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Title: The life of Pasteur
Author: Vallery-Radot, René
Language: English
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THE LIFE OF PASTEUR
“L’œuvre de Pasteur est admirable; elle montre son génie, mais il faut
avoir vécu dans son intimité pour connaître toute la bonté de son
cœur.”--DR. ROUX.
[Illustration: Portrait of LOUIS PASTEUR.]
THE
LIFE OF PASTEUR
BY RENÉ VALLERY-RADOT
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
MRS. R. L. DEVONSHIRE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
SIR WILLIAM OSLER, BART., M.D., F.R.S.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1920
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
INTRODUCTION
L’homme en ce siècle a pris une connaissance toute nouvelle des
ressource de la nature et, par l’application de son intelligence il
a commencé à les faire fructifier. Il a refait, par la géologie et
la paléontologie, l’histoire de la terre, entraînée elle-même par
la grande loi de l’évolution. Il connaît mieux, grâce à Pasteur
surtout, les conditions d’existence de son propre organisme et peut
entreprendre d’y combattre les causes de destruction.--Monod,
_L’Europe Contemporaine_.
Whether to admire more the man or his method, the life or the work, I
leave for the readers of this well-told story to decide. Among the
researches that have made the name of Pasteur a household word in the
civilised world, three are of the first importance--a knowledge of the
true nature of the processes in fermentation--a knowledge of the chief
maladies which have scourged man and animals--a knowledge of the
measures by which either the body may be protected against these
diseases, or the poison neutralised when once within the body.
I.
Our knowledge of disease has advanced in a curiously uniform way. The
objective features, the symptoms, naturally first attracted attention.
The Greek physicians, Hippocrates, Galen, and Aretaeus, gave excellent
accounts of many diseases; for example, the forms of malaria. They knew,
too, very well, their modes of termination, and the art of prognosis was
studied carefully. But of the actual causes of disease they knew little
or nothing, and any glimmerings of truth were obscured in a cloud of
theory. The treatment was haphazard, partly the outcome of experience,
partly based upon false theories of the cause of the disease. This may
be said to have been the sort of knowledge possessed by the profession
until men began to study the “seats and causes” of disease, and to
search out the changes _inside_ the body, corresponding to the outward
symptoms and the external appearances. Morbid anatomy began to be
studied, and in the hundred years from 1750 to 1850 such colossal
strides were made that we knew well the post-mortem appearances of the
more common diseases; the recognition of which was greatly helped by a
study of the relation of the pathological appearances with the signs and
symptoms. The 19th century may be said to have given us an
extraordinarily full knowledge of the changes which disease produces in
the solids and fluids of the body. Great advances, too, were made in the
treatment of disease. We learned to trust Nature more and drugs less; we
got rid (in part) of treatment by theory, and we ceased to have a drug
for every symptom. But much treatment was, and still is, irrational, not
based on a knowledge of the cause of the disease. In a blundering way
many important advances were made, and even specifics were
discovered--cinchona, for example, had cured malaria for a hundred and
fifty years before Laveran found the cause. At the middle of the last
century we did not know much more of the actual causes of the great
scourges of the race, the plagues, the fevers and the pestilences, than
did the Greeks. Here comes in Pasteur’s great work. Before him Egyptian
darkness; with his advent a light that brightens more and more as the
years give us ever fuller knowledge. The facts that fevers were
catching, that epidemics spread, that infection could remain attached to
particles of clothing, etc., all gave support to the view that the
actual cause was something alive, a _contagium vivum_. It was really a
very old view, the germs of which may be found in the Fathers, but which
was first clearly expressed--so far as I know--by Frascastorius, a
Veronese physician in the 16th century, who spoke of the seeds of
contagion passing from one person to another; and he first drew a
parallel between the processes of contagion and the fermentation of
wine. This was more than one hundred years before Kircher, Leeuwenhoek,
and others, began to use the microscope and to see animalculæ, etc., in
water, and so gave a basis for the “infinitely little” view of the
nature of disease germs. And it was a study of the processes of
fermentation that led Pasteur to the sure ground on which we now stand.
Starting as a pure chemist, and becoming interested in the science of
crystallography, it was not until his life at Lille, a town with
important brewing industries, that Pasteur became interested in the
biological side of chemical problems. Many years before it had been
noted by Cagniard-Latour that yeast was composed of cells capable of
reproducing themselves by a sort of budding, and he made the keen
suggestion that it was possibly through some effect of their vegetation
that the sugar was transformed. But Liebig’s view everywhere prevailed
that the ferment was an alterable, organic substance which exercised a
catalytic force, transforming the sugar. It was in August, 1857, that
Pasteur sent his famous paper on _Lactic Acid Fermentation_ to the Lille
Scientific Society; and in December of the same year he presented to the
Academy of Sciences a paper on _Alcoholic Fermentation_, in which he
concluded that the deduplication of sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid
is correlevant to a phenomena of life. These studies had the signal
effect of diverting the man from the course of his previous more
strictly chemical studies. It is interesting to note how slowly these
views dislocated the dominant theories of Liebig. More than ten years
after their announcement I remember that we had in our chemical lectures
the catalytic theory very fully presented.
Out of these researches arose a famous battle which kept Pasteur hard at
work for four or five years--the struggle over spontaneous generation.
It was an old warfare, but the microscope had revealed a new world, and
the experiments on fermentation had lent great weight to the _omne vivum
ex ovo_ doctrine. The famous Italians, Redi and Spallanzani, had led the
way in their experiments, and the latter had reached the conclusion that
there is no vegetable and no animal that has not its own germ. But
heterogenesis became the burning question, and Pouchet in France, and
Bastian in England, led the opposition to Pasteur. The many famous
experiments carried conviction to the minds of scientific men, and
destroyed for ever the old belief in spontaneous generation. All along
the analogy between disease and fermentation must have been in Pasteur’s
mind; and then came the suggestion: “What would be most desirable would
be to push those studies far enough to prepare the road for a serious
research into the origin of various diseases.” If the changes in lactic,
alcohol and butyric fermentations are due to minute living organisms,
why should not the same tiny creatures make the changes which occur in
the body in the putrid and suppurative diseases. With an accurate
training as a chemist, having been diverted in his studies upon
fermentation into the realm of biology, and nourishing a strong
conviction of the identity between putrefactive changes of the body and
fermentation, Pasteur was well prepared to undertake investigations,
which had hitherto been confined to physicians alone.
The first outcome of the researches of Pasteur upon fermentation and
spontaneous generation represents a transformation in the practice of
surgery, which, it is not too much to say, has been one of the greatest
boons ever conferred upon humanity. It had long been recognised that now
and again a wound healed without the formation of pus, that is without
suppuration, but both spontaneous and operative wounds were almost
invariably associated with that change; and, moreover, they frequently
became putrid, as it was then called--infected, as we should say; the
general system became involved, and the patient died of blood poisoning.
So common was this, particularly in old, ill-equipped hospitals, that
many surgeons feared to operate, and the general mortality in all
surgical cases was very high. Believing that from outside the germs came
which caused the decomposition of wounds, just as from the atmosphere
the sugar solution got the germs which caused the fermentation, a young
surgeon at Glasgow, Joseph Lister, applied the principles of Pasteur’s
experiments to their treatment. It may be well here to quote from
Lister’s original paper in the _Lancet_, 1867:--“Turning now to the
question how the atmosphere produces decomposition of organic
substances, we find that a flood of light has been thrown upon this most
important subject by the philosophic researches of M. Pasteur, who has
demonstrated by thoroughly convincing evidence that it is not to its
oxygen or to any of its gaseous constituents that the air owes this
property, but to minute particles suspended in it, which are the germs
of various low forms of life, long since revealed by the microscope, and
regarded as merely accidental concomitants of putrescence, but now shown
by Pasteur to be its essential cause, resolving the complex organic
compounds into substances of simpler chemical constitution, just as the
yeast plant converts sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid.” From these
beginnings modern surgery took its rise, and the whole subject of wound
infection, not only in relation to surgical diseases, but to child-bed
fever, forms now one of the most brilliant chapters in the history of
Preventive Medicine.
II.
Pasteur was early impressed with the analogies between fermentation and
putrefaction and the infectious diseases, and in 1863 he assured the
French Emperor that his ambition was “to arrive at the knowledge of the
causes of putrid and contagious diseases.” After a study upon the
diseases of wines, which has had most important practical bearings, an
opportunity came of the very first importance, which not only changed
the whole course of his career, but had great influence in the
development of medical science. A disease of the silkworm had, for some
years, ruined one of the most important industries of France, and in
1865 the Government asked Pasteur to give up the laboratory work and
teaching, and to devote his whole energies to the task of investigating
it. The story of the brilliant success which followed years of
application to the problem will be read with deep interest by every
student of science. It was the first of his victories in the application
of the experimental methods of a trained chemist to the problems of
biology, and it placed his name high in the group of the most
illustrious benefactors of practical industries.
The national tragedy of 1870-2 nearly killed Pasteur. He had a terrible
pilgrimage to make in search of his son, a sergeant in Bourbaki’s force.
“The retreat from Moscow cannot have been worse than this,” said the
_savant_. In October, 1868, he had had a stroke of paralysis, from which
he recovered in a most exceptional way, as it seemed to have diminished
neither his enthusiasm nor his energy. In a series of studies on the
diseases of beer, and on the mode of production of vinegar, he became
more and more convinced that these studies on fermentation had given him
the key to the nature of the infectious diseases. It is a remarkable
fact that the distinguished English philosopher of the seventeenth
century, the man who more than any one else of his century appreciated
the importance of the experimental method, Robert Boyle, had said that
he who could discover the nature of ferments and fermentation, would be
more capable than anyone else of explaining the nature of certain
diseases. The studies on spontaneous generation, and Lister’s
application of the germ theory to the treatment of wounds, had aroused
the greatest interest in the medical world, and Villemin, in a series of
most brilliant experiments, had demonstrated the infectivity of
tuberculosis. An extraordinary opportunity now offered for the study of
a widespread epidemic disease, known as anthrax, which in many parts of
France killed from 25 to 30 per cent. of the sheep and cattle, and which
in parts of Europe had been pandemic, attacking both man and beast. As
far back as 1838 minute rods had been noted in the blood of animals
which had died from the disease; and in 1863 Devaine thought that these
little bodies, which he called bacteridia, were the cause of the
disease. In 1876 a young German district physician, Robert Koch, began a
career, which in interest and importance rivals that of the subject of
this memoir. Koch confirmed in every point the old researches of
Devaine; but he did much more, and for the first time isolated the
organism in pure culture outside the body, grew successive generations,
showed the remarkable spore formation, and produced the disease
artificially in animals by inoculating with the cultures. Pasteur
confirmed these results, and in the face of extraordinary opposition
succeeded in convincing his opponents. Out of this study came a still
more important discovery, namely, that it was possible so to attenuate
or weaken the virus or poison that the animal could be inoculated, and
have a slight attack, recover, and be protected against the disease.
More than eighty years had passed since, on May 14th, 1796, Jenner, with
a small bit of virus taken from a cow-pox on the hand of the milkmaid,
Sarah Newlme, had vaccinated a child, and thus proved that a slight
attack of one disease would protect the body from disease of a similar
character. It was an occasion famous in the history of medicine, when,
in the spring of 1881, at Melun, at the farmyard of Pouilly le Fort, the
final test case was determined, and the flock of vaccinated sheep
remained well, while every one of the unvaccinated, inoculated from the
same material, had died. It was indeed a great triumph.
The studies on chicken cholera, yellow fever, and on swine plague helped
to further the general acceptance of the germ theory. I well remember at
the great meeting of the International Congress in 1881, the splendid
reception accorded to the distinguished Frenchman, who divided with
Virchow the honours of the meeting. Finally came the work upon one of
the most dreaded of all diseases--hydrophobia, an infection of a most
remarkable character, the germ of which remains undiscovered. The
practical results of Pasteur’s researches have given us a prophylactic
treatment of great efficacy. Before its introduction the only means of
preventing the development of the disease was a thorough cauterisation
of the disease wound within half an hour after its infliction. Pasteur
showed that animals could be made immune to the poison, and devised a
method by which the infection conveyed by the bite could be neutralised.
Pasteur Institutes for the treatment of hydrophobia have been
established in different countries, and where the disease is widely
prevalent have been of the greatest benefit. Except at the London
Congress, the only occasion on which I saw the great master was in 1891
or 1892, when he demonstrated at the Institute to a group of us the
technique of the procedure, and then superintended the inoculations of
the day. A large number of persons are treated in the course of the
year; a good many, of course, have not been bitten by mad dogs; but a
very careful classification is made:--
(_a_) Includes persons bitten by dogs proved experimentally to have been
mad.
(_b_) Persons bitten by dogs declared to be mad by competent veterinary
surgeons.
(_c_) All other cases.
The mortality even in Class A is very slight, though many patients are
not brought until late. Incidentally it may be remarked the lesson of
this country in its treatment of hydrophobia is one of the most
important ever presented in connection with an infectious disease. There
are no Pasteur Institutes; there are no cases. Why? The simple muzzling
order has prevented the transmission of the disease from dog to dog, and
once exterminated in the dog, the possibility of the infection in man
had gone. In 1888 the crowning work of Pasteur’s life was the
establishment of an Institute to serve as a centre of study on
contagious disease, and a dispensary for the treatment of hydrophobia,
which is to-day the most important single centre of research in the
world. The closing years of his life were full of interest in the work
of his colleagues and assistants, and he had the great satisfaction of
participating, with his assistant Roux, in another great victory over
the dread scourge, diphtheria. Before his death in 1895 he had seen his
work prosper in a way never before granted to any great discoverer. To
no one man has it ever been given to accomplish work of such great
importance for the well-being of humanity. As Paul Bert expressed it in
the report to the French Government, Pasteur’s work constitutes three
great discoveries, which may be thus formulated. 1. Each fermentation is
produced by the development of a special microbe.
2. Each infectious disease is produced by the development within the
organism of a special microbe.
3. The microbe of an infectious disease culture, under certain
detrimental condition is attenuated in its pathogenic activity; from a
virus it has become a vaccine.
In an address delivered in Edinburgh by Sir James Simpson in 1853, in
which he extolled the recent advancement of physic, occur these
words:--“I do not believe, that, at the present moment, any individual
in the profession, who, in surgery or in midwifery, could point out some
means of curing--or some prophylactic means of averting by antecedent
treatment--the liability to these analogous or identical diseases--viz.,
surgical or puerperal fever--such a fortunate individual would, I say,
make, in relation to surgery and midwifery, a greater and more important
discovery than could possibly be attained by any other subject of
investigation. Nor does such a result seem hopelessly unattainable.”
Little did he think that the fulfilment of these words was in the
possession of a young Englishman who had just gone to Edinburgh as an
assistant to his colleague, Professor Syme. Lister’s recognition of the
importance of Pasteur’s studies led to the fulfilment within this
generation of the pious hope expressed by Simpson. In Institutions and
Hospitals surgical infection and puerperal fevers are things of the
past, and for this achievement if for nothing else, the names of Louis
Pasteur and Joseph Lister will go down to posterity among those of the
greatest benefactors of humanity.
III.
In his growth the man kept pace with the scientist--heart and head held
even sway in his life. To many whose estimate of French character is
gained from “yellow” literature this story will reveal the true side of
a great people, in whom filial piety, brotherly solicitude, generosity,
and self-sacrifice are combined with a rare devotion to country. Was
there ever a more charming picture than that of the family at Dôle!
Napoleon’s old sergeant, Joseph Pasteur, is almost as interesting a
character as his illustrious son; and we follow the joys and sorrows of
the home with unflagging attention. Rarely has a great man been able to
pay such a tribute to his father as that paid by Pasteur:--“For thirty
years I have been his constant care, I owe everything to him.”
This is a biography for young men of science, and for others who wish to
learn what science has done, and may do, for humanity. From it may be
gleaned three lessons.
The value of method, of technique, in the hands of a great master has
never been better illustrated. Just as Harvey, searching out Nature by
way of experiment, opened the way for a study of the functions of the
body in health, so did Pasteur, bringing to the problems of biology the
same great _organon_, shed a light upon processes the nature of which
had defied the analysis of the keenest minds. From Dumas’s letter to
Pasteur, quoted in Chapter VI., a paragraph may be given in
illustration:--“The art of observation and that of experiment are very
distinct. In the first case, the fact may either proceed from logical
reasons or be mere good fortune; it is sufficient to have some
penetration and the sense of truth in order to profit by it. But the art
of experimentation leads from the first to the last link of the chain,
without hesitation and without a blank, making successive use of Reason,
which suggests an alternative, and of Experience, which decides on it,
until, starting from a faint glimmer, the full blaze of light is
reached.” Pasteur had the good fortune to begin with chemistry, and with
the science of crystallography, which demanded extraordinary accuracy,
and developed that patient persistence so characteristic of all his
researches.
In the life of a young man the most essential thing for happiness is the
gift of friendship. And here is the second great lesson. As a Frenchman,
Pasteur had the devotion that marks the students of that nation to their
masters, living and dead. Not the least interesting parts of this work
are the glimpses we get of the great teachers with whom he came in
contact. What a model of a scientific man is shown in the character of
Biot, so keenly alive to the interests of his young friend, whose
brilliant career he followed with the devotion of a second father. One
of the most touching incidents recorded in the book relates to
Pasteur’s election to the Academy of Sciences:--“The next morning when
the gates of the Montparnasse cemetery were opened, a woman walked
towards Biot’s grave with her hands full of flowers. It was Mme. Pasteur
who was bringing them to him ... who had loved Pasteur with so deep an
affection.” Pasteur looked upon the cult of great men as a great
principle in national education. As he said to the students of the
University of Edinburgh:--“Worship great men”;[1] and this reverence for
the illustrious dead was a dominant element in his character, though the
doctrines of Positivism seemed never to have had any attraction for him.
A dark shadow in the scientific life is often thrown by a spirit of
jealousy, and the habit of suspicious, carping criticism. The hall-mark
of a small mind, this spirit should never be allowed to influence our
judgment of a man’s work, and to young men a splendid example is here
offered of a man devoted to his friends, just and generous to his
rivals, and patient under many trying contradictions and vexatious
oppositions.
And the last great lesson is humility before the unsolved problems of
the Universe. Any convictions that might be a comfort in the sufferings
of human life had his respectful sympathy. His own creed was beautifully
expressed in his eulogy upon _Littré_:--“He who proclaims the existence
of the Infinite, and none can avoid it--accumulates in that affirmation
more of the supernatural than is to be found in all the miracles of all
the religions; for the notion of the Infinite presents that double
character that it forces itself upon us and yet is incomprehensible.
When this notion seizes upon our understanding, we can but kneel.... I
see everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world;
through it, the supernatural is at the bottom of every heart. The idea
of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of
the Infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the
worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah,
or Jesus; and on the pavement of those temples, men will be seen
kneeling, prostrated, annihilated in the thought of the Infinite.” And
modern Pantheism has never had a greater disciple, whose life and work
set forth the devotion to an ideal--that service to humanity is service
to God:--“Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and
who obeys it: ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel
virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions;
they all reflect light from the Infinite.”
The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the
destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on
her balances. In her new mission to humanity she preaches a new gospel.
In the nineteenth century renaissance she has had great apostles,
Darwin, for example, whose gifts of heart and head were in equal
measure, but after re-reading for the third or fourth time the _Life of
Louis Pasteur_, I am of the opinion, expressed recently by the anonymous
writer of a beautiful tribute in the _Spectator_, “that he was the most
perfect man who has ever entered the Kingdom of Science.”
WILLIAM OSLER.
CONTENTS
Introduction by Sir William Osler, Bart., M.D., F.R.S., v.
