, Huxley, Häckel, etc., while admitting that M. Pasteur’s experiments had been properly conducted within the very narrow circle they occupied, have unanimously rejected the assertions and generalisations drawn from them by that savant himself.”--Dr. Jousset de Bellesme, _Progrès Médical_, Vol. X., 1882, p. 340.
“It is now four years since the study of rabies was first commenced in my laboratory, and it has been continued without any other interruption than the enforced cessations which depend on the conditions of the enquiry, conditions which are very unfavourable. The incubation of the disease is always of long duration. There are never sufficient facilities to enable one at a given moment to multiply experiments. In spite of these material hindrances, which however the French Government, in its care for the great scientific interests involved, has done everything in its power to remove, the experiments which we, my fellow-workers and I, have carried out, have nevertheless passed beyond the possibility of numbering them.… If you take any street-dog you please and inoculate rabies in this manner by trephining, using as inoculating-material a portion of the bulb of an animal which has died of the disease, you will invariably convey rabies. The dogs to which the disease has been communicated in this manner are to be counted by hundreds. The method has never failed. The same operation has been performed on hundreds of guinea-pigs and on a yet greater number of rabbits, without a single failure.”--_Pasteur’s_ “_Address Delivered at the International Med. Congress at Copenhagen_,” Aug. 11th, “_Med. Times and Gazette_,” Aug. 23rd, 1884.
“In the case where rabies is produced by a bite, or by hypodermic injection, interference with the length of the incubation period must be chiefly ascribed to the great variation which is possible in the amount, always indefinite, of inoculated poison which reaches the central nervous system. If then we wish to determine the intensity of the virus from the length of the incubation period, it is unavoidably necessary to have recourse to inoculation by trephining, which is absolutely certain in its effects, and to employ larger quantities than such as would be necessary simply to produce rabies. When we operate in this way, irregularities in the length of incubation with the same virus will show a tendency to entirely disappear, because we always obtain the maximum of effect which the virus can produce; that maximum corresponding to the minimum duration of incubation. Thus we have at length obtained a method which has enabled us to enquire into the possible existence of varying degrees of virulence, and to mutually compare them. The only secrets in this method, I repeat, are to inoculate by trephining, and to use a quantity of virus, which, although very weak, is more than sufficient to produce rabies in and by itself.”--_Ibid._