Pasteur Institute : Mansion House Fund.

  • Mansion House Relief Fund (London)
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pasteur Institute : Mansion House Fund. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    out at Paris than they would be in London, and you will do well to give your money to Paris and not keep it for London. Dr. T. Lauder BruntON, in seconding this resolution, said : You have already heard from Sir James Paget that we may reckon that M. Pasteur has saved 900 lives, but this gives us a very small idea of what good he has really done. The saving of a life is but a small thing, and perhaps it is easier to convey an idea of what I mean by giving you an incident than by giving any number of general details. Some five or si.x years ago I was called to see a girl at Leytonstone who had been bitten by a dog three weeks previously. No one knew whether the dog was mad or not. Her father, her mother, and herself had gone out walking one Sunday afternoon ; the dog came rushing along the road, sprung upon her and bit her upon the cheek,tiien rushed on, no one knowing from whence it came or whither it had gone. The wound was washed. It was hoped that the dog was not mad, but three weeks after she began to feel a little difficulty in swallowing, and next day she died of hydrophobia. There was no Pasteur Institut then ; if there had been that girl might have gone across to Paris and been saved. That would have been a life saved, and M. Pasteur saved more than 900 lives. The death of that girl was but a small part of the mischief which was done by that dog—it blasted that home. Had the Institut Pasteur then been in existence that girl might have been living to cheer the declining years of her father and mother. Now, 900 lives saved means 900 homes, the happiness of which has not been wrecked, at least for the while, and in view of this I think we are justified in moving the resolution—That this meeting requests the Lord Mayor to start a fund for the purpose of making a suitable donation to the Institut Pasteur. But it so happened that the father and mother of that girl were in a position to have sent her to the Institut Pasteur, had it existed at that time ; but there are many others in this country who are not able to do that, and on behalf of the fathers and mothers, as well as of the children who are so likely to get bitten by rabid animals (like the ten who, as Dr. Hime has told us, were bitten all at once, and nine of w^hom survived under the treatment of M. Pasteur), I think I may second the latter part of this resolution— That the meeting requests the Lord Mayor to start a fund for the purpose of providing for the expenses