CHAPTER I
1822--1843
Origin of the Pasteur Family, 1--Jean Joseph Pasteur, a Conscript in
1811; Sergeant-major in the 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3; a Knight
of the Legion of Honour, 4; his Marriage, 5; the Tannery at Dôle,
6--Birth of Louis Pasteur, his Childhood and Youth, 6. Studies in
Arbois College, 7. Departure for Paris, 11. Arrival in Paris, 11;
the Barbet Boarding School, Home Sickness, 11. Return to Jura,
Pasteur a Portrait Painter, 12; enters Besançon Royal College, 13;
a Bachelier ès Lettres, a Preparation Master, 14; his Readings, 15.
Friendship with Chappuis, 18; a Bachelier ès Sciences, 20; Pasteur
admitted to the Ecole Normale, 22; Sorbonne Lectures, Impression
produced by J. B. Dumas, 21.
CHAPTER II
1844--1849
First Crystallographic Researches, 26; Pasteur a Curator in Balard’s
Laboratory, works with Auguste Laurent, 32. Chemistry and
Physics Theses, 34. Pasteur reads a Paper at the Académie des
Sciences, 36. February days, 1848, 37. Molecular Dissymmetry,
38; J. J. Biot’s Emotion at Pasteur’s first Discovery, 41. Pasteur
Professor of Physics at Dijon, 43. Professor of Chemistry at the
Strasburg Faculty, his Friend Bertin, 45; M. Laurent, Rector of
the Strasburg Academy, 47; Pasteur’s Marriage, 51.
CHAPTER III
1850--1854
Disgrace of the Strasburg Rector, 54. Letter from Biot to Pasteur’s
Father, 57. Letter from J. B. Dumas, 60. Interview with Mitscherlich,
61. Pasteur in quest of Racemic Acid, in Germany, Austria
and Bohemia, 62. Pasteur a Knight of the Legion of Honour, 70.
Biot’s Congratulations, 70. Proposed Work, 72.
CHAPTER IV
1855--1859
Pasteur Dean of the new Lille Faculty, 75; his Teaching, 77; First
Studies on Fermentations, 79. First Candidature for the Academy
of Sciences, 81. Lactic Fermentation, 83. Pasteur Administrator
of the Ecole Normale, 84. Alcoholic Fermentation, 85. Death of
Pasteur’s eldest Daughter, 86.
CHAPTER V
1860--1864
So-called spontaneous Generation, 88. Polemics and Experiments, 92.
Renewed Candidature for the Académie des Sciences, 100. Lectures
on Crystallography, 102. Pasteur elected a Member of the Académie
des Sciences, 103. Conversation with Napoleon III, 104. Lecture
at the Sorbonne on so-called spontaneous Generation, 106. Pasteur
and the Students of the Ecole Normale, 109. Discussions raised
by the question of spontaneous Generation, 111. Studies on
Wine, 113.
CHAPTER VI
1865--1870
The Silkworm Disease; Pasteur sent to Alais, 115. Death of Jean
Joseph Pasteur, 118. Return to Paris, 121; Pasteur’s Article on
J. B. Dumas’ Edition of Lavoisier’s Works, 122. Death of his
Daughter Camille, 123. Candidature of Ch. Robin for the Académie
des Sciences, 124. Letters exchanged between Ste. Beuve and
Pasteur, 124. The Cholera, 126. Pasteur at Compiègne Palace,
127. Return to the Gard, 130; Pasteur’s Collaborators, 130. Death
of his Daughter Cécile, 131. Letter to Duruy, 131. Publication of
the _Studies on Wine_, 133. Pasteur’s Article on Claude Bernard’s
Work, 134. Pasteur’s Work in the South of France, 138. Letter
from Duruy, 139. Pasteur a Laureate of the Exhibition, 140;
solemn Distribution of Rewards, 141. Ste. Beuve at the Senate,
142. Disturbance at the Ecole Normale, 143. Pasteur’s Letter to
Napoleon III, 147. Lecture on the Manufacture of Vinegar at
Orleans, 148. Council of Scientists at the Tuileries, 154. Studies
on Silkworm Diseases (continued), 155. Heating of Wines, 157.
Paralytic Stroke, 160; Illness, 161; private Reading, 163. Enlargement
of the Laboratory, 164. Pasteur in the South, 166. Success
of his Method of opposing Silkworm Diseases, 168. Pasteur at
Villa Vicentina, Austria, 173. Interview with Liebig, 176.
CHAPTER VII
1870--1872
Pasteur in Strasburg, 177; the War, 179; Pasteur at Arbois, 180. The
Académie des Sciences during the Siege of Paris, 186. Pasteur
returns his Doctor’s Diploma to the Bonn Faculty of Medicine, 189.
Retreat of Bourbaki’s Army Corps, 192; Pasteur at Pontarlier,
192. Pasteur at Lyons, 194. “Why France found no superior Men
in the Hours of Peril,” 194. Proposed Studies, 198. Professorship
offered to Pasteur at Pisa, 200; his Refusal, 200. The Prussians
at Arbois, 201. Pasteur and his Pupil Raulin, 203. Pasteur at
Clermont Ferrand; stays with his Pupil M. Duclaux, 206. Studies
on Beer, 207. Visit to London Breweries, 210. Renewed Discussions
at the Académie des Sciences, 216.
CHAPTER VIII
1873--1877
Pasteur elected to the Académie de Médecine, 225. General Condition
of Medicine, 226. Surgery before Pasteur, 234. Influence of his
Work, 236. Letter from Lister, 238. Debates at the Académie de
Médecine, 240; Science and Religion, 244. National Testimonial,
245. Pasteur a Candidate for the Senate, 248. Speech at the Milan
Congress of Sericiculture, 251. Letter from Tyndall, 252. Discussion
with Dr. Bastian, 253.
CHAPTER IX
1877--1879
Charbon, or Splenic Fever, 257; Pasteur studies it, 259. Traditional
Medicine and Pastorian Doctrines, 263. Progress of Surgery, 266.
The word Microbe invented, 266; renewed Attacks against Pasteur,
267. Charbon given to Hens--experiment before the Académie de
Médecine, 268. Pasteur’s Note on the Germ Theory, 271. Campaign
of Researches on Charbon, 275. Critical Examination of a
posthumous Note by Claude Bernard, 281. Pasteur in the Hospitals,
289; Puerperal Fever, 289.
CHAPTER X
1880--1882
Chicken Cholera, 297. Attenuation of the Virus, 299. Suggested
Researches on the bubonic Plague, 301. The Share of Earthworms in the
Development of Charbon, 304; an Incident at the Académie de Médecine,
309. The Vaccine of Charbon, 311; public Experiment at Pouilly le Fort
on the Vaccination of Splenic Fever, 316. First Experiments on
Hydrophobia, 318. Death of Sainte-Claire Deville, 326; Pasteur’s Speech,
327. Pasteur at the London Medical Congress, 329; Virchow and
Anti-vivisection, 332. Yellow Fever, 338; Pasteur at Pauillac, 338.
CHAPTER XI
1882--1884
Pasteur elected a Member of the Académie Française, 341; his Opinions
on Positivism, 342; J. B. Dumas and Nisard, his Sponsors, 344;
Pasteur welcomed by Renan into the Académie Française, 346.
Homage from Melun, from Aubenas, 350; Pasteur at Nîmes and
at Montpellier, 353. Speech of J. B. Dumas, 354; Pasteur’s
Answer, 355. Pasteur at the Geneva Conference of Hygiene, 358.
Studies on the Rouget of Pigs--Journey to Bollène, 360. Typhoid
Fever and the Champions of old Medical Methods, 364. Pasteur
and the Turin Veterinary School, 368. Marks of Gratitude from
Agriculturists, 372; Pasteur at Aurillac, 373. Another Testimonial
of national Gratitude, 374; a commemorative Plate on the House
where Pasteur was born, 376; his Speech at the Ceremony, 377.
Cholera, 378; French Mission to Alexandria, 379. Death of
Thuillier, 380. J. B. Dumas’ last Letter to Pasteur, 383. Third
Centenary of the University of Edinburgh--the French Delegation,
384; Ovation to Pasteur, 386; Pasteur’s Speech, 386.
CHAPTER XII
1884--1885
The Hydrophobia Problem, 390; preventive Inoculations on Dogs, 395.
Experiments on Hydrophobia verified by a Commission, 396. The Copenhagen
Medical Congress, Pasteur in Denmark, 399. Installation at Villeneuve
l’Etang of a Branch Establishment of Pasteur’s Laboratory, 406. Former
Remedies against Hydrophobia, 407. Kennels at Villeneuve l’Etang, 410.
CHAPTER XIII
1885--1888
First Antirabic Inoculation on Man, 414; the little Alsatian Boy, Joseph
Meister, 415. Pasteur at Arbois; his Speech for the Welcome of
Joseph Bertrand, succeeding J. B. Dumas at the Académie Française,
418. Perraud the Sculptor, 421. Inoculation of the Shepherd
Jupille, 422; the Discovery of the Preventive Treatment of Rabies
announced to the Académie des Sciences and the Académie de
Médecine, 422. Death of Louise Pelletier, 426; Pasteur’s Solicitude
for inoculated Patients, 427. Foundation of the Pasteur
Institute, 428; the Russians from Smolensk, 429; English Commission
for the Verification of the Inoculations against Hydrophobia,
430. Fête at the Trocadéro, 431. Temporary Buildings in the Rue
Vauquelin for the Treatment of Hydrophobia, 432. Ill-health of
Pasteur, 433; his Stay at Bordighera, 434. Foundation of the
_Annals of the Pasteur Institute_, 434. Discussions on Rabies at the
Académie de Médecine, 434. Earthquake at Bordighera, 436.
Pasteur returns to France, 437. Report of the English Commission
on the Treatment of Rabies, 437. Pasteur elected Permanent
Secretary of the Académie des Sciences, 439; his Resignation, 439.
Inauguration of the Pasteur Institute, 440.
CHAPTER XIV
1889--1895
Influence of Pasteur’s Labours, 445; his Jubilee, 447; Speech, 450.
Pasteur’s Name given to a District in Canada and to a Village in
Algeria, 451. Diphtheria, M. Roux’ Studies in Serotherapy, 453;
Pasteur at Lille; Lecture by M. Roux on Serotherapy, 456; repeated
at the Buda-Pesth Congress, 456. Subscription for the Organization
of the Antidiphtheritic Treatment, 456. Pasteur’s Disciples,
457. Pasteur’s Illness, 458; Visit from Alexandre Dumas, 460;
Visit from former Ecole Normale Students, 460. Pasteur refuses a
German Decoration, 461. Conversations with Chappuis, 462. Departure
for Villeneuve l’Etang, 462; last Weeks, 463. Project for
a Pasteur Hospital, 464. Death of Pasteur, 464.
Index 465
CHAPTER I
1822--1843
The origin of even the humblest families can be traced back by
persevering search through the ancient parochial registers. Thus the
name of Pasteur is to be found written at the beginning of the
seventeenth century in the old registers of the Priory of Mouthe, in the
province of Franche Comté. The Pasteurs were tillers of the soil, and
originally formed a sort of tribe in the small village of Reculfoz,
dependent on the Priory, but they gradually dispersed over the country.
The registers of Mièges, near Nozeroy, contain an entry of the marriage
of Denis Pasteur and Jeanne David, dated February 9, 1682. This Denis,
after whom the line of Pasteur’s ancestors follows in an unbroken
record, lived in the village of Plénisette, where his eldest son Claude
was born in 1683. Denis afterward sojourned for some time in the village
of Douay, and ultimately forsaking the valley of Mièges came to Lemuy,
where he worked as a miller for Claude François Count of Udressier, a
noble descendant of a secretary of the Emperor Charles V.
Lemuy is surrounded by wide plains affording pasture for herds of oxen.
In the distance the pine trees of the forest of Joux stand close
together, like the ranks of an immense army, their dark masses deepening
the azure of the horizon. It was in those widespreading open lands that
Pasteur’s ancestors lived. Near the church, overshadowed by old beech
and lime trees, a tombstone is to be found overgrown with grass. Some
members of the family lie under that slab naïvely inscribed: “Here lie,
each by the side of the others....”
In 1716, in the mill at Lemuy, ruins of which still exist, the marriage
contract of Claude Pasteur was drawn up and signed in the presence of
Henry Girod, Royal notary of Salins. The father and mother declared
themselves unable to write, but we have the signatures of the affianced
couple, Claude Pasteur and Jeanne Belle, affixed to the record of the
quaint betrothal oath of the time. This Claude was in his turn a miller
at Lemuy, though at his death in 1746 he is only mentioned as a labourer
in the parish register. He had eight children, the youngest, whose name
was Claude Etienne, and who was born in the village of Supt, a few
kilometres from Lemuy, being Louis Pasteur’s great-grandfather.
What ambition, what love of adventures induced him to leave the Jura
plains to come down to Salins? A desire for independence in the literal
sense of the word. According to the custom then still in force in
Franche Comté (in contradiction to the name of that province, as
Voltaire truly remarks), there were yet some serfs, that is to say,
people legally incapable of disposing of their goods or of their
persons. They were part of the possessions of a nobleman or of the lands
of a convent or monastery. Denis Pasteur and his son had been serfs of
the Counts of Udressier. Claude Etienne desired to be freed and
succeeded in achieving this at the age of thirty, as is proved by a
deed, dated March 20, 1763, drawn up in the presence of the Royal
notary, Claude Jarry. Messire Philippe-Marie-François, Count of
Udressier, Lord of Ecleux, Cramans, Lemuy and other places, consented
“by special grace” to free Claude Etienne Pasteur, a tanner, of Salins,
his serf. The deed stipulated that Claude Etienne and his unborn
posterity should henceforth be enfranchised from the stain of mortmain.
Four gold pieces of twenty-four livres were paid then and there in the
mansion of the Count of Udressier by the said Pasteur.
The following year, he married Françoise Lambert. After setting up
together a small tannery in the Faubourg Champtave they enjoyed the
fairy tale ideal of happiness: they had ten children. The third, Jean
Henri, through whom this genealogy continues, was born in 1769. On June
25, 1779, letters giving Claude Etienne Pasteur the freedom of the city
of Salins were delivered to him by the Town Council.
Jean Henri Pasteur, in his twentieth year, went to Besançon to seek his
fortune as a tanner, but was not successful. His wife, Gabrielle
Jourdan, died at the age of twenty, and he married again, but himself
died at twenty-seven, leaving one little son by his first marriage, Jean
Joseph Pasteur, born March 16, 1791. This child, who was to be Louis
Pasteur’s father, was taken charge of by his grandmother at Salins;
later on, his father’s sisters, one married to a wood merchant named
Chamecin, and the other to Philibert Bourgeois, Chamecin’s partner,
adopted the orphan. He was carefully brought up, but without much
learning; it was considered sufficient in those days to be able to read
the Emperor’s bulletins; the rest did not seem to matter very much.
Besides, Jean Joseph had to earn his living at the tanner’s trade, which
had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him.
Jean Joseph was drawn as a conscript in 1811, and went through the
Peninsular War in 1812 and 1813. He belonged to the 3rd Regiment of the
Line, whose mission was to pursue in the northern Spanish provinces the
guerillas of the famous Espoz y Mina. A legend grew round this wonderful
man; he was said to make his own gunpowder in the bleak mountain passes;
his innumerable partisans were supplied with arms and ammunition by the
English cruisers. He dragged women and old men after him, and little
children acted as his scouts. Once or twice however, in May, 1812, the
terrible Mina was very nearly caught; but in July he was again as
powerful as ever. The French had to organize mobile columns to again
occupy the coast and establish communications with France. There was
some serious fighting. Mina and his followers were incessantly harassing
the small French contingent of the 3rd and 4th Regiments, which were
almost alone. “How many traits of bravery,” writes Tissot, “will remain
unknown which on a larger field would have been rewarded and honoured!”
The records of the 3rd Regiment allow us to follow step by step this
valiant little troop, and among the rank and file, doing his duty
steadily through terrible hardships, that private soldier (a corporal in
July, 1812, and a sergeant in October, 1813) whose name was Pasteur. The
battalion returned to France at the end of January, 1814. It formed a
part of that Leval division which, numbering barely 8,000 men, had to
fight at Bar-sur-Aube against an army of 40,000 enemies. The 3rd
Regiment was called “brave amongst the brave.” “If Napoleon had had none
but such soldiers,” writes Thiers in his _History of the Consulate and
the Empire_, “the result of that great struggle would certainly have
been different.” The Emperor, touched by so much courage, distributed
crosses among the men. Pasteur was made a sergeant-major on March 10,
1814, and received, two days later, the cross of the Legion of Honour.
At the battle of Arcis-sur-Aube (March 21) the Leval division had again
to stand against 50,000 men--Russians, Austrians, Bavarians, and
Wurtembergers. Pasteur’s battalion, the 1st of the 3rd Regiment, came
back to St. Dizier and went on by forced marches to Fontainebleau, where
Napoleon had concentrated all his forces, arriving on April 4. The
battalion was now reduced to eight officers and 276 men. The next day,
at twelve o’clock, the Leval division and the remnant of the 7th corps
were gathered in the yard of the Cheval Blanc Inn and were reviewed by
Napoleon. The attitude of these soldiers, who had heroically fought in
Spain and in France, and who were still offering their passionate
devotion, gave him a few moments’ illusion. Their enthusiasm and
acclamations contrasted with the coldness, the reserve, the almost
insubordinations of Generals like Ney, Lefebvre, Oudinot and MacDonald,
who had just declared that to march on Paris would be folly.
Marmont’s defection hastened events; the Emperor, seeing himself
forsaken, abdicated. Jean Joseph Pasteur had not, like Captain Coignet,
the sad privilege of witnessing the Emperor’s farewell, his battalion
having been sent into the department of Eure on April 9. On April 23 the
white cockade replaced the tricolour.
On May 12, 1814, a royal order gave to the 3rd line Regiment the name of
“Régiment Dauphin”; it was reorganized at Douai, where Sergeant-major
Pasteur received his discharge from the service. He returned to Besançon
with grief and anger in his heart: for him, as for many others risen
from the people, Napoleon was a demi-god. Lists of victories, principles
of equality, new ideas scattered throughout the nations, had followed
each other in dazzling visions. It was a cruel trial for half-pay
officers, old sergeants, grenadiers, peasant soldiers, to come down from
this imperial epic to every-day monotony, police supervision, and the
anxieties of poverty; their wounded patriotism was embittered by
feelings of personal humiliation. Jean Joseph resigned himself to his
fate and went back to his former trade. The return from Elba was a ray
of joy and hope in his obscure life, only to be followed by renewed
darkness.
He was living in the Faubourg Champtave a solitary life in accordance
with his tastes and character when this solitude was interrupted for an
instant. The Mayor of Salins, a knight of Malta and an ardent royalist,
ordered all the late soldiers of Napoleon, the “_brigands de la Loire_”
as they were now called, to bring their sabres to the Mairie. Joseph
Pasteur reluctantly obeyed; but when he heard that these glorious
weapons were destined to police service, and would be used by police
agents, further submission seemed to him intolerable. He recognized his
own sergeant-major’s sabre, which had just been given to an agent, and,
springing upon the man, wrested the sword from him. Great excitement
ensued--a mixture of indignation, irritation and repressed enthusiasm;
the numerous Bonapartists in the town began to gather together. An
Austrian regiment was at that time still garrisoned in the town. The
Mayor appealed to the colonel, asking him to repress this disobedience;
but the Austrian officer refused to interfere, declaring that he both
understood and approved the military feelings which actuated the
ex-sergeant-major. Pasteur was allowed to keep his sword, and returned
home accompanied by sympathizers who were perhaps more noisily
enthusiastic than he could have wished.
