In December 1885, four young Americans crossed the Atlantic. They were headed for Louis Pasteur's laboratory in Paris, where they could be given the rabies vaccine that had been developed just a few months earlier. The children were the first Americans to be given post-exposure rabies prophylaxis. The event, which became a media sensation in the States, was part of ongoing efforts to make the new treatment available internationally.

Four boys from New Jersey

The four boys from Newark, New Jersey, all from Irish worker families, were bitten by a rabid dog on December 2, 1885.

The patients were:
1.    Austin Fitzgerald, aged 10, bitten on the thigh and hand,
2.    William Lane, aged 14, bitten on the hand and arm,
3.    Patrick Reynolds, aged 10, bitten on both hands,
4.    Eddie Ryan, aged 4, badly bitten.
 

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A race against death: crossing the Atlantic

Given the urgency of the situation, things moved very quickly. James Gordon Bennett Jr. (1841-1918), editor of the New York Herald, dealt with the administrative procedures, and a public appeal raised more than a thousand dollars (the equivalent of nearly $30,000 today) to pay for the journey and treatment. 
Accompanied by the mother of the young Eddie Ryan, who was pregnant at the time, and Dr. Frank F. Billings, the children left New York on December 9, 1885 on the steamship Canada, run by the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, and traveled to Le Havre. 
Louis Pasteur, who had been informed of the case by the press and realized how important it was, had booked a hospital room next to the port for their arrival. On December 21, 1885, they were driven as quickly as possible to the laboratory at 45, rue d'Ulm by Inman Barnard.

Vaccination protocol

As soon as they arrived, the boys were given their first inoculation. The vaccination schedule was the same as the one used successfully on Joseph Meister, the boy from Alsace whose life had been saved in July 1885.

According to sources from the time, the boys received two injections each day, one in the morning and one in the evening. The treatment was based on the method of viral attenuation by desiccating the spinal cords of rabbits, starting with the most weakened virus (for example spinal cords that were 15 days old) and gradually working up to the most virulent strains (for example 3-day-old spinal cords).

According to an official report from the New York Herald, the boys who had been most severely bitten received the treatment for 20 days, while Willie Lane was treated for 17 days. 

When the treatment was finished, the children, Mrs. Ryan and Dr. Frank F. Billings crossed the Atlantic to New York in January 1886. Mrs. Ryan gave birth on the ship on January 5, 1886. 

Success and recognition

The treatment was a resounding success. The four children were saved from rabies, and the episode received widespread media coverage, helping boost the international credibility of the rabies vaccination method. The boys were able to sail back to America once cured.

One of the young patients, Willie Lane, still remembered the details of the journey and the treatment several decades later, paying tribute to Pasteur. He said that during the treatment, Pasteur knelt down to tap him on the head and say a few words in French. Lane went on to work for the Edison Electric Company.

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Many years later, the daughter of one of the boys came to the Institut Pasteur...

Mrs. Cowgill, Willie Lane's daughter, came to the Institut Pasteur Museum many years later to meet museum curator Denise Wrotnowska. She gave her a photo of Willie Lane, aged 57 and in fine health, laying flowers beneath a statue of Louis Pasteur in Chicago in 1928. 

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