Hydrophobia in man requires usually from two to six weeks to develop, so that there is a long period in which to utilize preventive measures, and it is on this account that children may be sent, as happens frequently, to New York City or to Paris to be treated by what is known as "Pasteur treatment." This treatment involves the inoculation of the rabies virus which has first been passed through a series of rabbits, in the course of which the virus has become exceedingly strong. The treatment of the human being consists in successive inoculations with virus of various strengths, beginning with the weakest and ending with the most powerful rabbit virus. After this has been done, the effect of the bite of the mad dog has been neutralized, so that in most cases the disease has been robbed of its power. Of the cases treated at the Pasteur Institute in 1897, numbering 1521, there were six deaths, and these six were among those whose arrival at the Institute was so late that the treatment could not be begun in time. _Tetanus._ The fourth disease for which an antidote in the form of antitoxin has been developed is tetanus, commonly known as lockjaw. This is a bacterial disease caused by a specific germ, the peculiarity of which, in its progress, is a long-continued spasm of certain muscles of the body. The germs are commonly found in dirt, garden soil being always full of them, and whenever the skin is broken by any object, such as a rusty nail or a knife not clean, lockjaw may be the result. Rather curiously, it is particularly likely to develop after gunpowder wounds, and the number of cases of tetanus after the Fourth of July is notable. This special prevalence of the disease is so well recognized that health officers usually lay in a large stock of antitoxin about the first of July, awaiting the inevitable demand for it. The disease is most commonly contracted from wounds which occur in the hands or the feet, although it may be the result of wounds in other parts of the body. Very often the wound may be so insignificant as to escape the attention, as a pin prick, and yet be followed by an attack of tetanus. Formerly, the universal treatment for injuries from which tetanus was feared was to firmly cut out all portions of the flesh and skin which might have been infected. Sometimes cauterization was employed, as was done also with cases of rabies, and, if it were possible to reach the virus in the wounds before it escaped into the blood, such a method of treatment would be quite reasonable, but it is quite beyond hope to prevent infection in a jagged wound by cutting out adjacent flesh, with no regard to the dissolved poison. The more reasonable treatment is to inject the antitoxin, which neutralizes the poison and prevents, or at least minimizes, the disease. CHAPTER XXI _HYGIENE AND LAW_