Having peacefully resumed his work he made the acquaintance of a
neighbouring family of gardeners, whose garden faced his tannery on the
other bank of the “Furieuse,” a river rarely deserving its name. From
the steps leading to the water Jean Joseph Pasteur often used to watch a
young girl working in the garden at early dawn. She soon perceived that
the “old soldier”--very young still; he was but twenty-five years
old--was interested in her every movement. Her name was Jeanne
Etiennette Roqui.
Her parents, natives of Marnoz, a village about four kilometres from
Salins, belonged to one of the most ancient plebeian families of the
country. The Salins archives mention a Roqui working in vineyards as far
back as 1555, and in 1659 there were Roqui lampmakers and plumbers. The
members of this family were in general so much attached to each other
that “to love like the Roqui” had become proverbial; their wills and
testaments mentioned legacies or gifts from brother to brother, uncle to
nephew. In 1816 the father and mother of Jeanne Etiennette were living
very quietly in the old Salins faubourg. Their daughter was modest,
intelligent and kind; Jean Joseph Pasteur asked for her hand in
marriage. They seemed made for each other; the difference in their
natures only strengthened their mutual affection: he was reserved,
almost secretive, with a slow and careful mind apparently absorbed in
his own inner life; she was very active, full of imagination, and ready
enthusiasm.
The young couple migrated to Dôle and settled down in the Rue des
Tanneurs. Their first child only lived a few months; in 1818 a little
daughter came. Four years later in a small room of their humble home, on
Friday, December 27, 1822, at 2 a.m., Louis Pasteur was born.
Two daughters were born later--one at Dôle and the other at Marnoz, in
the house of the Roqui. Jean Joseph Pasteur’s mother-in-law, now a
widow, considering that her great age no longer allowed her to
administer her fortune, had divided all she possessed between her son
Jean Claude Roqui, a landed proprietor at Marnoz, and Jeanne Etiennette
her daughter.
Thus called away from Dôle by family interests, Jean Joseph Pasteur came
to live at Marnoz. The place was not very favourable to his trade,
though a neighbouring brook rendered the establishment of a tannery
possible. The house, though many times altered, still bears the name of
“Maison Pasteur.” On one of the inner doors the veteran, who had a taste
for painting, had depicted a soldier in an old uniform now become a
peasant and tilling the soil. This figure stands against a background of
grey sky and distant hills; leaning on his spade the man suspends his
labours and dreams of past glories. It is easy to criticize the faults
in the painting, but the sentimental allegory is full of feeling.
Louis Pasteur’s earliest recollections dated from that time; he could
remember running joyously along the Aiglepierre road. The Pasteur family
did not remain long at Marnoz. A tannery was to let in the neighbourhood
by the town of Arbois, near the bridge which crosses the Cuisance, and
only a few kilometres from the source of the river. The house, behind
its modest frontage, presented the advantage of a yard where pits had
been dug for the preparation of the skins. Joseph Pasteur took this
little house and settled there with his wife and children.
Louis Pasteur was sent at first to the “Ecole Primaire” attached to the
college of Arbois. Mutual teaching was then the fashion; scholars were
divided into groups: one child taught the rudiments of reading to
others, who then spelt aloud in a sort of sing-song. The master, M.
Renaud, went from group to group designating the monitors. Louis soon
desired to possess this title, perhaps all the more so because he was
the smallest scholar. But those who would decorate the early years of
Louis Pasteur with wonderful legends would be disappointed: when a
little later he attended the daily classes at the Arbois college he
belonged merely to the category of good average pupils. He took several
prizes without much difficulty; he rather liked buying new lesson books,
on the first page of which he proudly wrote his name. His father, who
wished to instruct himself as well as to help his son, helped him with
his home preparation. During holidays, the boy enjoyed his liberty. Some
of his schoolfellows--Vercel, Charrière, Guillemin, Coulon--called for
him to come out with them and he followed them with pleasure. He
delighted in fishing parties on the Cuisance, and much admired the net
throwing of his comrade Jules Vercel. But he avoided bird trapping; the
sight of a wounded lark was painful to him.
The doors of Louis Pasteur’s home were not usually open except to his
schoolboy friends, who, when they did not fetch him away, used to come
and play in the tannery yard with remnants of bark, stray bits of iron,
etc. Joseph Pasteur, though not considered a proud man, did not easily
make friends. His language and manners were not those of a retired
sergeant; he never spoke of his campaigns and never entered a café. On
Sundays, wearing a military-looking frock coat, spotlessly clean and
adorned with the showy ribbon of the Legion of Honour (worn very large
at that time), he invariably walked out towards the road from Arbois to
Besançon. This road passes between vine-planted hills. On the left, on a
wooded height above the wide plain towards Dôle, the ruins of the Vadans
tower invest the whole landscape with a lingering glamour of heroic
times. In these solitary meditations, he dwelt more anxiously on the
future than on present difficulties, the latter being of little account
in this hard-working family. What would become of this son of his,
conscientious and studious, but, though already thirteen years old, with
no apparent preference for anything but drawing? The epithet of _artist_
given to Louis Pasteur by his Arboisian friends only half pleased the
paternal vanity. And yet it is impossible not to be struck by the
realism of his first original effort, a very bold pastel drawing. This
pastel represents Louis’ mother, one morning that she was going to
market, with a white cap and a blue and green tartan shawl. Her son
insisted on painting her just as she was. The portrait is full of
sincerity and not unlike the work of a conscientious pre-Raphaelite. The
powerful face is illumined by a pair of clear straightforward eyes.
Though they did not entertain mere acquaintances, the husband and wife
were happy to receive those who seemed to them worthy of affection or
esteem by reason of some superiority of the mind or of the heart. In
this way they formed a friendship with an old army doctor then
practising in the Arbois hospital, Dr. Dumont, a man who studied for the
sake of learning and who did a great deal of good while avoiding
popularity.
Another familiar friend was a philosopher named Bousson de Mairet. An
indefatigable reader, he never went out without a book or pamphlet in
his pocket. He spent his life in compiling from isolated facts annals in
which the characteristics of the Francs-Comtois, and especially the
Arboisians, were reproduced in detail, with labour worthy of a
Benedictine monk. He often came to spend a quiet evening with the
Pasteur family, who used to question him and to listen to his
interesting records of that strange Arboisian race, difficult to
understand, presenting as it does a mixture of heroic courage and that
slightly ironical good humour which Parisians and Southerners mistake
for naïveness. Arboisians never distrust themselves, but are sceptical
where others are concerned. They are proud of their local history, and
even of their rodomontades.
For instance, on August 4, 1830, they sent an address to the Parisians
to express their indignation against the “Ordonnances”[2] and to assure
them that all the available population of Arbois was ready to fly to the
assistance of Paris. In April, 1834, a lawyer’s clerk, passing one
evening through Arbois by the coach, announced to a few _gardes
nationaux_ who were standing about that the Republic was proclaimed at
Lyons. Arbois immediately rose in arms; the insurgents armed themselves
with guns from the Hôtel de Ville. Louis Pasteur watched the arrival
from Besançon of 200 grenadiers, four squadrons of light cavalry, and a
small battery of artillery sent to reduce the rebels. The _sous-préfet_
of Poligny having asked the rioters who were their leaders, they
answered with one voice, “We are all leaders.” A few days later the
great, the good news was published in all the newspapers: “Arbois,
Lyons, and Paris are pacified.” The Arboisians called their neighbours
“the Braggarts of Salins,” probably with the ingenious intention of
turning such a well-deserved accusation from themselves.
Louis Pasteur, whose mind already had a serious bent, preferred to these
recent anecdotes such historical records as that of the siege of Arbois
under Henry IV, when the Arboisians held out for three whole days
against a besieging army of 25,000 men. His childish imagination, after
being worked upon by these stories of local patriotism, eagerly seized
upon ideals of a higher patriotism, and fed upon the glory of the French
people as represented by the conquests of the Empire.
He watched his parents, day by day working under dire necessity and
ennobling their weary task by considering their children’s education
almost as essential as their daily bread; and, as in all things the
father and mother took an interest in noble motives and principles,
their material life was lightened and illumined by their moral life.
One more friend, the headmaster of Arbois college, M. Romanet, exerted a
decisive influence on Louis Pasteur’s career. This master, who was
constantly trying to elevate the mind and heart of his pupils, inspired
Louis with great admiration as well as with respect and gratitude.
Romanet considered that whilst instruction doubled a man’s value,
education, in the highest sense of the word, increased it tenfold. He
was the first to discover in Louis Pasteur the hidden spark that had not
yet revealed itself by any brilliant success in the hardworking
schoolboy. Louis’ mind worked so carefully that he was considered slow;
he never affirmed anything of which he was not absolutely sure; but with
all his strength and caution he also had vivid imaginative faculties.
Romanet, during their strolls round the college playground, took
pleasure in awakening with an educator’s interest the leading qualities
of this young nature--circumspection and enthusiasm. The boy, who had
been sitting over his desk with all-absorbing attention, now listened
with sparkling eyes to the kind teacher talking to him of his future and
opening to him the prospect of the great _Ecole Normale_.[3]
An officer of the Paris municipal guard, Captain Barbier, who always
came to Arbois when on leave, offered to look after Louis Pasteur if he
were sent to Paris. But Joseph Pasteur--in spite of all--hesitated to
send his son, not yet sixteen years old, a hundred leagues away from
home. Would it not be wiser to let him go to Besançon college and come
back to Arbois college as professor? What could be more desirable than
such a position? Surely Paris and the Ecole Normale were quite
unnecessary! The question of money also had to be considered.
“That need not trouble you,” said Captain Barbier. “In the Latin
Quarter, Impasse des Feuillantines, there is a preparatory school, of
which the headmaster, M. Barbet, is a Franc-Comtois. He will do for your
son what he has done for many boys from his own country--that is, take
him at reduced school fees.”
Joseph Pasteur at last allowed himself to be persuaded, and Louis’
departure was fixed for the end of October, 1838. He was not going
alone: Jules Vercel, his dear school friend, was also going to Paris to
work for his “baccalauréat.”[4] This youth had a most happy temperament:
unambitious, satisfied with each day’s work as it came, he took pride
and pleasure in the success of others, and especially in that of
“Louis,” as he then and always fraternally called his friend. The two
boys’ friendship went some way to alleviate the natural anxieties felt
by both families. The slowness and difficulty of travelling in those
days gave to farewells a sort of solemn sadness; they were repeated
twenty times whilst the horses were being harnessed and the luggage
hoisted on to the coach in the large courtyard of the “Hôtel de la
Poste.” On that bleak October morning, amidst a shower of rain and
sleet, the two lads had to sit under the tarpaulin behind the driver;
there were no seats left inside or under the hood. In spite of Vercel’s
habit of seeing the right side of things and his joy in thinking that in
forty-eight hours he, the country boy, would see the wonders of
Paris--in spite of Pasteur’s brave resolve to make the most of his
unexpected opportunities of study, of the now possible entrance into the
“Ecole Normale”--both looked with heavy hearts at the familiar scene
they were leaving behind them--their homes, the square tower of Arbois
church, the heights of the Ermitage in the grey distance.
Every native of Jura, though he affects to feel nothing of the kind,
has, at the bottom of his heart, a strong feeling of attachment for the
corner of the world where he has spent his childhood; as soon as he
forsakes his native soil his thoughts return to it with a painful and
persistent charm. The two boys did not take much interest in the towns
where the coach stopped to change horses, Dôle, Dijon, Auxerre, Joigny,
Sens, Fontainebleau, etc.
When Louis Pasteur reached Paris he did not feel like Balzac’s student
hero, confidently defying the great city. In spite of the strong will
already visible in his pensive features, his grief was too deep to be
reasoned away. No one at first suspected this; he was a reserved youth,
with none of the desire to talk which leads weak natures to ease their
sorrows by pouring them out; but, when all was quiet in the Impasse des
Feuillantines and his sleeping comrades could not break in upon his
regrets, he would lie awake for hours thinking of his home and repeating
the mournful line--
How endless unto watchful anguish
Night doth seem.
The students of the Barbet school attended the classes of the Lycée St.
Louis. In spite of his willingness and his passionate love of study,
Louis was overcome with despair at being away from home. Never was
homesickness more acute. “If I could only get a whiff of the tannery
yard,” he would say to Jules Vercel, “I feel I should be cured.” M.
Barbet endeavoured in vain to amuse and turn the thoughts of this lad of
fifteen so absorbed in his sorrow. At last he thought it his duty to
warn the parents of this state of mind, which threatened to become
morbid.
One morning in November Louis Pasteur was told with an air of mystery
that he was wanted. “They are waiting for you close by,” said the
messenger, indicating a small café at the corner of the street. Louis
entered and found a man sitting at a small table at the back of the
shop, his face in his hands. It was his father. “I have come to fetch
you,” he said simply. No explanations were necessary; the father and son
understood each other’s longings.
What took place in Pasteur’s mind when he found himself again at Arbois?
After the first few days of relief and joy, did he feel, when he went
back to Arbois college, any regret, not to say remorse, at not having
overcome his homesickness? Was he discouraged by the prospect of a
restricted career in that small town? Little is known of that period
when his will had been mastered by his feelings; but from the indecision
of his daily life we may hazard a guess at the disquieted state of his
mind at this time. At the beginning of that year (1839) he returned for
a time to his early tastes; he went back to his coloured chalks, left
aside for the last eighteen months, ever since one holiday time when he
had drawn Captain Barbier, proudly wearing his uniform, and with the
high colour of excellent health.
He soon got beyond the powers of his drawing master, M. Pointurier, a
good man who does not seem to have seen any scientific possibilities in
the art of drawing.
Louis’ pastel drawings soon formed a portrait gallery of friends. An old
cooper of seventy, Father Gaidot, born at Dôle, but now living at
Arbois, had his turn. Gaidot appears in a festive costume, a blue coat
and a yellow waistcoat, very picturesque with his wrinkled forehead and
close-shaven cheeks. Then there are all the members of a family named
Roch. The father and the son are drawn carefully, portraits such as are
often seen in country villages; but the two daughters Lydia and Sophia
are more delicately pencilled; they live again in the youthful grace of
their twenty summers. Then we have a notary, the wide collar of a frock
coat framing his rubicund face; a young woman in white; an old nun of
eighty-two in a fluted cap, wearing a white hood and an ivory cross; a
little boy of ten in a velvet suit, a melancholy-looking child, not
destined to grow to manhood. Pasteur obligingly drew any one who wished
to have a portrait. Among all these pastels, two are really remarkable.
The first represents, in his official garb, a M. Blondeau, registrar of
mortgages, whose gentle and refined features are perfectly delineated.
The other is the portrait of a mayor of Arbois, M. Pareau; he wears his
silver-embroidered uniform, with a white stock. The cross of the Legion
of Honour and the tricolour scarf are discreetly indicated. The whole
interest is centred in the smiling face, with hair brushed up _à la_
Louis Philippe, and blue eyes harmonizing with a blue ground.
The compliments of this local dignitary and Romanet’s renewed counsels
at the end of the year--when Pasteur took more school prizes than he
could carry--reawakened within him the ambition for the Ecole Normale.
There was no “philosophy”[5] class in the college of Arbois, and a
return to Paris seemed formidable. Pasteur resolved to go to the college
at Besançon, where he could go on with his studies, pass his
baccalauréat and then prepare for the examinations of the Ecole Normale.
Besançon is only forty kilometres from Arbois, and Joseph Pasteur was in
the habit of going there several times a year to sell some of his
prepared skins. This was by far the wisest solution of the problem.
On his arrival at the Royal College of Franche Comté Pasteur found
himself under a philosophy master, M. Daunas, who had been a student at
the Ecole Normale and was a graduate of the University; he was young,
full of eloquence, proud of his pupils, of awakening their faculties and
directing their minds. The science master, M. Darlay, did not inspire
the same enthusiasm; he was an elderly man and regretted the good old
times when pupils were less inquisitive. Pasteur’s questions often
embarrassed him. Louis’ reputation as a painter satisfied him no longer,
though the portrait he drew of one of his comrades was exhibited. “All
this does not lead to the Ecole Normale,” he wrote to his parents in
January, 1840. “I prefer a first place at college to 10,000 praises in
the course of conversation.... We shall meet on Sunday, dear father, for
I believe there is a fair on Monday. If we see M. Daunas, we will speak
to him of the Ecole Normale. Dear sisters, let me tell you again, work
hard, love each other. When one is accustomed to work it is impossible
to do without it; besides, everything in this world depends on that.
Armed with science, one can rise above all one’s fellows.... But I hope
all this good advice to you is superfluous, and I am sure you spend many
moments every day learning your grammar. Love each other as I love you,
while awaiting the happy day when I shall be received at the Ecole
Normale.” Thus was his whole life filled with tenderness as well as with
work. He took the degree of “bachelier ès lettres” on August 29, 1840.
The three examiners, doctors “ès lettres,” put down his answers as “good
in Greek on Plutarch and in Latin on Virgil, good also in rhetoric,
medicine, history and geography, good in philosophy, very good in
elementary science, good in French composition.”
At the end of the summer holidays the headmaster of the Royal College of
Besançon, M. Répécaud, sent for him and offered him the post of
preparation master. Certain administrative changes and an increased
number of pupils were the reason of this offer, which proved the
master’s esteem for Pasteur’s moral qualities, his first degree not
having been obtained with any particular brilliancy.
The youthful master was to be remunerated from the month of January,
1841. A student in the class of special mathematics, he was his
comrades’ mentor during preparation time. They obeyed him without
difficulty; simple and yet serious-minded, his sense of individual
dignity made authority easy to him. Ever thoughtful of his distant home,
he strengthened the influence of the father and mother in the education
of his sisters, who had not so great a love of industry as he had. On
November 1, 1840--he was not eighteen yet--pleased to hear that they
were making some progress, he wrote the following, which, though
slightly pedantic, reveals the warmth of his feelings--“My dear parents,
my sisters, when I received at the same time the two letters that you
sent me I thought that something extraordinary had happened, but such
was not the case. The second letter you wrote me gave me much pleasure;
it tells me that--perhaps for the first time--my sisters have _willed_.
To _will_ is a great thing, dear sisters, for Action and Work usually
follow Will, and almost always Work is accompanied by success. These
three things, Will, Work, Success, fill human existence. Will opens the
door to success both brilliant and happy; Work passes these doors, and
at the end of the journey Success comes to crown one’s efforts. And so,
my dear sisters, if your resolution is firm, your task, be it what it
may, is already begun; you have but to walk forward, it will achieve
itself. If perchance you should falter during the journey, a hand would
be there to support you. If that should be wanting, God, who alone could
take that hand from you, would Himself accomplish its work.... May my
words be felt and understood by you, dearest sisters. I impress them on
your hearts. May they be your guide. Farewell. Your brother.”
The letters he wrote, the books he loved, the friends he chose, bear
witness to the character of Pasteur in those days of early youth. As he
now felt, after the discouraging trial he had gone through in Paris,
that the development of the will should hold the first place in
education, he applied all his efforts to the bringing out of this
leading force. He was already grave and exceptionally matured; he saw in
the perfecting of self the great law of man, and nothing that could
assist in that improvement seemed to him without importance. Books read
in early life appeared to him to have an almost decisive influence. In
his eyes a good book was a good action constantly renewed, a bad one an
incessant and irreparable fault.
