"By the application of this method, I had made fifty dogs of all ages and breeds refractory to rabies without a single failure, when unexpectedly on the 6th of July last, three persons from Alsace presented themselves at my laboratory: Theodore Vone... bitten on the arm 4 July, by his own dog that had become rabid; Joseph Meister, 9 years old, also bitten on 4 July at 8 in the morning by the same dog. This child knocked to the ground by the dog carried numerous bites on the hand, legs, thighs, some rather deep that made his walking difficult. The principal bites had been cauterized only twelve hours earlier with carbolic acid.... The third person who hadn't been bitten was the mother of little Joseph Meister..."

"...In the last days, I had thus inoculated Joseph Meister with the most virulent rabid virus, that of the dog made more potent by a great number of rabbit to rabbit passages, a virus that gives rabies to these animals after seven days of incubation, after eight or ten days in dogs.  I was warranted in this activity because of what happened to the fifty dogs of which I have spoken. When the state of immunity is attained one may without harm inoculate the most virulent virus an in whatever amount. It always appears that this has not other effect than consolidating the state of refractoriness to rabies."

"Joseph Meister has thus escaped, not only from rabies that his bites would have produced, but also from that which I had inoculated him with in order to check his immunity produced by the treatment -- a rabies more virulent than that of ordinary canine rabies. The final most virulent inoculation has again the advantage of reducing the duration of apprehension that one may have following the course of the bites.. If rabies might break out, it will be evident more quickly with a more virulent virus that than due to the bites. From the middle of August, I looked forward with confidence to the health of Joseph Meister. As of today, after three months and three weeks elapsed since the accident, his health has left nothing to be desired..."​​​​​​​

"...To prevent the occurrence of suppuration with all its attendant risks was an object manifestly desirable, but till lately apparently unattainable, since it seemed hopeless to attempt to exclude the oxygen which was universally regarded as the agent by which putrefaction was effected... when it had been shown by the researches of Pasteur that the septic properties of the atmosphere depended not on the oxygen... but on minute organisms suspended in it... it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air, by applying as a dressing some material capable of destroying the life of the floating particles. Upon this principle I have based a practice of which I will now attempt to give a short account.

The material which I have employed is carbolic or phenic acid, a volatile organic compound, which appears to exercise a peculiarly destructive influence upon low forms of life, and hence is the most powerful antiseptic with which we are at present acquainted..."

"...The first class of cases to which I applied it was that of compound fractures, in which the effects of decomposition in the injured part were especially striking and pernicious... irritating and poisonous influence of decomposing blood or sloughs. For these evils are entirely avoided by the antiseptic treatment, so that limbs... unhesitatingly condemned to amputation may be retained...

In conducting the treatment, the first object must be the destruction of any septic germs which may have been introduced into the wounds... This is done by introducing the acid of full strength into all accessible recesses of the wound by means of a piece of rag held in dressing forceps and dipped into the liquid... This I did not venture to do in the earlier cases; but experience has shown that the compound which carbolic acid forms with the blood, and also any portions of tissue killed by its caustic action... are disposed of by absorption and organisation, provided they are afterwards kept from decomposing. We are thus enabled to employ the antiseptic treatment efficiently at a period after the occurrence of the injury at which it would otherwise probably fail. Thus I have now under my care... a boy who was admitted with compound fracture of the leg as late as eight and one-half hours after the accident... all local and constitutional disturbance was avoided by means of carbolic acid, and the bones were soundly united five weeks after his admission..."