Rabies Series 2——Pasteur and rabies vaccine

Louis Pasteur was born in Dole, France in 1822 and is one of the greatest scientists in French history. Pasteur is more familiar for his broth experiment and the pasteurization method he invented, which is widely used in beer, wine, milk and juice. In addition, his contribution to microbiology also laid the foundation for immunology. The anthrax vaccine and rabies vaccine he developed have saved millions of lives.

In the previous article, we mentioned that in the more than 4,000 years of fighting against rabies, humans had never found a way to fight it until the emergence of Pasteur.

Before Pasteur, people had discovered that injecting the saliva of a mad dog could cause other animals to become infected with rabies. Based on this, Pasteur conducted a series of animal experiments and found that if the saliva of a mad dog was injected directly into the animal's brain, the onset of rabies would be greatly shortened. He therefore inferred that the animal's nerves and brain were the real targets of the rabies pathogen.

Image source: pixabay

Based on the above findings, Pasteur began to try to develop a rabies vaccine. In fact, long before the rabies vaccine was developed, Pasteur had already developed a cholera vaccine, anthrax vaccine, and swine erysipelas vaccine. When making these vaccines, Pasteur cultured the pathogenic bacteria in a petri dish, then used air or oxidants to weaken the toxicity of the bacteria, and then made a bacterial vaccine.

But we know that rabies is actually caused by viruses, and the methods used to fight bacteria before were ineffective against viruses. By chance, Pasteur, inspired by his assistant Emile Roux, came up with a new method: he cultured the virus in rabbits and then air-dried the infected nerve tissue to weaken the toxicity of the virus. In this way, the first rabies vaccine in human history was born.

On July 6, 1885, a 9-year-old boy was brought to Pasteur's home. The boy's name was Joseph Meister. He was severely bitten by a mad dog and was likely infected with rabies.

After obtaining the boy and his mother's consent and consulting relevant doctors, Pasteur decided to provide him with a weakened rabies vaccine. In the following 11 days, Meister received a total of 13 vaccinations. After three months of observation, Meister recovered well and showed no symptoms of rabies. By the way, Pasteur did not have a medical license at the time, and he would likely face prosecution for this practice. Fortunately, everything went well, and Pasteur became a hero who defeated rabies.

Pasteur supervised the rabies vaccination (Image source: Harper's Weekly, December 19, 1885)

In recognition of his outstanding contribution, the French government established the Pasteur Institute, with Pasteur as its director, and gradually brought the rabies vaccine with a more mature production process to the market, which began to be widely used. The little boy Meister who was cured by Pasteur later became the gatekeeper of the Pasteur Institute.

So far, humans have begun to fight back against rabies. Among these countless battles without gunpowder, the most famous one is the "Chicken Head Rain" operation in Europe. What exactly does this so-called "Chicken Head Rain" operation refer to? What effect did it have? Let us look forward to the rabies series 3 - Operation Chicken Head Rain to eliminate rabies.

The article is produced by Science Popularization China-Starry Sky Project (Creation and Cultivation). Please indicate the source when reprinting.

Author: Science scraps popular science team

Reviewer: Wang Chuanlin, Director of Emergency Department, Peking University People's Hospital