There lived at that time in Franche Comté an elderly writer, whom Sainte
Beuve considered as the ideal of the upright man and of the man of
letters. His name was Joseph Droz, and his moral doctrine was that
vanity is the cause of many wrecked and aimless lives, that moderation
is a form of wisdom and an element of happiness, and that most men
sadden and trouble their lives by causeless worry and agitation. His own
life was an example of his precepts of kindliness and patience, and was
filled to the utmost with all the good that a pure literary conscience
can bestow; he was all benevolence and cordiality. It seemed natural
that he should publish one after another numberless editions of his
_Essay on the Art of being Happy_.
“I have still,” wrote Pasteur to his parents, “that little volume of M.
Droz which he was kind enough to lend me. I have never read anything
wiser, more moral or more virtuous. I have also another of his works;
nothing was ever better written. At the end of the year I shall bring
you back these books. One feels in reading them an irresistible charm
which penetrates the soul and fills it with the most exalted and
generous feelings. There is not a word of exaggeration in what I am
writing. Indeed I take his books with me to the services on Sundays to
read them, and I believe that in so acting, in spite of all that
thoughtless bigotry might say, I am conforming to the very highest
religious ideas.”
Those ideas Droz might have summarized simply by Christ’s words, “Love
ye one another.” But this was a time of circumlocution. Young people
demanded of books, of discourses, of poetry, a sonorous echo of their
own secret feelings. In the writings of the Besançon moralist, Pasteur
saw a religion such as he himself dreamed of, a religion free from all
controversy and all intolerance, a religion of peace, love and devotion.
A little later, Silvio Pellico’s _Miei Prigioni_ developed in him an
emotion which answered to his instinctive sympathy for the sorrows of
others. He wrote advising his sisters to read “that interesting work,
where you breathe with every page a religious perfume which exalts and
ennobles the soul.” In reading _Miei Prigioni_ his sisters would light
upon a passage on fraternal love and all the deep feelings which it
represents.
“For my sisters,” he wrote in another letter, “I bought, a few days ago,
a very pretty book; I mean by very pretty something very interesting. It
is a little volume which took the Montyon[6] prize a few years ago, and
it is called, _Picciola_. How could it have deserved the Montyon
prize,” he added, with an edifying respect for the decisions of the
Academy, “if the reading of it were not of great value?”
“You know,” he announced to his parents when his appointment was
definitely settled, “that a supplementary master has board and lodging
and 300 francs a year!” This sum appeared to him enormous. He added, on
January 20: “At the end of this month money will already be owing to me;
and yet I assure you I am not really worth it.”
Pleased with this situation, though such a modest one, full of eagerness
to work, he wrote in the same letter: “I find it an excellent thing to
have a room of my own; I have more time to myself, and I am not
interrupted by those endless little things that the boys have to do, and
which take up a good deal of time. Indeed I am already noticing a change
in my work; difficulties are getting smoothed away because I have more
time to give to overcoming them; in fact I am beginning to hope that by
working as I do and shall continue to do I may be received with a good
rank at the Ecole. But do not think that I am overworking myself at all;
I take every recreation necessary to my health.”
Besides his ordinary work, he had been entrusted with the duty of giving
some help in mathematics and physical science to the youths who were
reading for their baccalauréat.
As if reproaching himself with being the only member of the family who
enjoyed the opportunity of learning, he offered to pay for the schooling
of his youngest sister Josephine in a girls’ college at
Lons-le-Saulnier. He wrote, “I could easily do it by giving private
lessons. I have already refused to give some to several boys at 20 or 25
fr. a month. I refused because I have not too much time to give to my
work.” But he was quite disposed to waive this motive in deference to
superior judgment. His parents promised to think over this fraternal
wish, without however accepting his generous suggestion, offering even
to supplement his small salary of 24 francs a month by a little
allowance, in case he wished for a few private lessons to prepare
himself more thoroughly for the Ecole Normale. They quite recognized his
right to advise; and--as he thought that his sister should prepare
herself beforehand for the class she was to enter--he wrote to his
mother with filial authority, “Josephine should work a good deal until
the end of the year, and I would recommend to Mother that she should not
continually be sent out on errands; she must have time to work.”
Michelet, in his recollections, tells of his hours of intimacy with a
college friend named Poinsat, and thus expresses himself: “It was an
immense, an insatiable longing for confidences, for mutual revelations.”
Pasteur felt something of the sort for Charles Chappuis, a _philosophie_
student at Besançon college. He was the son of a notary at St. Vit, one
of those old-fashioned provincial notaries, who, by the dignity of their
lives, their spirit of wisdom, the perpetual preoccupation of their
duty, inspired their children with a sense of responsibility. His son
had even surpassed his father’s hopes. Of this generous, gentle-faced
youth there exists a lithograph signed “Louis Pasteur.” A book entitled
_Les Graveurs du XIXᵐᵉ Siècle_ mentions this portrait, giving Pasteur an
unexpected form of celebrity. Before the _Graveurs_, the _Guide de
l’Amateur des Œuvres d’Art_ had already spoken of a pastel drawing
discovered in the United States near Boston. It represents another
schoolfellow of Pasteur’s, who, far from his native land, carefully
preserved the portrait of Chappuis as well as his own. Everything that
friendship can give in strength and disinterestedness, everything that,
according to Montaigne--who knew more about it even that
Michelet--“makes souls merge into each other so that the seam which
originally joined them disappears,” was experienced by Pasteur
and Chappuis. Filial piety, brotherly solicitude, friendly
confidences--Pasteur knew the sweetness of all these early human joys;
the whole of his life was permeated with them. The books he loved added
to this flow of generous emotions. Chappuis watched and admired this
original nature, which, with a rigid mind made for scientific research
and always seeking the proof of everything, yet read Lamartine’s
_Meditations_ with enthusiasm. Differing in this from many science
students, who are indifferent to literature--just as some literature
students affect to disdain science--Pasteur kept for literature a place
apart. He looked upon it as a guide for general ideas. Sometimes he
would praise to excess some writer or orator merely because he had found
in one page or in one sentence the expression of an exalted sentiment.
It was with Chappuis that he exchanged his thoughts, and together they
mapped out a life in common. When Chappuis went to Paris, the better to
prepare himself for the Ecole Normale, Pasteur felt an ardent desire to
go with him. Chappuis wrote to him with that open spontaneity which is
such a charm in youth, “I shall feel as if I had all my Franche Comté
with me when you are here.” Pasteur’s father feared a crisis like that
of 1838, and, after hesitating, refused his consent to an immediate
departure. “Next year,” he said.
In October, 1841, though still combining the functions of master and
student, Pasteur resumed his attendance of the classes for special
mathematics. But he was constantly thinking of Paris, “Paris, where
study is deeper.” One of Chappuis’ comrades, Bertin, whom Pasteur had
met during the holidays, had just entered the Ecole Normale at the head
of the list after attending in Paris a class of special mathematics.
“If I do not pass this year,” Pasteur wrote to his father on November 7,
“I think I should do well to go to Paris for a year. But there is time
to think of that and of the means of doing so without spending too much,
if the occasion should arise. I see now what great advantage there is in
giving two years to mathematics; everything becomes clearer and easier.
Of all our class students who tried this year for the Ecole
Polytechnique and the Ecole Normale, not a single one has passed, not
even the best of them, a student who had already done one year’s
mathematics at Lyons. The master we have now is very good. I feel sure I
shall do a great deal this year.”
He was twice second in his class; once he was first in physics. “That
gives me hope for later on,” he said. He wrote about another
mathematical competition, “If I get a good place it will be well
deserved, for this work has given me a pretty bad headache; I always do
get one, though, whenever we have a competition.” Then, fearful of
alarming his parents, he hastily adds, “But those headaches never last
long, and it is only an hour and a half since we left off.”
Anxious to stifle by hard work his growing regrets at not having
followed Chappuis to Paris, Pasteur imagined that he might prepare
himself for the Ecole Polytechnique as well as for the Ecole Normale.
One of his masters, M. Bouché, had led him to hope that he might be
successful. “I shall try this year for both schools,” Pasteur wrote to
his friend (January 22, 1842). “I do not know whether I am right in
deciding to do so. One thing tells me that I am wrong: it is the idea
that we might thus be parted; and when I think of that, I firmly believe
that I cannot possibly be admitted this year into the Ecole
Polytechnique. I feel quite superstitious about it. I have but one
pleasure, your letters and those from my family. Oh! do write often,
very long letters!”
Chappuis, concerned at this sudden resolve, answered in terms that did
credit to his heart and youthful wisdom. “Consult your tastes, think of
the present, of the future. You must think of yourself; it is your own
fate that you have to direct. There is more glitter on the one side; on
the other the gentle quiet life of a professor, a trifle monotonous
perhaps, but full of charm for him who knows how to enjoy it. You too
appreciated it formerly, and I learned to do so when we thought we
should both go the same way. Anyhow, go where you think you will be
happy, and think of me sometimes. I hope your father will not blame me.
I believe he looks upon me as your evil genius. These last holidays I
wanted you to come to me, then I advised you to go to Paris; each time
your father created some obstacle! But do what he wishes, and never
forget that it is perhaps because he loves you too much that he never
does what you ask him.”
Pasteur soon thought no more of his Polytechnic fancy, and gave himself
up altogether to his preparation for the Ecole Normale. But the study of
mathematics seemed to him dry and exhausting. He wrote in April, “One
ends by having nothing but figures, formulas and geometrical forms
before one’s eyes.... On Thursday I went out and I read a charming
story, which, much to my astonishment, made me weep. I had not done such
a thing for years. Such is life.”
On August 13, 1842, he went up for his examination (_baccalauréat ès
sciences_) before the Dijon Faculty. He passed less brilliantly even
than he had done for the _baccalauréat ès lettres_. In chemistry he was
only put down as “_médiocre_.” On August 26 he was declared admissible
to the examinations for the Ecole Normale. But he was only fifteenth out
of twenty-two candidates. He considered this too low a place, and
resolved to try again the following year. In October, 1842, he started
for Paris with Chappuis. On the eve of his departure Louis drew a last
pastel, a portrait of his father. It is a powerful face, with
observation and meditation apparent in the eyes, strength and caution in
the mouth and chin.
Pasteur arrived at the Barbet Boarding School, no longer a forlorn lad,
but a tall student capable of teaching and engaged for that purpose. He
only paid one-third of the pupil’s fees, and in return had to give to
the younger pupils some instruction in mathematics every morning from
six to seven. His room was not in the school, but in the same Impasse
des Feuillantines; two pupils shared it with him.
“Do not be anxious about my health and work,” he wrote to his friends a
few days after his arrival. “I need hardly get up till 5.45; you see it
is not so very early.” He went on outlining the programme of his time.
“I shall spend my Thursdays in a neighbouring library with Chappuis, who
has four hours to himself on that day. On Sundays we shall walk and work
a little together; we hope to do some Philosophy on Sundays, perhaps too
on Thursdays; I shall also read some literary works. Surely you must see
that I am not homesick this time.”
Besides attending the classes of the Lycée St. Louis, he also went to
the Sorbonne[7] to hear the Professor, who, after taking Gay-Lussac’s
place in 1832, had for the last ten years delighted his audience by an
eloquence and talent which opened boundless horizons before every mind.
In a letter dated December 9, 1842, Pasteur wrote, “I attend at the
Sorbonne the lectures of M. Dumas, a celebrated chemist. You cannot
imagine what a crowd of people come to these lectures. The room is
immense, and always quite full. We have to be there half an hour before
the time to get a good place, as you would in a theatre; there is also a
great deal of applause; there are always six or seven hundred people.”
Under this rostrum, Pasteur became, in his own words, a “disciple” full
of the enthusiasm inspired by Dumas.
Happy in this industrious life, he wrote in response to an expression of
his parents’ provincial uneasiness as to the temptations of the Latin
Quarter. “When one wishes to keep straight, one can do so in this place
as well as in any other; it is those who have no strength of will that
succumb.”
He made himself so useful at Barbet’s that he was soon kept free of all
expense. But the expenses of his Parisian life are set out in a small
list made about that time. His father wished him to dine at the Palais
Royal on Thursdays and Sundays with Chappuis, and the price of each of
those dinners came to a little less than two francs. He had, still with
the inseparable Chappuis, gone four times to the theatre and once to the
opera. He had also hired a stove for his stone-floored room; for eight
francs he had bought some firewood, and also a two-franc cloth for his
table, which he said had holes in it, and was not convenient to write
on.
At the end of the school year, 1843, he took at the Lycée St. Louis two
“Accessits,”[8] and one first prize in physics, and at the “_Concours
Général_”[9] a sixth “Accessit” in physics. He was admitted fourth on
the list to the Ecole Normale. He then wrote from Arbois to M. Barbet,
telling him that on his half-holidays he would give some lessons at the
school of the Impasse des Feuillantines as a small token of his
gratitude for past kindness. “My dear Pasteur,” answered M. Barbet, “I
accept with pleasure the offer you have made me to give to my school
some of the leisure that you will have during your stay at the Ecole
Normale. It will indeed be a means of frequent and intimate intercourse
between us, in which we shall both find much advantage.”
Pasteur was in such a hurry to enter the Ecole Normale that he arrived
in Paris some days before the other students. He solicited permission to
come in as another might have begged permission to come out. He was
readily allowed to sleep in the empty dormitory. His first visit was to
M. Barbet. The Thursday half-holiday, usually from one to seven, was
now from one to eight. “There is nothing more simple,” he said, “than to
come regularly at six o’clock on Thursdays and give the schoolboys a
physical science class.”
“I am very pleased,” wrote his father, “that you are giving lessons at
M. Barbet’s. He has been so kind to us that I was anxious that you
should show him some gratitude; be therefore always most obliging
towards him. You should do so, not only for your own sake, but for
others; it will encourage him to show the same kindness to other
studious young men, whose future might depend upon it.”
Generosity, self-sacrifice, kindliness even to unknown strangers, cost
not the least effort to the father and son, but seemed to them the most
natural thing possible. Just as their little house at Arbois was
transformed by a ray of the ideal, the broken down walls of the old
Ecole Normale--then a sort of annexe of the Louis Le Grand college, and
looking, said Jules Simon, like an old hospital or barracks--reflected
within them the ideas and sentiments which inspire useful lives. Joseph
Pasteur wrote (Nov. 18, 1843): “The details you give me on the way your
work is directed please me very much; everything seems organized so as
to produce distinguished scholars. Honour be to those who founded this
School.” Only one thing troubled him, he mentioned it in every letter.
“You know how we worry about your health; you do work so immoderately.
Are you not injuring your eyesight by so much night work? Your ambition
ought to be satisfied now that you have reached your present position!”
He also wrote to Chappuis: “Do tell Louis not to work so much; it is not
good to strain one’s brain. That is not the way to succeed but to
compromise one’s health.” And with some little irony as to the
cogitations of Chappuis the philosopher: “Believe me, you are but poor
philosophers if you do not know that one can be happy even as a poor
professor in Arbois College.”
Another letter, December, 1843, to his son this time: “Tell Chappuis
that I have bottled some 1834 bought on purpose to drink the health of
the Ecole Normale during the next holidays. There is more wit in those
100 litres than in all the books on philosophy in the world; but, as to
mathematical formulæ, there are none, I believe. Mind you tell him that
we shall drink the first bottle with him. Remain two good friends.”
Pasteur’s letters during this first period at the Normale have been
lost, but his biography continues without a break, thanks to the letters
of his father. “Tell us always about your studies, about your doings at
Barbet’s. Do you still attend M. Pouillet’s lectures, or do you find
that one science hampers the other? I should think not; on the contrary,
one should be a help to the other.” This observation should be
interesting to a student of heredity; the idea casually mentioned by the
father was to receive a vivid demonstration in the life-work of the
son.
CHAPTER II
1844--1849
Pasteur often spent his leisure moments in the library of the Ecole
Normale. Those who knew him at that time remember him as grave, quiet,
almost shy. But under these reflective characteristics lay the latent
fire of enthusiasm. The lives of illustrious men, of great scientists,
of great patriots inspired him with a generous ardour. To this ardour he
added a great eagerness of mind; whether studying a book, even a
commonplace one--for he was so conscientious that he did not even know
what it was to “skim” through a book--or coming away from one of J. B.
Dumas’ lectures, or writing his student’s notes in his small fine
handwriting, he was always thirsting to learn more, to devote himself to
great researches. There seemed to him no better way of spending a
holiday than to be shut up all Sunday afternoon at the Sorbonne
laboratory or coaxing a private lesson from the celebrated Barruel,
Dumas’ curator.
Chappuis--anxious to obey the injunctions of Pasteur’s father, who in
every letter repeated “Do not let him work too much!” desirous also of
enjoying a few hours’ outing with his friend--used to wait
philosophically, sitting on a laboratory stool, until the experiments
were over. Conquered by this patient attitude and reproachful silence
Pasteur would take off his apron, saying half angrily, half gratefully,
“Well, let us go for a walk.” And, when they were out in the street, the
same serious subjects of conversation would inevitably crop up--classes,
lectures, readings, etc.
One day, in the course of those long talks in the gardens of the
Luxembourg, Pasteur carried Chappuis with him very far away from
philosophy. He began to talk of tartaric acid and of paratartaric acid.
The former had been known since 1770, thanks to the Swedish chemist
Scheele, who discovered it in the thick crusty formations within wine
barrels called “tartar”; but the latter was disconcerting to chemists.
In 1820 an Alsatian manufacturer, Kestner, had obtained by chance,
whilst preparing tartaric acid in his factory at Thann, a very singular
acid which he was unable to reproduce in spite of various attempts. He
had kept some of it in stock. Gay-Lussac, having visited the Thann
factory in 1826, studied this mysterious acid; he proposed to call it
_racemic_ acid. Berzelius studied it in his turn, and preferred to call
it _paratartaric_. Either name may be adopted; it is exactly the same
thing: men of letters or in society are equally frightened by the word
paratartaric or racemic. Chappuis certainly was when Pasteur repeated to
him word for word a paragraph by a Berlin chemist and crystallographer
named Mitscherlich. Pasteur had pondered over this paragraph until he
knew it by heart; often indeed, absorbed in reading the reports for 1844
of the Académie des Sciences, in the dark room which was then the
library of the Ecole Normale, he had wondered if it were possible to get
over a difficulty which seemed insurmountable to scientists such as
Mitscherlich and Biot. This paragraph related to two saline
combinations--tartrate and paratartrate of soda or ammonia--and may be
epitomized as follows: in these two substances of similar crystalline
form, the nature and number of the atoms, their arrangement and
distances are the same. Yet dissolved tartrate rotates the plane of
polarized light and paratartrate remains inactive.
Pasteur had the gift of making scientific problems interesting in a few
words, even to minds least inclined to that particular line of thought.
He rendered his listener’s attention very easy; no question surprised
him and he never smiled at ignorance. Though Chappuis, absorbed in the
series of lectures on philosophy given at that time by Jules Simon, was
deep in a train of thought very far away from Mitscherlich’s
perplexities, he gradually became interested in this optical inactivity
of paratartrate, which so visibly affected his friend. Pasteur liked to
look back into the history of things, giving in this way a veritable
life to his explanations. Thus, à propos of the optical phenomenon which
puzzled Mitscherlich, Pasteur was speaking to his friend of crystallized
carbonate of lime, called Iceland spar, which presents a double
refraction--that is to say: if you look at an object through this
crystal, you perceive two reproductions of that object. In describing
this, Pasteur was not giving to Chappuis a vague notion of some piece
of crystal in a glass case, but was absolutely evoking a vision of the
beautiful crystal, perfectly pure and transparent, brought from Iceland
in 1669 to a Danish physicist. Pasteur almost seemed to experience the
surprise and emotion of this scientist, when, observing a ray of light
through this crystal, he saw it suddenly duplicated. Pasteur also spoke
enthusiastically of an officer of Engineers under the First Empire,
Etienne Louis Malus. Malus was studying double refraction, and holding
in his hands a piece of spar crystal, when, from his room in the Rue de
l’Enfer, it occurred to him to observe through the crystal the windows
of the Luxembourg Palace, then lighted up by the setting sun. It was
sufficient to make the crystal rotate slowly round the visual ray (as on
an axis) to perceive the periodic variations in the intensity of the
light reflected by the windows. No one had yet suspected that light,
after being reflected under certain conditions, would acquire properties
quite different from those it had before its reflection. Malus gave the
name of polarized light to light thus modified (by reflection in this
particular case). Scientists admitted in those days, in the theory of
emission, the existence of luminous molecules, and they imagined that
these molecules “suffered the same effects simultaneously when they had
been reflected on glass at a certain angle.... They were all turned in
the same direction.” Pouillet, speaking of this discovery of Malus in
the class on physics that Pasteur attended, explained that the
consequent persuasion was “that those molecules had rotatory axes and
poles, around which their movements could be accomplished under certain
influences.”
