Historical Perspectives A Centennial Celebration:
Pasteur and the Modern Era of Immunization
On July 6, 1885, Louis Pasteur and his colleagues injected the
first of 14 daily doses of rabbit spinal cord suspensions
containing
progressively inactivated rabies virus into 9-year-old Joseph
Meister,
who had been severely bitten by a rabid dog 2 days before. This
was
the beginning of the modern era of immunization, which had been
presaged by Edward Jenner nearly 100 years earlier.
Pasteur's decision to treat the child followed 4 years of
intensive research, culminating in the development of a vaccine
capable of protecting experimentally challenged rabbits and dogs.
His
decision was difficult: "The child's death appeared inevitable. I
decided not without acute and harrowing anxiety, as may be
imagined,
to apply to Joseph Meister the method which I had found
consistently
successful with dogs" (1). The immunization was successful; and
the
Pasteur rabies immunization procedure was rapidly adopted
throughout
the world. By 1890, there were rabies treatment centers in
Budapest,
Madras, Algiers, Bandung, Florence, Sao Paulo, Warsaw, Shanghai,
Tunis, Chicago, New York, and many other places throughout the
world.
The basic "Pasteur Treatment," based on brain tissue vaccine
with
the addition of formaldehyde, is still used in many countries of
the
world where rabies is prevalent. This treatment still involves
immunizations given daily for 14-21 days, and it still carries the
same risk of neurologic sequelae as in Pasteur's day. In the
United
States and other developed countries, more potent, safer, but very
expensive, cell culture-based rabies vaccines are combined with
hyperimmune globulin for postexposure treatment. The efficacy of
such
regimens has been well proven.
Another era in vaccine development is now beginning--an era
based
on the practical application of recombinant-deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA) technology and other novel genetic manipulations of rabies
and
other viruses and microorganisms. These new technologies promise
even
more potent and safer vaccines, as well as lower costs, improved
stability, and easier delivery throughout the world to people at
risk.
In celebrating the Pasteur centennial, the preeminent role of
vaccines in the control of infectious diseases is recognized; as
Rene
Dubos stated: "Even granted that the antirabies treatment had saved
the lives of a few human beings, this would have been only meager
return for so much effort . . . . It is on much broader issues that
Pasteur's achievements must be judged. He had demonstrated the
possibility of investigating by rigorous techniques the infectious
diseases caused by invisible, noncultivable viruses; he had shown
that
their pathogenic potentialities could be modified by various
laboratory artifices; he had established beyond doubt that a solid
immunity could be brought about without endangering the life or
health
of the vaccinated person. Thanks to the rabies epic . . .
immunization (has) become recognized as a general law of nature.
Its
importance for the welfare of man and animals is today commonplace,
but only the future will reveal its full significance in the realm
of
human economy" (2).
Reported by Div of Viral Diseases, Center for Infectious Diseases,
CDC.
References
Cuny H. Louis Pasteur: the man and his theories. Greenwich,
Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1963:173.
Dubos RJ. Louis Pasteur: free lance of science. Boston,
Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Co., 1950:352-3.
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