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PASTEUR

I can trephine a dog—I can drill a little hole in his skull—without hurting him—without damaging his brain at all . . . it would be easy . . ." said Roux.

Pasteur shut Roux up, furiously. He was no doctor, and he did not know that surgeons can do this operation on human beings even, quite safely. "What! bore a hole right through a dog's skull—why, you'd hurt the poor beast terribly . . . you would damage his brain . . . you would paralyze him . . . No! I will not permit it!"

So near was Pasteur, by reason of his tender-heartedness, so close was he to failing completely in winning to the most marvelous of his gifts to men. He quailed before the stern experiment that his weird idea demanded. But Roux—the faithful, the now almost forgotten Roux—saved him by disobeying him.

For, a few days later when Pasteur left the laboratory to go to some meeting or other, Roux took a healthy dog, put him easily out of pain with a little chloroform, and bored a hole in the beast's head and exposed his palpitating, living brain. Then up into a syringe he drew a little bit of the ground-up brain of a dog just dead with rabies: "This stuff must be swarming with those rabies microbes that are maybe too small for us to see," he pondered; and through the hole in the sleeping dog's skull went the needle of the syringe, and into the living brain Roux slowly, gently shot the deadly rabid stuff. . . .

Next morning Roux told Pasteur about it— "What!" shouted Pasteur. "Where is the poor creature . . . he must be dying . . . paralyzed. . . ."

But Roux was already down the stairs, and in an instant he was back, his operated dog prancing in ahead of him, jumping gayly against Pasteur, sniffing 'round among the old broth bottles under the laboratory benches. Then Pasteur realized Roux's cleverness—and the new road of experiment that lay before him, and though he was not fond of dogs, his joy made him fuss over this one: "Good dog, excellent beast!" Pasteur