Pasteur spoke feverishly of his regrets that Malus should have died at
thirty-seven in the midst of his researches; of Biot, and of Arago, who
became illustrious in the path opened by Malus. He explained to Chappuis
that, by means of a polarizing apparatus, it could be seen that certain
quartz crystals deflected to the right the plane of polarized light,
whilst others caused it to turn to the left. Chappuis also learned that
some natural organic material, such as solutions of sugar or of tartaric
acid, when placed in such an apparatus, turned to the right the plane of
polarization, whilst others, like essence of turpentine or quinine,
deflected it to the left; whence the expression “rotatory polarization.”
These would seem dry researches, belonging altogether to the domain of
science. And yet, thanks to the saccharimeter, which is a polarizing
apparatus, a manufacturer can ascertain the quantity of pure sugar
contained in the brown sugar of commerce, and a physiologist can follow
the progress of diabetes.
Chappuis, who knew what powers of investigation his friend could bring
to bear on the problem enunciated by Mitscherlich, thought with regret
that the prospect of such examinations as that for the _licence_ and for
the _agrégation_ did not allow Pasteur to concentrate all his forces on
such a special scientific point. But Pasteur was resolved to come back
definitely to this subject as soon as he should have become “_docteur ès
sciences_.”
When writing to his father he did not dwell upon tartrate and
paratartrate; but his ambition was palpable. He was ever eager to do
double work, to go up for his examination at the very earliest. “Before
being a captain,” answered the old sergeant-major, “you must become a
lieutenant.”
These letters give one the impression of living amongst those lives,
perpetually reacting upon each other. The thoughts of the whole family
were centred upon the great School, where that son, that brother, was
working, in whom the hopes of each were placed. If one of his bulky
letters with the large post mark was too long in coming, his father
wrote to reproach him gently: “Your sisters were counting the days.
Eighteen days, they said! Louis has never kept us waiting so long! Can
he be ill? It is a great joy to me,” adds the father, “to note your
attachment to each other. May it always remain so.”
The mother had no time to write much; she was burdened with all the
cares of the household and with keeping the books of the business. But
she watched for the postman with a tender anxiety increased by her vivid
imagination. Her thoughts were ever with the son whom she loved, not
with a selfish love, but for himself, sharing his happiness in that he
was working for a useful career.
So, between that corner in the Jura and the Ecole Normale, there was a
continual exchange of thoughts; the smallest incidents of daily life
were related. The father, knowing that he should inform the son of the
fluctuations of the family budget, spoke of his more or less successful
sales of leathers at the Besançon fair. The son was ever hunting in the
progress of industry anything that could tend to lighten the father’s
heavy handicraft. But though the father declared himself ready to
examine Vauquelin’s new tanning process, which obviated the necessity of
keeping the skins so long in the pits, he asked himself with scrupulous
anxiety whether leathers prepared in that way would last as long as the
others. Could he safely guarantee them to the shoemakers, who were
unanimous in praising the goods of the little tannery-yard, but alas
equally unanimous in forgetting to reward the disinterested tanner by
prompt payment? He supplied his family with the necessaries of life:
what more did he want? When he had news of his _Normalien_ he was
thoroughly happy. He associated himself with his son’s doings, sharing
his enthusiasm over Dumas’ lectures, and taking an interest in
Pouillet’s classes: Pouillet was a Franc-Comtois, and had been a student
at the Ecole Normale; he was now Professor of Physics at the Sorbonne
and a member of the _Institut_.[10] When Balard, a lecturer at the
Ecole, was nominated to the Académie des Sciences, Louis told his father
of it with the delight of an admiring pupil.
Like J. B. Dumas, Balard had been an apothecary’s pupil. When he spoke
of their humble beginnings, Dumas was wont to say rather
pompously--“Balard and I were initiated into our scientific life under
the same conditions.” When, at the age of forty-two, he was made a
member of the Institute, Balard could not contain his joy; he was quite
a Southerner in his language and gestures, and the adjective _exubérant_
might have been invented for him. But this same Southerner, ever on the
move as he was, belonged to a special race: he always kept his word. “I
was glad to note your pleasure at this nomination,” wrote Joseph Pasteur
to his son; “it proves that you are grateful to your masters.” About
that same time the headmaster of Arbois College, M. Romanet, used to
read out to the older boys the letters, always full of gratitude, which
he received from Louis Pasteur. These letters reflected life in Paris,
such as Pasteur understood it--a life of hard work and exalted ambition.
M. Romanet, in one of his replies, asked him to become librarian _in
partibus_ for the college and to choose and procure books on science and
literature. The headmaster also begged of the young man some lectures
for the _rhétorique_ class during the holidays. “It would seem to the
boys like an echo of the Sorbonne lectures! And you would speak to us of
our great scientific men,” added M. Romanet, “amongst whom we shall one
day number him who once was one of our best pupils and will ever remain
one of our best friends.”
A corresponding member of Arbois College, and retained as vacation
lecturer, Pasteur now undertook a yet more special task. He had often
heard his father deplore his own lack of instruction, and knew well the
elder man’s desire for knowledge. By a touching exchange of parts, the
child to whom his father had taught his alphabet now became his father’s
teacher; but with what respect and what delicacy did this filial master
express himself! “It is in order that you may be able to help Josephine
that I am sending you this work to do.” He took most seriously his task
of tutor by correspondence; the papers he sent were not always easy. His
father wrote (Jan. 2, 1845)--“I have spent two days over a problem which
I afterwards found quite easy; it is no trifle to learn a thing and
teach it directly afterwards.” And a month later: “Josephine does not
care to rack her brains, she says; however I promise you that you will
be pleased with her progress by the next holidays.”
The father would often sit up late at night over rules of grammar and
mathematical problems, preparing answers to send to his boy in Paris.
Some Arboisians, quite forgotten now, imagined that they would add
lustre to the local history. General Baron Delort, a peer of France,[11]
aide de camp to Louis Philippe, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour and
the first personage in Arbois--where he beguiled his old age by
translating Horace--used to go across the Cuisance bridge without so
much as glancing at the tannery where the Pasteur family lived. Whilst
the general in his thoughts bequeathed to the town of Arbois his books,
his papers, his decorations, even his uniform, he was far from
foreseeing that the little dwelling by the bridge would one day become
the cynosure of all eyes.
Months went by and happy items of news succeeded one another. The
_Normalien_ was chiefly interested in the transformations of matter, and
was practising in order to become capable of assisting in experiments;
difficulties only stimulated him. At the chemistry class that he
attended, the process of obtaining phosphorus was merely explained, on
account of the length of time necessary to obtain this elementary
substance; Pasteur, with his patience and desire for proven knowledge,
was not satisfied. He therefore bought some bones, burnt them, reduced
them to a very fine ash, treated this ash with sulphuric acid, and
carefully brought the process to its close. What a triumph it seemed to
him when he had in his possession sixty grammes of phosphorus, extracted
from bones, which he could put into a phial labelled “phosphorus.” This
was his first scientific joy.
Whilst his comrades ironically (but with some discernment) called him a
“laboratory pillar,” some of them, more intent upon their examinations,
were getting ahead of him.--M. Darboux, the present “doyen” of the
Faculty[12] of Science, finds in the Sorbonne registers that Pasteur was
placed 7th at the _licence_ examination; two other students having
obtained equal marks with him, the jury (Balard, Dumas and Delafosse),
mentioned his name after theirs.
Those who care for archives would find in the _Journal Général de
l’Instruction Publique_ of September 17, 1846, a report of the
_agrégation_[13] competition (physical science). Out of fourteen
candidates only four passed and Pasteur was the third. His lessons on
physics and chemistry caused the jury to say, “He will make an excellent
professor.”
Many _Normaliens_ of that time fancied themselves called to a destiny
infinitely superior to his. Some of them, in later times, used to
complacently allude to this momentary superiority when speaking to their
pupils. Of all Pasteur’s acquaintances Chappuis was the only one who
divined the future. “You will see what Pasteur will be,” he used to say,
with an assurance generally attributed to friendly partiality.
Chappuis--Pasteur’s confidant--was well aware of his friend’s powers of
concentration.
Balard also realised this; he had the happy idea of taking the young
_agrégé_ into his laboratory, and intervened vehemently when the
Minister of Public Instruction desired--a few months later--that Pasteur
should teach physics in the Tournon Lycée. It would be rank folly,
Balard declared, to send 500 kilometres away from Paris a youth who only
asked for the modest title of curator, and had no ambition but to work
from morning till night, preparing for his doctor’s degree. There would
be time to send him away later on. It was impossible to resist this
torrent of words founded on solid sense. Balard prevailed.
Pasteur was profoundly grateful to him for preserving him from exile to
the little town in Ardèche; and, as he added to his Franc-Comtois
patience and reflective mind a childlike heart and deep enthusiasm, he
was delighted to remain with a master like Balard, who had become
celebrated, at the age of twenty-four, as the discoverer of bromin.
At the end of 1846, a newcomer entered Balard’s laboratory, a strange
delicate-looking man, whose ardent eyes were at the same time proud and
yet anxious. This man, a scientist and a poet, was a professor of the
Bordeaux Faculty, named Auguste Laurent. Perhaps he had had some
friction with his Bordeaux chiefs, possibly he merely wished for a
change; at all events, he now desired to live in Paris. Laurent was
already known in the scientific world, and had recently been made a
correspondent of the Académie des Sciences. He had foreseen and
confirmed the theory of substitutions, formulated by Dumas as early as
1834 before the Académie. Dumas had expressed himself thus: “Chlorine
possesses the singular power of seizing upon the hydrogen in certain
substances, and of taking its place atom by atom.”
This theory of substitutions was--according to a simple and vivid
comparison of Pasteur’s--a way of looking upon chemical bodies as upon
“molecular edifices, in which one element could be replaced by another
without disturbing the structure of the edifice; as if one were to
replace, one by one, every stone of a monument by a new stone.” Original
researches, new and bold ideas, appealed to Pasteur. But his cautious
mind prevented his boldness from leading him into errors, surprises or
hasty conclusions. “That is possible,” he would say, “but we must look
more deeply into the subject.”
When asked by Laurent to assist him with some experiments upon certain
theories, Pasteur was delighted at this suggested collaboration, and
wrote to his friend Chappuis: “Even if the work should lead to no
results worth publishing, it will be most useful to me to do practical
work for several months with such an experienced chemist.”
It was partly due to Laurent, that Pasteur entered more deeply into the
train of thought which was to lead him to grapple with Mitscherlich’s
problem. “One day” (this is a manuscript note of Pasteur’s) “one day it
happened that M. Laurent--studying, if I mistake not, some tungstate of
soda, perfectly crystallized and prepared from the directions of another
chemist, whose results he was verifying--showed me through the
microscope that this salt, apparently very pure, was evidently a mixture
of three distinct kinds of crystals, easily recognizable with a little
experience of crystalline forms. The lessons of our modest and excellent
professor of mineralogy, M. Delafosse, had long since made me love
crystallography; so, in order to acquire the habit of using the
goniometer, I began to carefully study the formations of a very fine
series of combinations, all very easily crystallized, tartaric acid and
the tartrates.” He appreciated any favourable influence on his work; we
find in the same note: “Another motive urged me to prefer the study of
those particular forms. M. de la Provostaye had just published an almost
complete work concerning them; this allowed me to compare as I went
along my own observations with those, always so precise, of that clever
scientist.”
Pasteur and Laurent’s work in common was interrupted. Laurent was
appointed as Dumas’ assistant at the Sorbonne. Pasteur did not dwell
upon his own disappointment, but rejoiced to see honour bestowed upon a
man whom he thought worthy of the first rank. Some judges have thought
that Laurent, in his introductory lesson, was too eager to expound his
own ideas; but is not every believer an apostle? When a mind is full of
ideas, it naturally overflows. It is probable that Pasteur in Laurent’s
place would have kept his part as an assistant more in the background.
He did not give vent to the slightest criticism, but wrote to Chappuis.
“Laurent’s lectures are as bold as his writings, and his lessons are
making a great sensation amongst chemists.” Whether one of criticism or
of approbation, this sensation was a living element of success. In order
to answer some insinuations concerning Laurent’s ambition and constant
thirst for change, Pasteur proclaimed in his thesis on chemistry how
much he had been “enlightened by the kindly advice of a man so
distinguished, both by his talent and by his character.”
This essay was entitled “_Researches into the saturation capacity of
arsenious acid. A study of the arsenites of potash, soda and ammonia._”
This, to Pasteur’s mind, was but schoolboy work. He had not yet, he
said, enough practice and experience in laboratory work. “In physics,”
he wrote to Chappuis, “I shall only present a programme of some
researches that I mean to undertake next year, and that I merely
indicate in my essay.”
This essay on physics was a “_Study of phenomena relative to the
rotatory polarization of liquids_.” In it he rendered full homage to
Biot, pointing out the importance of a branch of science too much
neglected by chemists; he added that it was most useful, in order to
throw light upon certain difficult chemical problems, to obtain the
assistance of crystallography and physics. “Such assistance is
especially needed in the present state of science.”
These two essays, dedicated to his father and mother, were read on
August 23, 1847. He only obtained one white ball and two red ones for
each. “We cannot judge of your essays,” wrote his father, in the name of
the whole family, “but our satisfaction is no less great. As to a
doctor’s degree, I was far from hoping as much; all _my_ ambition was
satisfied with the _agrégation_.” Such was not the case with his son.
“Onwards” was his motto, not from a desire for a diploma, but from an
insatiable thirst for knowledge.
After spending a few days with his family and friends, he wanted to go
to Germany with Chappuis to study German from morning till night. The
prospect of such industrious holidays enchanted him. But he had
forgotten a student’s debt. “I cannot carry out my project,” he sadly
wrote, on September 3, 1847; “I am more than ruined by the cost of
printing my thesis.”
On his return to Paris he shut himself up in the laboratory. “I am
extremely happy. I shall soon publish a paper on crystallography.” His
father writes (December 25, 1847): “We received your letter yesterday;
it is absolutely satisfactory, but it could not be otherwise coming from
you; you have long, indeed ever, been all satisfaction to me.” And in
response to his son’s intentions of accomplishing various tasks, fully
understanding that nothing will stop him: “You are doing right to make
for your goal; it was only out of excessive affection that I have often
written in another sense. I only feared that you might succumb to your
work; so many noble youths have sacrificed their health to the love of
science. Knowing you as I do, this was my only anxiety.”
After being reproved for excessive work, Louis was reprimanded for too
much affection (January 1, 1848). “The presents you sent have just
arrived; I shall leave it to your sisters to write their thanks. For my
part, I should prefer a thousand times that this money should still be
in your purse, and thence to a good restaurant, spent in some good meals
that you might have enjoyed with your friends. There are not many
parents, my dearest boy, who have to write such things to their son; my
satisfaction in you is indeed deeper than I can express.” At the end of
this same letter, the mother adds in her turn: “My darling boy, I wish
you a happy new year. Take great care of your health.... Think what a
worry it is to me that I cannot be with you to look after you. Sometimes
I try to console myself for your absence by thinking how fortunate I am
in having a child able to raise himself to such a position as yours
is--such a happy position, as it seems to be from your last letter but
one.” And in a strange sentence, where it would seem that a presentiment
of her approaching death made worldly things appear at their true
value: “Whatever happens to you, do not grieve; nothing in life is more
than a chimera. Farewell, my son.”
On March 20, 1848, Pasteur read to the Académie des Sciences a portion
of his treatise on “_Researches on Dimorphism_.” There are some
substances which crystallize in two different ways. Sulphur, for
instance, gives quite dissimilar crystals according to whether it is
melted in a crucible or dissolved in sulphide of carbon. Those
substances are called dimorphous. Pasteur, kindly aided by the learned
M. Delafosse (with his usual gratefulness he mentions this in the very
first pages) had made out a list--as complete as possible--of all
dimorphous substances. When M. Romanet, of Arbois College, received this
paper he was quite overwhelmed. “It is much too stiff for you,” he said
with an infectious modesty to Vercel, Charrière, and Coulon, Pasteur’s
former comrades. Perhaps the head master desired to palliate his own
incompetence in the eyes of coming generations, for on the title page of
the copy of Pasteur’s booklet still to be found in the Arbois
library, he wrote this remark, which he signed with his initial
R.:--“_Dimorphisme_; this word is not even to be found in the
_Dictionnaire de l’Académie_”!! The approbation of several members of
the Académie des Sciences compensated for the somewhat summary judgment
of M. Romanet, whose good wishes continued to follow the rapid course of
his old pupil.
After this very special study, dated at the beginning of 1848, one might
imagine the graduate-curator closing his ears to all outside rumours and
little concerned with political agitation, but that would be doing him
an injustice. Those who witnessed the Revolution of 1848 remember how
during the early days France was exalted with the purest patriotism.
Pasteur had visions of a generous and fraternal Republic; the words
_drapeau_ and _patrie_ moved him to the bottom of his soul.
Lamartine[14] as a politician inspired him with an enthusiastic
confidence; he delighted in the sight of a poet leader of men. Many
others shared the same illusions. France, as Louis Veuillot has it, made
the mistake of choosing her band-master as colonel of the regiment.
Enrolled with his fellow students, Pasteur wrote thus to his parents: “I
am writing from the Orleans Railway, where as a _garde national_[15] I
am stationed. I am glad that I was in Paris during the February days[16]
and that I am here still; I should be sorry to leave Paris just now. It
is a great and a sublime doctrine which is now being unfolded before our
eyes ... and if it were necessary I should heartily fight for the holy
cause of the Republic.” “What a transformation of our whole being!” has
written one who was then a candidate to the Ecole Normale, already noted
by his masters for his good sense, Francisque Sarcey. “How those magical
words of liberty and fraternity, this renewal of the Republic, born in
the sunshine of our twentieth year, filled our hearts with unknown and
absolutely delicious sensations! With what a gallant joy we embraced the
sweet and superb image of a people of free men and brethren! The whole
nation was moved as we were; like us, it had drunk of the intoxicating
cup. The honey of eloquence flowed unceasingly from the lips of a great
poet, and France believed, in childlike faith, that his word was
efficacious to destroy abuses, cure evils and soothe sorrows.”
One day when Pasteur was crossing the Place du Panthéon, he saw a
gathering crowd around a wooden erection, decorated with the words:
_Autel de la Patrie_. A neighbour told him that pecuniary offerings
might be laid upon this altar. Pasteur goes back to the Ecole Normale,
empties a drawer of all his savings, and returns to deposit it in
thankful hands.
