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This stark nineteenth-century engraving, titled "Trépanation d'un lapin," captures a pivotal and intense moment in the history of medical science. The illustration shows two scientists in formal attire and lab aprons working in tandem to perform a delicate surgical procedure on a rabbit. One researcher holds a T-handle surgical drill (trephine) to create a small opening in the animal's skull, while his assistant carefully stabilizes the rabbit on a wooden workbench. This specific technique was essential to the work of Louis Pasteur and his team, as it allowed them to inject rabies virus directly into the central nervous system of rabbits to attenuate the virus and create the first successful human rabies vaccine. Rendered with detailed cross-hatching, the image documents the rigorous, and now controversial, animal experimentation methods that were foundational to the birth of modern immunology and the defeat of one of humanity's most feared diseases during the Belle Époque.