The children from Bradford who were all bitten by the same dog. © Wellcome Library, London

An unusual event is taking place at Leeds’ Thackray Museum on September 8 2007.

Six youngsters aged between seven and 15 are recreating a trip made to Paris in the 1880s by children of the same ages who had been bitten by a rabid dog. They were being sent for treatment under Louis Pasteur, who had developed an inoculation for rabies.

The event, organised in collaboration with science historians from the universities of Manchester and Birmingham, is in aid of the first World Rabies Day, which aims to raise awareness of the disease. It still kills 50,000 people each year.

The Thackray Museum is an appropriate venue, with its medical exhibits ranging from pharmaceutical ceramics to squeal-inducing antique surgical instruments.

“The characters to be recreated comprise a group of five children from Bradford sent by their city to the new Pasteur Institute and a wealthier child taken independently by her father,” explained Dr Emm Barnes from Manchester’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

Make-up dog bites by Julia Hyland from Birmingham University. Courtesy University of Manchester

The visitors will be dressed in costumes based on illustrations of the original Victorian patients, with stage make-up dog bites.

“The five Bradford children, along with three local men, were all bitten by the same mad dog on January 24 1886,” said Dr Barnes.

“When one of the men dies, public funds were made available to send the remainder of the group to Paris where the first cure for hydrophobia – the human form of the disease – was being hailed by Louis Pasteur.”

Pasteur’s inoculation, utilising a form of the virus weakened by being passed through a series of rabbit ‘hosts’, attracted bite victims from across Europe and the United States. It was a big improvement on the folk remedy of applying a ‘hair of the dog that bit you’ to the wound. Other treatments varied from cauterisation and excision to sucking the wound.

Louis Pasteur examining a rabies patient. © Wellcome Library, London

“Hair of the dog meant applying the hair of the dog that bit you to the wound or eating the hair, heart or liver of the animal on the principle that ‘like cures like’,” said Dr Barnes.

“Of course, these days the term has become more associated with hangovers where the sufferer drinks more alcohol in a vain attempt to reduce the hangover symptoms.”

Participants in Saturday’s event will be offered some freshly cooked lamb’s liver to represent the hair of the dog option.

The event will be re-staged in Manchester in October for the city’s Science Week.