INACTIVATED RABIES VIRUS

The rabies vaccine is prepared by growing rabies viruses in animal nerve tissue, mainly in poultry embryos, harvesting the viruses from the nerve tissue or from the heads of the embryos, concentrating the viruses, inactivating them and making up to the vaccine, wherein homogenisation of the nerve tissue or of the embryo heads with a mixer is avoided on harvesting the viruses, and thus damage and fragmentation of the viruses is prevented, in that the nerve tissue or the heads of the embryos or their contents are comminuted without damaging cells, the complete, live and viable viruses are washed out of the resulting cell suspension, the resulting virus suspension is concentrated, delipidated by extraction with an organic solvent which is immiscible with water, and then further selectively concentrated. A myelin-free rabies vaccine is obtained from poultry embryo head tissue containing rabies viruses by the process described above.