“You say,” wrote his father on April 28, 1848, “that you have offered to
France all your savings, amounting to 150 francs. You have probably kept
a receipt of the office where this payment was made, with mention of the
date and place?” And considering that this action should be made known,
he advises him to publish it in the journal _Le National_ or _La
Réforme_ in the following terms, “Gift to the _Patrie_: 150 francs, by
the son of an old soldier of the Empire, Louis Pasteur of the Ecole
Normale.” He wrote in the same letter, “You should raise a subscription
in your school in favour of the poor Polish exiles who have done so much
for us; it would be a good deed.”
After those days of national exaltation, Pasteur returned to his
crystals. He studied tartrates under the influence of certain ideas that
he himself liked to expound. Objects considered merely from the point of
view of form, may be divided into two great categories. First, those
objects which, placed before a mirror, give an image which can be
superposed to them: these have a symmetrical plan; secondly, those which
have an image which cannot be superposed to them: they are
dissymmetrical. A chair, for instance, is symmetrical, or a straight
flight of steps. But a spiral staircase is not symmetrical, its own
image cannot be laid over it. If it turns to the right, its image turns
to the left. In the same way the right hand cannot be superposed to the
left hand, a righthand glove does not fit a left hand, and a right hand
seen in a mirror gives the image of a left hand.
Pasteur noticed that the crystals of tartaric acid and the tartrates had
little faces, which had escaped even the profound observation of
Mitscherlich and La Provostaye. These faces, which only existed on one
half of the edges or similar angles, constituted what is called a
hemihedral form. When the crystal was placed before a glass the image
that appeared could not be superposed to the crystal; the comparison of
the two hands was applicable to it. Pasteur thought that this aspect of
the crystal might be an index of what existed within the molecules,
dissymmetry of form corresponding with molecular dissymmetry.
Mitscherlich had not perceived that his tartrate presented these little
faces, this dissymmetry, whilst his paratartrate was without them, was
in fact not hemihedral. Therefore, reasoned Pasteur, the deviation to
the right of the plane of polarization produced by tartrate and the
optical neutrality of paratartrates would be explained by a structural
law. The first part of these conclusions was confirmed; all the crystals
of tartrate proved to be hemihedral. But when Pasteur came to examine
the crystals of paratartrate, hoping to find none of them hemihedral, he
experienced a keen disappointment. The paratartrate also was hemihedral,
but the faces of some of the crystals were inclined to the right, and
those of others to the left. It then occurred to Pasteur to take up
these crystals one by one and sort them carefully, putting on one side
those which turned to the left, and on the other those which turned to
the right. He thought that by observing their respective solutions in
the polarizing apparatus, the two contrary hemihedral forms would give
two contrary deviations; and then, by mixing together an equal number of
each kind, as no doubt Mitscherlich had done, the resulting solution
would have no action upon light, the two equal and directly opposite
deviations exactly neutralizing each other.
With anxious and beating heart he proceeded to this experiment with the
polarizing apparatus and exclaimed, “I have it!” His excitement was such
that he could not look at the apparatus again; he rushed out of the
laboratory, not unlike Archimedes. He met a curator in the passage,
embraced him as he would have embraced Chappuis, and dragged him out
with him into the Luxembourg garden to explain his discovery. Many
confidences have been whispered under the shade of the tall trees of
those avenues, but never was there greater or more exuberant joy on a
young man’s lips. He foresaw all the consequences of his discovery. The
hitherto incomprehensible constitution of paratartaric or racemic acid
was explained; he differentiated it into righthand tartaric acid,
similar in every way to the natural tartaric acid of grapes, and
lefthand tartaric acid. These two distinct acids possess equal and
opposite rotatory powers which neutralize each other when these two
substances, reduced to an aqueous solution, combine spontaneously in
equal quantities.
“How often,” he wrote to Chappuis (May 5), whom he longed to have with
him, “how often have I regretted that we did not both take up the same
study, that of physical science. We who so often talked of the future,
we did not understand. What splendid work we could have undertaken and
would be undertaking now; and what could we not have done united by the
same ideas, the same love of science, the same ambition! I would we
were twenty and with the three years of the Ecole before us!” Always
fancying that he could have done more, he often had such retrospective
regrets. He was impatient to begin new researches, when a sad blow fell
upon him--his mother died almost suddenly of apoplexy. “She succumbed in
a few hours,” he wrote to Chappuis on May 28, “and when I reached home
she had already left us. I have asked for a holiday.” He could no longer
work; he remained steeped in tears and buried in his sorrow. For weeks
his intellectual life was suspended.
* * * * *
In Paris, in the scientific world perhaps even more than in any other,
everything gets known, repeated, discussed. Pasteur’s researches were
becoming a subject of conversation. Balard, with his strident voice,
spoke of them in the library at the Institute, which is a sort of
drawing-room for talkative old Academicians. J. B. Dumas listened
gravely; Biot, old Biot, then seventy-four years old, questioned the
story with some scepticism. “Are you quite sure?” he would ask, his head
a little on one side, his words slow and slightly ironical. He could
hardly believe, on first hearing Balard, that a new doctor, fresh from
the Ecole Normale, should have overcome a difficulty which had proved
too much for Mitscherlich. He did not care for long conversations with
Balard, and as the latter continued to extol Pasteur, Biot said, “I
should like to investigate that young man’s results.”
Besides Pasteur’s deference for all those whom he looked upon as his
teachers, he also felt a sort of general gratitude for their services to
Science. Partly from an infinite respect and partly from an ardent
desire to convince the old scientist, he wrote on his return to Paris to
Biot, whom he did not know personally, asking him for an interview. Biot
answered: “I shall be pleased to verify your results if you will
communicate them confidentially to me. Please believe in the feelings of
interest inspired in me by all young men who work with accuracy and
perseverance.”
An appointment was made at the Collège de France,[17] where Biot lived.
Every detail of that interview remained for ever fixed in Pasteur’s
memory. Biot began by fetching some paratartaric acid. “I have most
carefully studied it,” he said to Pasteur; “it is absolutely neutral in
the presence of polarized light.” Some distrust was visible in his
gestures and audible in his voice. “I shall bring you everything that is
necessary,” continued the old man, fetching doses of soda and ammonia.
He wanted the salt prepared before his eyes.
After pouring the liquid into a crystallizer, Biot took it into a corner
of his room to be quite sure that no one would touch it. “I shall let
you know when you are to come back,” he said to Pasteur when taking
leave of him. Forty-eight hours later some crystals, very small at
first, began to form; when there was a sufficient number of them,
Pasteur was recalled. Still in Biot’s presence, Pasteur withdrew, one by
one, the finest crystals and wiped off the mother-liquor adhering to
them. He then pointed out to Biot the opposition of their hemihedral
character, and divided them into two groups--left and right.
“So you affirm,” said Biot, “that your righthand crystals will deviate
to the right the plane of polarization, and your lefthand ones will
deviate it to the left?”
“Yes,” said Pasteur.
“Well, let me do the rest.”
Biot himself prepared the solutions, and then sent again for Pasteur.
Biot first placed in the apparatus the solution which should deviate to
the left. Having satisfied himself that this deviation actually took
place, he took Pasteur’s arm and said to him these words, often
deservedly quoted: “My dear boy, I have loved Science so much during my
life, that this touches my very heart.”
“It was indeed evident,” said Pasteur himself in recalling this
interview, “that the strongest light had then been thrown on the cause
of the phenomenon of rotatory polarization and hemihedral crystals; a
new class of isomeric substances was discovered; the unexpected and
until then unexampled constitution of the racemic or paratartaric acid
was revealed; in one word a great and unforeseen road was opened to
science.”
Biot now constituted himself the sponsor in scientific matters of his
new young friend, and undertook to report upon Pasteur’s paper entitled:
“_Researches on the relations which may exist between crystalline form,
chemical composition, and the direction of rotatory power_”--destined
for the Académie des Sciences.
Biot did full justice to Pasteur; he even rendered him homage, and--not
only in his own name but also in that of his three colleagues, Regnault,
Balard, and Dumas--he suggested that the Académie should declare its
highest approbation of Pasteur’s treatise.
Pasteur did not conceive greater happiness than his laboratory life, and
yet the laboratories of that time were very unlike what they are
nowadays, as we should see if the laboratories of the Collège de France,
of the Sorbonne, of the Ecole Normale had been preserved. They were all
that Paris could offer Europe, and Europe certainly had no cause to
covet them. Nowadays the most humble college, in the smallest provincial
town, would not accept such dens as the State offered (when it offered
them any) to the greatest French scientists. Claude Bernard, Magendie’s
curator, worked at the Collège de France in a regular cellar. Wurtz only
had a lumber-room in the attics of the Dupuytren Museum. Henri Sainte
Claire Deville, before he became head of the Besançon Faculty, had not
even as much; he was relegated to one of the most miserable corners of
the Rue Lafarge. J. B. Dumas did not care to occupy the unhealthy room
reserved for him at the Sorbonne; his father-in-law, Alexandre
Brongniart, having given him a small house in the Rue Cuvier, opposite
the Jardin des Plantes, he had had it transformed into a laboratory and
was keeping it up at his own expense. He was therefore comfortably
situated, but he was exceptionally fortunate. Every scientist who had no
private means to draw upon had to choose between the miserable cellars
and equally miserable garrets which were all that the State could offer.
And yet it was more tempting than a Professor’s chair in a College or
even in a Faculty, for there one could not give oneself up entirely to
one’s work.
Nothing would have seemed more natural than to leave Pasteur to his
experiments. But his appointment to some definite post could no longer
be deferred, in spite of Balard’s tumultuous activity. The end of the
summer vacation was near, there was a vacancy: Pasteur was made a
Professor of Physics at the Dijon Lycée. The Minister of Public
Instruction consented to allow him to postpone his departure until the
beginning of November, in order to let him finish some work begun under
the eye of Biot, who thought and dreamt of nothing but these new
investigations. During thirty years Biot had studied the phenomena of
rotatory polarization. He had called the attention of chemists to these
phenomena, but his call had been unheeded. Continuing his solitary
labour, he had--in experimenting on cases both simple and
complex--studied this molecular rotatory power, without suspecting that
this power bore a definite relation to the hemihedral form of some
crystals. And now that the old man was a witness of a triumphant sequel
to his own researches, now that he had the joy of seeing a young man
with a thoughtful mind and an enthusiastic heart working with him, now
that the hope of this daily collaboration shed a last ray on the close
of his life, Pasteur’s departure for Dijon came as a real blow. “If at
least,” he said, “they were sending you to a Faculty!” He turned his
wrath on to the Government officials. “They don’t seem to realize that
such labours stand above everything else! If they only knew it, two or
three such treatises might bring a man straight to the Institut!”
Nevertheless Pasteur had to go. M. Pouillet gave him a letter for a
former Polytechnician,[18] now a civil engineer at Dijon, a M.
Parandier, in which he wrote--
“M. Pasteur is a most distinguished young chemist. He has just completed
some very remarkable work, and I hope it will not be long before he is
sent to a first-class Faculty. I need add nothing else about him; I know
no more honest, industrious, or capable young man. Help him as much as
you can at Dijon; you will not regret it.”
Those first weeks away from his masters and from his beloved pursuits
seemed very hard to Pasteur. But he was anxious to prove himself a good
teacher. This duty appeared to him to be a noble ideal, and to involve a
wide responsibility. He felt none of the self satisfaction which is
sometimes a source of strength to some minds conscious of their
superiority to others. He did not even do himself the justice of feeling
that he was absolutely sure of his subject. He wrote to Chappuis
(November 20, 1848): “I find that preparing my lessons takes up a great
deal of time. It is only when I have prepared a lesson very carefully
that I succeed in making it very clear and capable of compelling
attention. If I neglect it at all I lecture badly and become
unintelligible.”
He had both first and second year pupils; these two classes took up all
his time and all his strength. He liked the second class; it was not a
very large one. “They all work,” Pasteur wrote, “some very
intelligently.” As to the first year class, what could he do with eighty
pupils? The good ones were kept back by the bad. “Don’t you think,” he
wrote, “that it is a mistake not to limit classes to fifty boys at the
most? It is with great difficulty that I can secure the attention of all
towards the end of the lesson. I have only found one means, which is to
multiply experiments at the last moment.”
Whilst he was eagerly and conscientiously giving himself up to his new
functions--not without some bitterness, for he really was entitled to an
appointment in a Faculty, and he could not pursue his favourite
studies--his masters were agitating on his behalf. Balard was clamouring
to have him as an assistant at the Ecole Normale. Biot was appealing to
Baron Thenard. This scientist was then Chairman of the Grand Council of
the Université.[19] He had been a pupil of Vauquelin, a friend of
Laplace, and a collaborator of Gay-Lussac; he had lectured during thirty
years at the Sorbonne, at the Collège de France, and at the Ecole
Polytechnique; he could truthfully boast that he had had 40,000 pupils.
He was, like J. B. Dumas, a born professor. But, whilst Dumas was always
self possessed and dignified in his demeanour, his very smile serious,
Thenard, a native of Burgundy, threw his whole personality into his
work, a broad smile on his beaming face.
He was now (1848) seventy years old, and the memory of his teaching,
the services rendered to industry by his discoveries, the _éclat_ of his
name and titles contrasted with his humble origin, all combined to
render him more than a Chancellor of the University; he was in fact a
sort of Field Marshal of science, and all powerful. Three years
previously he had much scandalized certain red-tape officials by
choosing three very young men--Puiseux, Delesse, and H. Sainte Claire
Deville--as professors for the new Faculty of Science at Besançon. He
had accentuated this authoritative measure by making Sainte Claire
Deville Dean of the Faculty. In the unknown professor of twenty-six, he
had divined the future celebrated scientist.
At the end of the year 1848 Pasteur solicited the place of assistant to
M. Delesse, who was taking a long leave of absence. This would have
brought him near Arbois, besides placing him in a Faculty. He asked for
nothing more. Thenard, who had Biot’s report in his hands, undertook to
transmit to the Minister this modest and natural request. He was opposed
by an unexpected argument--the presentation of assistantships belonged
to each Faculty. This custom was unknown to Pasteur. Thenard was unable
to overcome this routine formality. Pasteur thought that the unanimous
opinion of Thenard, Biot, and Pouillet ought to have prevailed. “I can
practically do nothing here,” he wrote on the sixth of December,
thinking of his interrupted studies. “If I cannot go to Besançon, I
shall go back to Paris as a curator.”
His father, to whom he paid a visit for the new year, persuaded him to
look upon things more calmly, telling him that wisdom repudiated too
much hurry. Louis deferred to his father’s opinion to the extent of
writing, on January 2, 1849, to the Minister of Public Instruction,
begging him to overlook his request. However, the members of the
Institute who had taken up his cause did not intend to be thwarted by
minor difficulties. Pasteur’s letter was hardly posted when he received
an assistantship, not at the Besançon Faculty but at Strasburg, to take
the place of M. Persoz, Professor of Chemistry, who was desirous of
going to Paris.
Pasteur, on his arrival at Strasburg (January 15) was welcomed by the
Professor of Physics, his old school friend, the Franc-Comtois Bertin.
“First of all, you are coming to live with me,” said Bertin gleefully.
“You could not do better; it is a stone’s throw from the Faculté.” By
living with Bertin, Pasteur acquired a companion endowed with a rare
combination of qualities--a quick wit and an affectionate heart. Bertin
was too shrewd to be duped, and a malicious twinkle often lit up his
kindly expression; with one apparently careless word, he would hit the
weak point of the most self satisfied. He loved those who were simple
and true, hence his affection for Pasteur. His smiling philosophy
contrasted with Pasteur’s robust faith and ardent impetuosity. Pasteur
admired, but did not often imitate, the peaceful manner with which
Bertin, affirming that a disappointment often proved to be a blessing in
disguise, accepted things as they came. In order to prove that this was
no paradox, Bertin used to tell what had happened to him in 1839, when
he was mathematical preparation master at the College of Luxeuil. He was
entitled to 200 francs a month, but payment was refused him. This
injustice did not cause him to recriminate, but he quietly tendered his
resignation. He went in for the Ecole Normale examination, entered the
school at the head of the list, and subsequently became Professor of
Physics at the Strasburg Faculty. “If it had not been for my former
disappointment, I should still be at Luxeuil.” He was now perfectly
satisfied, thinking that nothing could be better than to be a Professor
in a Faculty; but this absence of any sort of ambition did not prevent
him from giving his teaching the most scrupulous attention. He prepared
his lessons with extreme care, endeavouring to render them absolutely
clear. He took great personal interest in his pupils, and often helped
them with his advice in the interval between class hours. This excellent
man’s whole life was spent in working for others, and to be useful was
ever to him the greatest satisfaction.
Perhaps Pasteur was stimulated by Bertin’s example to give excessive
importance to minor matters in his first lessons. He writes: “I gave too
much thought to the style of my two first lectures, and they were
anything but good; but I think the subsequent ones were more
satisfactory, and I feel I am improving.” His lectures were well
attended, for the numerous industries of Alsace gave to chemistry quite
a place by itself.
Everything pleased him in Strasburg save its distance from Arbois. He
who could concentrate his thoughts for weeks, for months even, on one
subject, who could become as it were a prisoner of his studies, had
withal an imperious longing for family life. His rooms in Bertin’s house
suited him all the better that they were large enough for him to
entertain one of his relations. His father wrote in one of his letters:
“You say that you will not marry for a long time, that you will ask one
of your sisters to live with you. I could wish it for you and for them,
for neither of them wishes for a greater happiness. Both desire nothing
better than to look after your comfort; you are absolutely everything to
them. One may meet with sisters as good as they are, but certainly with
none better.”
Louis Pasteur’s circle of dear ones was presently enlarged by his
intimacy with another family. The new Rector of the Academy of
Strasburg, M. Laurent, had arrived in October. He was no relation to the
chemist of the same name, and the place he was about to take in
Pasteur’s life was much greater than that held by Auguste Laurent at the
time when they were working together in Balard’s laboratory.
After having begun, in 1812, as preparation master in the then Imperial
College of Louis le Grand, M. Laurent had become, in 1826, head master
of the College of Riom. He found at Riom more tutors than pupils; there
were only three boys in the school! Thanks to M. Laurent, those three
soon became one hundred and thirty-four. From Riom he was sent to
Guéret, then to Saintes, to save a college in imminent danger of
disappearing; there were struggles between the former head master and
the Mayor, the town refused the subsidies, all was confusion. Peace
immediately followed his arrival. “Those who have known him,” wrote M.
Pierron in the _Revue de l’Instruction Publique_, “will not be surprised
at such miracles coming from a man so intelligent and so active, so
clever, amiable, and warm-hearted.” Wherever he was afterwards sent, at
Orleans, Angoulême, Douai, Toulouse, Cahors, he worked the same charm,
born of kindness. At Strasburg, he had made of the Académie a home where
all the Faculty found a simple and cordial welcome. Madame Laurent was a
modest woman who tried to efface herself, but whose exquisite qualities
of heart and mind could not remain hidden. The eldest of her daughters
was married to M. Zevort, whose name became doubly dear to the
Université. The two younger ones, brought up in habits of industry and
unselfishness which seemed natural to them, brightened the home by their
youthful gaiety.
When Pasteur on his arrival called on this family, he had the feeling
that happiness lay there. He had seen at Arbois how, through the daily
difficulties of manual labour, his parents looked at life from an
exalted point of view, appreciating it from that standard of moral
perfection which gives dignity and grandeur to the humblest existence.
In this family--of a higher social position than his own--he again found
the same high ideal, and, with great superiority of education, the same
simple-mindedness. When Pasteur entered for the first time the Laurent
family circle, he immediately felt the delightful impression of being in
a thoroughly congenial atmosphere; a communion of thoughts and feelings
seemed established after the first words, the first looks exchanged
between him and his hosts.
In the evening, at the restaurant where most of the younger professors
dined, he heard others speak of the kindliness and strict justice of the
Rector; and everyone expressed respect for his wonderfully united
family.
