Pierre-Victor or Pierre Victor Galtier ((1846-10-15)15 October 1846 – (1908-04-24)24 April 1908) was a veterinarian and professor at the National Veterinary School of Lyon, specialising in pathology of infectious diseases, health surveillance and commercial and medical legislation. He developed a rabies vaccine which had some experimental success in laboratory animals.
Early life and studies Galtier was born on 15 October 1846 in Langogne, Lozère to a farmer's family. In 1853, he was entrusted to the nuns who ran the local school. He escaped from this school twice, only to be placed with his grandmother who lived in Langogne. There, he attended secondary school, leaving after the tenth grade. He read Greco-Roman studies at La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin in the "Petit Séminaire", the famous ecclesiastical secondary school of Bishop Felix Dupanloup, an outpost of the Seminar d'Orléans. He received his bachelor's degree with honours. He studied for his master's degree and his veterinary license at Marvejols college. Around this time Lozère created a scholarship to help poor students to study to become veterinarians, which Galtier received and used to study at the National Veterinary School of Lyon. He came top of the class for four consecutive years, and graduated in 1873 as a valedictorian, receiving the "Grand prix Bourgelat".
Career Galtier began his professional career as an associate of Monsieur Delorme, a veterinarian in Arles, whose daughter he married. He began teaching veterinary pathology and eventually became the Chair of Infectious Diseases. Aged 33, he began his work on rabies. In 1876, he was appointed the Chair of Pathology and Internal Medicine in the veterinary science department at Lyon. In 1877, his department began to carry out studies on microbial pathology and microbiology. This led to the school supporting the idea of contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, the common cold, and rabies, as opposed to the National Veterinary School of Alfort which supported the idea of spontaneous generation. In 1878 he was appointed professor of pathology of infectious diseases, animal health, trade and medical law. In the same year, Mr. Bouley, Inspector General of veterinary schools, created a new department that would separate the teaching of general pathology from that of communicable diseases. Pierre Victor Galtier was appointed to the department chair and held the position for 30 years. In 1879, he made important discoveries about two deadly diseases: common cold and rabies. In 1883, he obtained a law degree. For his work on rabies, Galtier was considered for the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. However, he died in La Mulatière on 24 April 1908, thereby preventing his nomination.
Honors 1881: Member of the Anthropological Society of Lyon 1887: Member of the National Agricultural Society, natural history and useful Arts de Lyon 1888: Officer Academy 1891: Knight Legion of Honor 1895: Officer of the Order of Agricultural Merit Correspondent of the Academy of Medicine 1898: Correspondent of the National Society of Agriculture 1898: Associate of the National Central Society of Veterinary Medicine Associate 1901: Elected Associate of the Académie nationale de médecine, by 56 votes out of 59 1903: Appointed Commander of Agricultural Merit 1903–08: Member of the Veterinary Academy of France 1903: Member of the Rhône Hygiene County Council 1906: Appointed Officer of Education Member of the Rhone vaccines commission Four gold medals with the effigy of Olivier de Serres (works on rabies, pneumo-enteritis in sheep and horse and tuberculosis) Agricultural Society of France 1887: Bréant Prize (for his work on rabies) 1887: Barbier Prize French: Prix Barbier (for his work on rabies). Academy of Medicine, contests 1890: Behague Prize of the National Society of Agriculture of France for his work on the pneumo-enteritis in sheep (25 June) 1891: Barbier Prize (for his work on pneumo-enteritis from cheeses) 1892: Stanski Prize (for the second edition of contagious diseases)
Work on rabies Pierre Galtier was notable for his work on rabies; he was the first to develop a vaccine for rabies. He also made important advances in the study of the common cold and on the infectiousness of viruses. Galtier assumed that, because of the incubation period of rabies, the development of a vaccine could be used as curative for a disease like this.
1879 His first publication on rabies was a thesis entitled "Studies on rabies" published in two veterinary journals and whose findings are published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences. On 25 April 1879, the Academy of Sciences published his notes on rabies. The article made clear his conclusions about rabies:
The dog rabies is transmitted to the rabbit, which thus becomes a convenient and safe reagent to determine the status of non-virulence or virulence of various liquids from rabid animals (…) Rabies is transmitted to animals (rabbits) of his kind (…) Symptoms that predominate in the rabid rabbits are paralysis and convulsions. The rabbit can live from several hours to one, two and even four days after the disease has clearly declared. (…) the incubation period is shorter in him than in other species. (Based on an experience table published in the note, Galtier accurately and correctly calculates an average incubation time for the rabbit 18 days). Salicylic acid, administered by hypodermic injection, the daily dose of 0.0068 gr for fourteen consecutive days from the fiftieth hour after inoculation, did not prevent the development of rabies the rabbit. The saliva of rabid dog, collected on the living animal and stored in the water is still virulent five, fourteen twenty-four hours.
Galtier also had a brilliant idea: he began experiments to find an agent capable of neutralizing rabies virus. He thought that the discovery of an effective preventive was almost equivalent to the discovery of a cure, especially if it was effective when administered within a day or two of an infected bite. It is this 'genius idea which is the basis of preventive treatment for rabies by vaccination'.
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