Rabies has been called the “world’s most diabolical virus,” spreading from animal to human via a bite.

Working with rabies virus is incredibly dangerous, as mortality approaches 100% once symptoms appear and without vaccination. Through astute observation, Pasteur discovered that drying out the spinal cords of dead rabid rabbits and monkeys resulted in a weakened form of rabies virus. Using that weakened version as a vaccine to gradually expose dogs to the rabies virus, Pasteur showed that he could effectively immunize the dogs against rabies.

Then, in July 1885, Joseph Meister, a 9-year-old boy from France, was severely bitten by a rabid dog. With Joseph facing almost certain death, his mother took him to Paris to see Pasteur because she had heard that he was working to develop a cure for rabies.

Pasteur took on the case, and alongside two physicians, he gave the boy a series of injections over several weeks. Joseph survived and Pasteur shocked the world with a cure for a universally lethal disease. This discovery opened the door to the widespread use of Pasteur’s rabies vaccine around 1885, which dramatically reduced rabies’ deaths in humans and animals.

Pasteur once famously said in a lecture, “In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.”

Pasteur had a knack for applying his brilliant – and prepared – scientific mind to the most practical dilemmas faced by humankind.

While Louis Pasteur died prior to the initiation of the Nobel Prize, I would argue that his amazing lifetime of discovery and contribution to science in medicine, infectious diseases, vaccination, medical microbiology and immunology place him among the all-time greatest scientists.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Rodney E. Rohde, Texas State University. The Conversation has a variety of fascinating free newsletters.

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Rodney E. Rohde has received funding from the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP), American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science (ASCLS), U.S. Department of Labor (OSHA), and other public and private entities/foundations. Rohde is affiliated with ASCP, ASCLS, ASM, and serves on several scientific advisory boards. See https://rodneyerohde.wp.txstate.edu/service/.