At one of M. Laurent’s quiet evening “at homes,” Bertin was saying of
Pasteur, “You do not often meet with such a hard worker; no attraction
ever can take him away from his work.” The attraction now came, however,
and it was such a powerful one that, on February 10, only a fortnight
after his arrival, Pasteur addressed to M. Laurent the following
official letter:--
“SIR,--
“An offer of the greatest importance to me and to your family is
about to be made to you on my behalf; and I feel it my duty to put
you in possession of the following facts, which may have some
weight in determining your acceptance or refusal.
“My father is a tanner in the small town of Arbois in the Jura, my
sisters keep house for him, and assist him with his books, taking
the place of my mother whom we had the misfortune to lose in May
last.
“My family is in easy circumstances, but with no fortune; I do not
value what we possess at more than 50,000 francs, and, as for me, I
have long ago decided to hand over to my sisters the whole of what
should be my share. I have therefore absolutely no fortune. My only
means are good health, some courage, and my position in the
Université.
“I left the Ecole Normale two years ago, an _agrégé_ in physical
science. I have held a Doctor’s degree eighteen months, and I have
presented to the Académie a few works which have been very well
received, especially the last one, upon which a report was made
which I now have the honour to enclose.
“This, Sir, is all my present position. As to the future, unless my
tastes should completely change, I shall give myself up entirely to
chemical research. I hope to return to Paris when I have acquired
some reputation through my scientific labours. M. Biot has often
told me to think seriously about the Institute; perhaps I may do so
in ten or fifteen years’ time, and after assiduous work; but this
is but a dream, and not the motive which makes me love Science for
Science’s sake.
“My father will himself come to Strasburg to make this proposal of
marriage.
“Accept, Sir, the assurance of my profound respect, etc.
“P.S.--I was twenty-six on December 27.”
A definite answer was adjourned for a few weeks. Pasteur, in a letter to
Madame Laurent, wrote, “I am afraid that Mlle. Marie may be influenced
by early impressions, unfavourable to me. There is nothing in me to
attract a young girl’s fancy. But my recollections tell me that those
who have known me very well have loved me very much.”
Of these letters, religiously preserved, fragments like the following
have also been obtained. “All that I beg of you, Mademoiselle (he had
now been authorised to address himself directly to her) is that you will
not judge me too hastily, and therefore misjudge me. Time will show you
that below my cold, shy and unpleasing exterior, there is a heart full
of affection for you!” In another letter, evidently remorseful at
forsaking the laboratory, he says, “I, who did so love my crystals!”
He loved them still, as is proved by an answer from Biot to a proposal
of Pasteur’s. In order to spare the old man’s failing sight, Pasteur had
the ingenious idea of cutting out of pieces of cork, with exquisite
skill, some models of crystalline types greatly enlarged. He had tinted
the edges and faces, and nothing was easier than to recognize their
hemihedral character. “I accept with great pleasure,” wrote Biot on
April 7, “the offer you make me of sending me a small quantity of your
two acids, with models of their crystalline types.” He meant the
righthand tartaric acid and the lefthand tartaric acid, which
Pasteur--not to pronounce too hastily on their identity with ordinary
tartaric acid--then called _dextroracemic_ and _lævoracemic_.
Pasteur wished to go further; he was now beginning to study the
crystallizations of formate of strontian. Comparing them with those of
the paratartrates of soda and ammonia, surprised and uneasy at the
differences he observed, he once exclaimed, “Ah! formate of strontian,
if only I had got you!” to the immense amusement of Bertin, who long
afterwards used to repeat this invocation with mock enthusiasm.
Pasteur was about to send these crystals to Biot, but the latter wrote,
“Keep them until you have thoroughly investigated them.... You can
depend on my wish to serve you in every circumstance when my assistance
can be of any use to you, and also on the great interest with which you
have inspired me.”
Regnault and Senarmont had been invited by Biot to examine the valuable
samples received from Strasburg, the dextroracemic and lævoracemic
acids. Biot wrote to Pasteur, “We might make up our minds to sacrifice a
small portion of the two acids in order to reconstitute the racemic, but
we doubt whether we should be capable of discerning it with certainty by
those crystals when they are formed. You must show it us yourself, when
you come to Paris for the holidays. Whilst arranging my chemical
treasures, I came upon a small quantity of racemic acid which I thought
I had lost. It would be sufficient for the microscopical experiments
that I might eventually have to make. So if the small phial of it that
you saw here would be useful to you, let me know, and I will willingly
send it. In this, as in everything else, you will always find me most
anxious to second you in your labours.”
This period was all happiness. Pasteur’s father and his sister Josephine
came to Strasburg. The proposal of marriage was accepted, the father
returned to Arbois, Josephine staying behind. She remained to keep house
and to share the everyday life of her brother, whom she loved with a
mixture of pride, tenderness and solicitude. In her devoted sisterly
generosity, she resigned herself to the thought that her happy dream
must be of short duration. The wedding was fixed for May 29.
“I believe,” wrote Pasteur to Chappuis, “that I shall be very happy.
Every quality I could wish for in a wife I find in her. You will say,
‘He is in love!’ Yes, but I do not think I exaggerate at all, and my
sister Josephine quite agrees with me.”
CHAPTER III
1850--1854
From the very beginning Mme. Pasteur not only admitted, but approved,
that the laboratory should come before everything else. She would
willingly have adopted the typographic custom of the Académie des
Sciences Reports, where the word Science is always spelt with a capital
S. It was indeed impossible to live with her husband without sharing his
joys, anxieties and renewed hopes, as they appeared day by day reflected
in his admirable eyes--eyes of a rare grey-green colour like the sparkle
of a Ceylon gem. Before certain scientific possibilities, the flame of
enthusiasm shone in those deep eyes, and the whole stern face was
illumined. Between domestic happiness and prospective researches,
Pasteur’s life was complete. But this couple, who had now shared
everything for more than a year, was to suffer indirectly through the
new law on the liberty of teaching.
Devised by some as an effort at compromise between the Church and the
University, considered by others as a scope for competition against
State education, the law of 1850 brought into the Superior Council of
Public Instruction four archbishops or bishops, elected by their
colleagues. In each Department[20] an Academy Council was instituted,
and, in this parcelling out of University jurisdiction, the right of
presence was recognized as belonging to the bishop or his delegate. But
all these advantages did not satisfy those who called themselves
Catholics before everything else. The rupture between Louis Veuillot on
one side and, on the other, Falloux and Montalembert, the principal
authors of this law, dates from that time.
“What we understood by the liberty of teaching,” wrote Louis Veuillot,
“was not a share given to the Church, but the destruction of
monopoly.... No alliance with the University! Away with its books,
inspectors, examinations, certificates, diplomas! All that means the
hand of the State laid on the liberty of the citizen; it is the breath
of incredulity on the younger generation.” Confronted by the violent
rejection of any attempt at reconciliation and threatened interference
with the University on the part of the Church, the Government was trying
to secure to itself the whole teaching fraternity.
The primary schoolmasters groaned under the heavy yoke of the prefects.
“These deep politicians only know how to dismiss.... The rectors will
become the valets of the prefects ...” wrote Pasteur with anger and
distress in a letter dated July, 1850. After the primary schools, the
attacks now reached the colleges. The University was accused of
attending exclusively to Latin verse and Greek translations, and of
neglecting the souls of the students. Romieu, who ironically dubbed the
University “Alma Parens,” and attacked it most bitterly, seemed hardly
fitted for the part of justiciary. He was a former pupil of the Ecole
Polytechnique, who wrote vaudevilles until he was made a prefect by
Louis Philippe. He was celebrated for various tricks which amused Paris
and disconcerted the Government, much to the joy of the Prince de
Joinville,[21] who loved such mystifications. After the fall of Louis
Philippe, Romieu became a totally different personality. He had been
supposed to take nothing seriously; he now put a tragic construction on
everything. He became a prophet of woe, declaring that “gangrene was
devouring the souls of eight year old children.” According to him,
faith, respect, all was being destroyed; he anathematized Instruction
without Education, and stigmatized village schoolmasters as “obscure
apostles” charged with “preaching the doctrines of revolt.” This
violence was partly oratory, but oratory does not minimize violence, it
excites it. Every pamphleteer ends by being a bond-slave to his own
phraseology.
When Romieu appeared in Strasburg as an Envoy Extraordinary entrusted by
the Government with a general inquiry, he found that M. Laurent did not
answer to that ideal of a functionary which was entertained by a
certain party. M. Laurent had the very highest respect for justice; he
distrusted the upstarts whose virtues were very much on the surface; he
never decided on the fate of an inferior without the most painstaking
inquiry; he did not look on an accidental mistake as an unpardonable
fault; he refused to take any immediate and violent measures: all this
caused him to be looked upon with suspicion. “The influence of the
Rector” (thus ran Romieu’s official report) “is hardly, if at all,
noticeable. He should be replaced by a safe man.”
The Minister of Public Instruction, M. de Parieu, had to bow before the
formal wish of the Minister of the Interior, founded upon peremptory
arguments of this kind. M. Laurent was offered the post of Rector at
Châteauroux, a decided step downward. He refused, left Strasburg, and,
with no complaint or recriminations, retired into private life at the
age of fifty-five.
It was when this happy family circle was just about to be enlarged that
its quiet was thus broken into by this untoward result of political
agitation. M. Laurent’s youngest daughter soon after became engaged to
M. Loir, a professor at the Strasburg Pharmaceutical School, who had
been a student at the Ecole Normale, and who ultimately became Dean of
the Faculty of Sciences at Lyons. He was then preparing, assisted by
Pasteur, his “thesis” for the degree of Doctor of Science. In this he
announced some new results based on the simultaneous existence of
hemihedral crystalline forms and the rotatory power. He wrote, “I am
happy to have brought new facts to bear upon the law that M. Pasteur has
enunciated.”
“Why are you not a professor of physics or chemistry!” wrote Pasteur to
Chappuis; “we should work together, and in ten years’ time we would
revolutionize chemistry. There are wonders hidden in crystallization,
and, through it, the inmost construction of substances will one day be
revealed. If you come to Strasburg, you _shall_ become a chemist; I
shall talk to you of nothing but crystals.”
The vacation was always impatiently awaited by Pasteur. He was able to
work more, and to edit the result of his researches in an extract for
the Académie des Sciences. On October 2 his friend received the
following letter: “On Monday I presented this year’s work to the
‘Institut.’ I read a long extract from it, and then gave a vivâ voce
demonstration relative to some crystallographic details. This
demonstration, which I had been specially desired to give, was quite
against the prevailing customs of the Académie. I gave it with my usual
delight in that sort of thing, and it was followed with great attention.
Fortunately for me, the most influential members of the Académie were
present. M. Dumas sat almost facing me. I looked at him several times,
and he expressed by an approving nod of his head that he understood and
was much interested. He asked me to his house the next day, and
congratulated me. He said, amongst other things, that I was a proof that
when a Frenchman took up crystallography he knew what he was about, and
also that if I persevered, as he felt sure I should, I should become the
founder of a school.
“M. Biot, whose kindness to me is beyond all expression, came to me
after my lecture and said, ‘It is as good as it can possibly be.’ On
October 14 he will give his report on my work; he declares I have
discovered a very California. Do not suppose I have done anything
wonderful this year. This is but a satisfactory consequence of preceding
work.”
In his report (postponed until October 28) Biot was more enthusiastic.
He praised the numerous and unforeseen results brought out by Pasteur
within the last two years. “He throws light upon everything he touches,”
he said.
To be praised by Biot was a rare favour; his diatribes were better
known. In a secret committee of the Académie des Sciences (January,
1851) the Académie had to pronounce on the merits of two candidates for
a professorship at the Collège de France: Balard, a professor of the
Faculty of Science, chief lecturer of the Ecole Normale, and Laurent the
chemist, who in order to live had been compelled to accept a situation
as assayer at the Mint. Biot, with his halting step, arrived at the
Committee room and spoke thus: “The title of Member of the Institute is
the highest reward and the greatest honour that a French scientist can
receive, but it does not constitute a privilege of inactivity that need
only be claimed in order to obtain everything.... For several years, M.
Balard has been in possession of two large laboratories where he might
have executed any work dictated to him by his zeal, whilst nearly all M.
Laurent’s results have been effected by his unaided personal efforts at
the cost of heavy sacrifices. If you give the college vacancy to M.
Balard, you will add nothing to the opportunities for study which he
already has; but it will take away from M. Laurent the means of work
that he lacks and that we have now the opportunity of providing for him.
The chemical section, and indeed the whole Academy will easily judge on
which side are scientific justice and the interests of future progress.”
Biot had this little speech printed and sent a copy of it to Pasteur.
The incident led to a warm dispute, and Biot lost his cause. Pasteur
wrote to Chappuis, “M. Biot has done everything that was possible to do
in order that M. Laurent should win, and the final result is a great
grief to him. But really,” the younger man added, more indulgent than
the old man, and divided between his wishes for Laurent and the fear of
the sorrow Balard would have felt, “M. Balard would not have deserved so
much misfortune. Think of the disgrace it would have been to him if
there had been a second vote favourable to Laurent, especially coming
from the Institute of which he is a member.” At the end of that
campaign, Biot in a fit of misanthropy which excepted Pasteur alone, and
knowing that Pasteur had spoken with effusion of their mutual feelings,
wrote to him as follows: “I am touched by your acknowledgment of my deep
and sincere affection for you, and I thank you for it. But whilst
keeping your attachment for me as I preserve mine for you, let me for
the future rejoice in it in the secret recesses of my heart and of
yours. The world is jealous of friendships however disinterested, and my
affection for you is such that I wish people to feel that they honour
themselves by appreciating you, rather than that they should know that
you love me and that I love you. Farewell. Persevere in your good
feelings as in your splendid career, and be happy. Your friend.”
The character of Biot, a puzzle to Sainte Beuve, seems easier to
understand after reading those letters, written in a small conscientious
hand. The great critic wrote: “Who will give us the secret key to Biot’s
complex nature, to the curiosities, aptitudes, envies, prejudices,
sympathies, antipathies, folds and creases of every kind in his
character?” Even with no other documents, the history of his relations
with Pasteur would throw light upon this nature, not so “complex” after
all. From the day when Pasteur worked out his first experiment before
Biot, at first suspicious, then astonished and finally touched to the
heart, until the period of absolute mutual confidence and friendship, we
see rising before us the image of this true scientist, with his rare
independence, his good-will towards laborious men and his mercilessness
to every man who, loving not Science for its own sake, looked upon a
discovery as a road to fortune, pecuniary or political.
He loved both science and letters, and, now that age had bent his tall
form, instead of becoming absorbed in his own recollections and the
contemplation of his own labours, he kept his mind open, happy to learn
more every day and to anticipate the future of Pasteur.
During the vacation of 1851 Pasteur came to Paris to bring Biot the
results of new researches on aspartic and malic acids, and he desired
his father to join him in order to efface the sad impression left by his
former journey in 1838. Biot and his wife welcomed the father and son as
they would have welcomed very few friends. Touched by so much kindness,
Joseph Pasteur on his return in June wrote Biot a letter full of
gratitude, venturing at the same time to send the only thing it was in
his power to offer, a basket of fruit from his garden. Biot answered as
follows: “Sir, my wife and I very much appreciate the kind expressions
in the letter you have done me the honour of writing me. Our welcome to
you was indeed as hearty as it was sincere, for I assure you that we
could not see without the deepest interest such a good and honourable
father sitting at our modest table with so good and distinguished a son.
I have never had occasion to show that excellent young man any feelings
but those of esteem founded on his merit, and an affection inspired by
his personality. It is the greatest pleasure that I can experience in my
old age, to see young men of talent working industriously and trying to
progress in a scientific career by means of steady and persevering
labour, and not by wretched intriguing. That is what has made your son
dear to me, and his affection for me adds yet to his other claims and
increases that which I feel for him. We are therefore even with one
another. As to your kindness in wishing that I should taste fruit from
your garden, I am very grateful for it, and I accept it as cordially as
you send it.”
Pasteur had also brought Biot some other products--a case full of new
crystals. Starting from the external configuration of crystals, he
penetrated the individual constitution of their molecular groups, and
from this point of departure, he then had recourse to the resources of
chemistry and optics. Biot never ceased to admire the sagacity of the
young experimentalist who had turned what had until then been a mere
crystallographic character into an element of chemical research.
Equally interested by the general consequences of these studies, so
delicate and so precise, M. de Senarmont wished in his turn to examine
the crystals. No one approved more fully than he the expressions of the
old scientist, who ended in this way his 1851 report: “If M. Pasteur
persists in the road he has opened, it may be predicted of him that what
he has found is nothing to what he will find.” And, delighted to see the
important position that Pasteur was taking at Strasburg and the
unexpected extension of crystallography, Biot wrote to him: “I have read
with much interest the thesis of your brother-in-law, M. Loir. It is
well conceived and well written, and he establishes with clearness many
very curious facts. M. de Senarmont has also read it with very great
pleasure, and I beg you will transmit our united congratulations to your
brother-in-law.” Biot added, mixing as he was wont family details with
scientific ideas: “We highly appreciated your father, the rectitude of
his judgment, his firm, calm, simple reason and the enlightened love he
bears you.”
“My plan of study is traced for this coming year,” wrote Pasteur to
Chappuis at the end of December. “I am hoping to develop it shortly in
the most successful manner.... I think I have already told you that I am
on the verge of mysteries, and that the veil which covers them is
getting thinner and thinner. The nights seem to me too long, yet I do
not complain, for I prepare my lectures easily, and often have five
whole days a week that I can give up to the laboratory. I am often
scolded by Mme. Pasteur, but I console her by telling her that I shall
lead her to fame.”
He already foresaw the greatness of his work. However he dare not speak
of it, and kept his secret, save with the confidante who was now a
collaborator, ever ready to act as secretary, watching over the precious
health of which he himself took no account, an admirable helpmeet, to
whom might be applied the Roman definition, _socia rei humanæ atque
divinæ_. Never did life shower more affection upon a man. Everything at
that time smiled upon him. Two fair children in the home, great security
in his work, no enemies, and the comfort of receiving the approval and
counsel of masters who inspired him with a feeling of veneration.
“At my age,” wrote Biot to Pasteur, “one lives only in the interest one
takes in those one loves. You are one of the small number who can
provide such food for my mind.” And alluding in that same letter
(December 22, 1851) to four reports successively approved of by Balard,
Dumas, Regnault, Chevreul, Senarmont and Thenard: “I was very happy to
see, in those successive announcements of ideas of so new and so
far-reaching a nature, that you have said--and that we have made you
say--nothing that should now be contradicted or objected to in one
single point. I still have in my hands the pages of your last paper
concerning the optical study of malic acid. I have not yet returned them
to you, as I wish to extract from them some results that I shall place
to your credit in a paper I am now writing.”
It was no longer Biot and Senarmont only who were watching the growing
importance of Pasteur’s work. At the beginning of the year 1852 the
physicist Regnault thought of making Pasteur a corresponding member of
the Institute. Pasteur was still under thirty. There was a vacancy in
the General Physics section, why not offer it to him? said Regnault,
with his usual kindliness. Biot shook his head: “It is to the Chemistry
section that he ought to belong.” And, with the courage of sincere
affection, he wrote to Pasteur, “Your work marks your place in chemistry
rather than physics, for in chemistry you are in the front rank of
inventors, whilst in physics you have applied processes already known
rather than invented new ones. Do not listen to people, who, without
knowing the ground, would cause you to desire, and even to hastily
obtain, a distinction which would be above your real and recognized
claims.... Besides, you can see for yourself how much your work of the
last four years has raised you in every one’s estimation. And that
place, which you have made for yourself in the general esteem, has the
advantage of not being subject to the fluctuations of the ballot.
Farewell, dear friend, write to me when you have time, and be assured
that my interest in hard workers is about the only thing which yet makes
me wish to live. Your friend.”
Pasteur gratefully accepted these wise counsels. In an excess of
modesty, he wrote to Dumas that he should not apply as candidate even
if a place for a correspondent were vacant in the Chemistry section. “Do
you then believe,” answered Dumas with a vivacity very unlike his usual
solemn calmness, “do you believe that we are insensible to the glory
which your work reflects on French chemistry, and on the Ecole from
whence you come? The very day I entered the Ministry, I asked for the
Cross[22] for you. I should have had in giving it to you myself a
satisfaction which you cannot conceive. I don’t know whence the delay
and difficulty arise. But what I do know is that you make my blood boil
when you speak in your letter of the necessity of leaving a free place
in chemistry to the men you mention, one or two excepted.... What
opinion have you then of our judgment? When there _is_ a vacant place,
you shall be presented, supported and elected. It is a question of
justice and of the great interests of science: we shall make them
prevail.... When the day comes, there will be means found to do what is
required for the interests of science, of which you are one of the
firmest pillars, and one of the most glorious hopes. Heartily yours.”
“My dear father,” wrote Pasteur, sending his father a copy of this
letter, “I hope you will be proud of M. Dumas’ letter. It surprised me
very much. I did not believe that my work deserved such a splendid
testimony, though I recognize its great importance.”
Thus were associated in Pasteur the full consciousness of his great
mental power with an extreme ingenuousness. Instead of the pride and
egotism provoked, almost excusably, in so many superior men by excessive
strength, his character presented the noblest delicacy.
Another arrangement occurred to Regnault: that he himself should accept
the direction of the Sèvres Manufactory, and give up to Pasteur his
professorship at the Ecole Polytechnique. Others suggested that Pasteur
should become chief lecturer at the Ecole Normale. Rumours of these
possibilities reached Strasburg, but Pasteur’s thoughts were otherwise
absorbed. He was concerned with the manner in which he could modify the
crystalline forms of certain substances which, though optically active,
did not at the first view present the hemihedral character, and with the
possibility of provoking the significant faces by varying the nature of
the dissolving agents. Biot was anxious that he should not be disturbed
in these ingenious researches, and advised him to remain at Strasburg in
terms as vigorous as any of his previous advice. “As to the accidents
which come from or depend on men’s caprice, be strong-minded enough to
disdain them yet awhile. Do not trouble about anything, but pursue
indefatigably your great career. You will be rewarded in the end, the
more certainly and unquestionably that you will have deserved it more
fully. The time is not far when those who can serve you efficiently will
feel as much pride in doing so as shame and embarrassment in not having
done so already.”
When Pasteur came to Paris in August, for what he might have called his
annual pilgrimage, Biot had reserved for him a most agreeable surprise.
Mitscherlich was in Paris, where he had come, accompanied by another
German crystallographer, G. Rose, to thank the Académie for appointing
him a foreign Associate. They both expressed a desire to see Pasteur,
who was staying in a hotel in the Rue de Tournon. Biot, starting for his
daily walk round the Luxembourg Garden, left this note: “Please come to
my house to-morrow at 8 a.m., if possible with your products. M.
Mitscherlich and M. Rose are coming at 9 to see them.” The interview was
lengthy and cordial. In a letter to his father--who now knew a great
deal about crystals and their forms, thanks to Pasteur’s lucid
explanations--we find these words. “I spent two and a half hours with
them on Sunday at the Collège de France, showing them my crystals. They
were much pleased, and highly praised my work. I dined with them on
Tuesday at M. Thenard’s; you will like to see the names of the guests:
Messrs. Mitscherlich, Rose, Dumas, Chevreul, Regnault, Pelouze, Péligot,
C. Prévost, and Bussy. You see I was the only outsider, they are all
members of the Académie.... But the chief advantage of my meeting these
gentlemen is that I have heard from them the important fact that there
is a manufacturer in Germany who again produces some racemic acid. I
intend to go and see him and his products, so as to study thoroughly
that singular substance.”
At the time when scientific novels were in fashion, a whole chapter
might have been written on Pasteur in search of that acid. In order to
understand in a measure his emotion on learning that a manufacturer in
Saxony possessed this mysterious acid, we must remember that the racemic
acid--produced for the first time by Kestner at Thann in 1820, through
a mere accident in the manufacture of tartaric acid--had suddenly ceased
to appear, in spite of all efforts to obtain it again. What then was the
origin of it?
Mitscherlich believed that the tartars employed by this Saxony
manufacturer came from Trieste. “I shall go to Trieste,” said Pasteur;
“I shall go to the end of the world. I _must_ discover the source of
racemic acid, I must follow up the tartars to their origin.” Was the
acid existent in crude tartars, such as Kestner received in 1820 from
Naples, Sicily, or Oporto? This was all the more probable from the fact
that from the day when Kestner began to use semi-refined tartars he had
no longer found any racemic acid. Should one conclude that it remained
stored up in the mother-liquor?
With a feverish impetuosity that nothing could soothe, Pasteur begged
Biot and Dumas to obtain for him a mission from the Ministry or the
Académie. Exasperated by red tape delays, he was on the point of writing
directly to the President of the Republic. “It is a question,” he said,
“that France should make it a point of honour to solve through one of
her children.” Biot endeavoured to moderate this excessive impatience.
“It is not necessary to set the Government in motion for this,” he said,
a little quizzically. “The Academy, when informed of your motives might
very well contribute a few thousand francs towards researches on the
racemic acid.” But when Mitscherlich gave Pasteur a letter of
recommendation to the Saxony manufacturer, whose name was Fikentscher
and who lived near Leipzig, Pasteur could contain himself no longer, and
went off, waiting for nothing and listening to no one. His travelling
impressions were of a peculiar nature. We will extract passages from a
sort of diary addressed to Madame Pasteur so that she might share the
emotions of this pursuit. He starts his campaign on the 12th September.
“I do not stop at Leipzig, but go on to Zwischau, and then to M.
Fikentscher. I leave him at nightfall and go back to him the next
morning very early. I have spent all to-day, Sunday, with him. M.
Fikentscher is a very clever man, and he has shown me his whole
manufactory in every detail, keeping no secrets from me.... His factory
is most prosperous. It comprises a group of houses which, from a
distance, and situated on a height as they are, look almost like a
little village. It is surrounded by 20 hectares[23] of well cultivated
ground. All this is the result of a few years’ work. As to _the_
question, here is a little information that you will keep strictly to
yourself for the present. M. Fikentscher obtained racemic acid for the
first time about twenty-two years ago. He prepared at that time rather a
large quantity. Since then only a very small amount has been formed in
the process of manufacture and he has not troubled to preserve it. When
he used to obtain most, his tartars came from Trieste. This confirms,
though not in every point, what I heard from M. Mitscherlich. Anyhow,
here is my plan: Having no laboratory at Zwischau, I have just returned
to Leipzig with two kinds of tartars that M. Fikentscher now uses, some
of which come from Austria, and some from Italy. M. Fikentscher has
assured me that I should be very well received here by divers
professors, who know my name very well, he says. To-morrow Monday
morning, I will go to the Université and set up in some laboratory or
other. I think that in five or six days I shall have finished my
examination of these tartars. Then I shall start for Vienna, where I
shall stay two or three days and rapidly study Hungarian tartars....
Finally I shall go to Trieste, where I shall find tartars of divers
countries, notably those of the Levant, and those of the neighbourhood
of Trieste itself. On arriving here at M. Fikentscher’s I have
unfortunately discovered a very regrettable circumstance. It is that the
tartars he uses have already been through one process in the country
from which they are exported, and this process is such that it evidently
eliminates and loses the greater part of the racemic acid. At least I
think so. I must therefore go to the place itself. If I had enough money
I should go on to Italy; but that is impossible, it will be for next
year. I shall give ten years to it if necessary; but it will not be, and
I am sure that in my very next letter I shall be able to tell you that I
have some good results. For instance, I am almost sure to find a prompt
means of testing tartars from the point of view of racemic acid. That is
a point of primary importance for my work. I want to go quickly through
examining all these different tartars; that will be my first study....
M. Fikentscher will take nothing for his products. It is true that I
have given him hints and some of my own enthusiasm. He wants to prepare
for commercial purposes some _left_ tartaric acid, and I have given him
all the necessary crystallographic indications. I have no doubt he will
succeed.”
_Leipzig, Wednesday, September 15, 1852._ “My dear Marie, I do not want
to wait until I have the results of my researches before writing to you
again. And yet I have nothing to tell you, for I have not left the
laboratory for three days, and I know nothing of Leipzig but the street
which goes from the Hôtel de Bavière to the Université. I come home at
dusk, dine, and go to bed. I have only received, in M. Erdmann’s study,
the visit of Professor Hankel, professor of physics of the Leipzig
Université, who has translated all my treatises in a German paper edited
by M. Erdmann. He has also studied hemihedral crystals, and I enjoyed
talking with him. I shall also soon meet the professor of mineralogy, M.
Naumann.
“To-morrow only shall I have a first result concerning racemic acid. I
shall stay about ten days longer in Leipzig. It is more than I told you,
and the reason lies in rather a happy circumstance. M. Fikentscher has
kindly written to me and to a firm in Leipzig, and I heard yesterday
from the head of that firm that, very likely, they can get me to-morrow
some tartars absolutely crude and of the same origin as M.
Fikentscher’s. The same gentleman has given me some information about a
factory at Venice, and will give me a letter of recommendation to a firm
in that city, also for Trieste. In this way the journey I proposed to
make in that town will not simply be a pleasure trip.... I shall write
to M. Biot as soon as I have important results. To-day has been a good
day, and in about three or four more you will no doubt receive a
satisfactory letter.”
_Leipzig, September 18, 1852._ “My dear Marie, the very question which
has brought me here is surrounded with very great difficulties.... I
have only studied one tartar thoroughly since I have been here; it comes
from Naples and has been refined once. It contains racemic acid, but in
such infinitesimal proportions that it can only be detected by the most
delicate process. It is only by manufacture on a very large scale that a
certain quantity could be prepared. But I must tell you that the first
operation undergone by this tartar must have deprived it almost entirely
of racemic acid. Fortunately M. Fikentscher is a most enlightened man,
he perfectly understands the importance of this acid and he is prepared
to follow most minutely the indications that I shall give him in order
to obtain this singular substance in quantities such that it can again
be easily turned into commercial use. I can already conceive the history
of this product. M. Kestner must have had at his disposal in 1820 some
Neapolitan tartars, as indeed he said he had, and he must have operated
on crude tartar. That is the whole secret.... But is it certain that
almost the whole of the acid is lost in the first manufacture undergone
by tartar? I believe it is. But it must be proved. There are at Trieste
and at Venice two tartar refineries of which I have the addresses. I
also have letters of introduction. I shall examine there (if I find a
laboratory) the residual products, and I shall make minute inquiries
respecting the places the tartars used in those two cities come from.
Finally, I shall procure a few kilogrammes, which I shall carefully
study when I get back to France....”
_Freiberg, September 23, 1852._ “I arrived on the evening of the 21st at
Dresden, and I had to wait until eleven the next morning to have my
passport _visé_, so I could not start for Freiberg before seven p.m. I
took advantage of that day to visit the capital of Saxony, and I can
assure you that I saw some admirable things. There is a most beautiful
museum containing pictures by the first masters of every school. I spent
over four hours in the galleries, noting on my catalogue the pictures I
most enjoyed. Those I liked I marked with a cross; but I soon put two,
three crosses, according to the degree of my enthusiasm. I even went as
far as four.
“I also visited what they call the green vault room, an absolutely
unique collection of works of art, gems, jewels ... then some churches,
avenues, admirable bridges across the Elbe....
“I then started for Freiberg at 7.... My love of crystals took me first
to the learned Professor of mineralogy, Breithaupt, who received me as
one would not be received in France. After a short colloquy, he passed
into the next room, came back in a black tail-coat with three little
decorations in his button hole, and told me he would first present me to
the Baron von Beust, Superintendent of Factories, so as to obtain a
permit to visit the latter.... Then he took me for a walk, talking
crystals the whole time....”
P.S.--“Mind you tell M. Biot how I was received; it will please him.”
_Vienna, September 27, 1852._ “Yesterday, Monday morning, I set out to
call upon several people. Unfortunately, I hear that Professor Schrotten
is at Wiesbaden, at a scientific congress, as well as M. Seybel, a
manufacturer of tartaric acid. M. Miller, a merchant for whom I had a
letter of recommendation, was kind enough to ask M. Seybel’s business
manager for permission for me to visit the factory in his absence. He
refused, saying he was not authorized. But I did not give in; I asked
for the addresses of Viennese professors, and I fortunately came upon
that of a very well known scientific man, M. Redtenbacher, who has been
kind to me beyond all description. At 6 a.m. he came to my hotel, and we
took the train at 7 for the Seybel manufactory, which is at a little
distance from Vienna. We were received by the chemist of the factory,
who made not the slightest difficulty in introducing us into the
sanctuary, and after many questions we ended by being convinced that the
famous racemic acid was seen there last winter.... I reserve for later
many details of great interest, for here they have operated for years on
crude tartar. I came away very happy.
“There is another factory of tartaric acid in Vienna. We go there; I
repeat through M. Redtenbacher my string of questions. They have seen
nothing. I ask to see their products, and I come upon a barrel full of
tartaric acid crystals, on the surface of which I think I perceive _the_
substance. A first test made with dirty old glasses then and there
confirms my doubts; they become a certainty a few moments later at M.
Redtenbacher’s laboratory. We dine together; then we go back to the
factory, where we learn, miraculous to relate, that they are just now
embarrassed in their manufacturing process, and, almost certainly, the
product which hinders them--though it is in a very small quantity, and
they take it for sulphate of potash--is no other than racemic acid. I
wish I could give you more details of this eventful day. I was to have
left Vienna to-day, but, as you will understand, I shall stay until I
have unravelled this question. I have already in the laboratory three
kinds of products from the factory. To-morrow night, or the day after, I
shall know what to think....
“You remember what I used to say to you and to M. Dumas, that almost
certainly the first operation which tartar goes through in certain
factories causes it to lose all or nearly all its racemic acid. Well, in
the two Viennese factories, it is only two years since they began to
operate on crude tartar, and it is only two years since they first saw
the supposed sulphate of potash, the supposed sulphate of magnesia. For,
at M. Seybel’s, they had taken for sulphate of magnesia the little
crystals of racemic acid.
“Shortly, this is as far as I have come--I spare you many details:--
1. “The Naples tartar contains racemic acid.
2. “The Austrian tartar (neighbourhood of Vienna) contains racemic acid.
3. “The tartars of Hungary, Croatia, Carniola contain racemic acid.
4. “The tartar of Naples contains notably more than the latter, for it
presents racemic acid even after one refining process, whilst that from
Austria and Hungary only presents it when in the crude state.
“I believe it now to be extremely probable that I shall find some
racemic acid in French tartars, but in very small quantities; and if it
is not detected it is because all the circumstances of the manufacture
of tartaric acid are unknown or unappreciated, or because some little
precaution is neglected that would preserve it or make it visible.
“You see, dear Marie, how useful was my journey.”
“_Vienna, September 30, 1852._ I am not going to Trieste; I shall start
for Prague this evening.”
“_Prague, October 1, 1852._ Here is a startling piece of news. I arrive
in Prague; I settle down in the Hôtel d’Angleterre, have lunch, and call
on M. Rochleder, Professor of chemistry, so that he may introduce me to
the manufacturer. I go to the chemist of the factory, Dr. Rassmann, for
whom I had a letter from M. Redtenbacher, his former master. That letter
contained all the questions that I usually make to the manufacturers of
tartaric acid.
“Dr. Rassmann hardly took time to read the letter; he saw what it dealt
with, and said to me: ‘I have long obtained racemic acid. The Paris
Pharmaceutical Society offered a prize for whoever manufactured it. It
is a product of manufacture; I obtain it with the assistance of tartaric
acid.’ I took the chemist’s hand affectionately, and made him repeat
what he had said. Then I added: ‘You have made one of the greatest
discoveries that it is possible to make in chemistry. Perhaps you do not
realise as I do the full importance of it. But allow me to tell you
that, with my ideas, I look upon that discovery as impossible. I do not
ask for your secret; I shall await the publication of it with the
greatest impatience. So that is really true? You take a kilogramme of
pure tartaric acid, and with that you make racemic acid?’
“‘Yes,’ he said; ‘but it is still’ ... and as he had some difficulty in
expressing himself, I said: ‘It is still surrounded with great
difficulties?’
“‘Yes, monsieur.’
“Great heavens! what a discovery! if he had really done what he says!
But no; it is impossible. There is an abyss to cross, and chemistry is
yet too young.”
_Second letter, same date._ “M. Rassmann is mistaken.... He has never
obtained racemic acid with pure tartaric acid. He does what M.
Fikentscher and the Viennese manufacturers do, with slight differences,
which confirm the general opinion I expressed in my letter to M. Dumas a
few days ago.”
That letter, and also another addressed to Biot, indicated that racemic
acid was formed in varying quantities in the mother-liquor, which
remained after the purification of crude tartars.
“I can at last,” Pasteur wrote from Leipzig to his wife, “turn my steps
again towards France. I want it; I am very weary.”
In an account of this journey in a newspaper called _La Vérité_ there
was this sentence, which amused everybody, Pasteur included: “Never was
treasure sought, never adored beauty pursued over hill and vale with
greater ardour.”
But the hero of scientific adventures was not satisfied. He had foreseen
by the examination of crystalline forms, the correlation between
hemihedral dissymmetry and rotatory power; this was, to his mind, a
happy foresight. He had afterwards succeeded in separating the racemic
acid, inactive on polarized light, into two acids, left and right,
endowed with equal but contrary rotatory powers; this was a discovery
deservedly qualified as memorable by good judges in those matters. Now
he had indicated the mother-liquor as a source of racemic acid, and this
was a precious observation that Kestner, who was specially interested in
the question, confirmed in a letter to the Académie des Sciences
(December, 1852), sending at the same time three large phials of racemic
acid, one of which, made of thin glass, broke in Biot’s hands. But a
great advance, apparently unrealizable, remained yet to be accomplished.
Could not racemic acid be produced by the aid of tartaric acid?
Pasteur himself, as he told the optimist Rassmann, did not believe such
a transformation possible. But, by dint of ingenious patience, of
trials, of efforts of all sorts, he fancied he was nearing the goal. He
wrote to his father: “I am thinking of one thing only, of the hope of a
brilliant discovery which seems not very far. But the result I foresee
is so extraordinary that I dare not believe it.” He told Biot and
Senarmont of this hope. Both seemed to doubt. “I advise you,” wrote
Senarmont, “not to speak until you can say: ‘I obtain racemic acid
artificially with some tartaric acid, of which I have myself verified
the purity; the artificial acid, like the natural, divides itself into
equal equivalents of left and right tartaric acids, and those acids have
the forms, the optical properties, all the chemical properties of those
obtained from the natural acid.’ Do not believe that I want to worry
you; the scruples I have for you I should have for myself; it is well to
be doubly sure when dealing with such a fact.” But with Biot, Senarmont
was less reserved; he believed the thing done. He said so to Biot, who,
prudent and cautious, still desirous of warning Pasteur, wrote to him on
May 27, 1853, speaking of Senarmont: “The affection with which your
work, your perseverance and your moral character have inspired him makes
him desire impossible prodigies for you. My friendship for you is less
hastily hopeful and harder to convince. However, enjoy his friendship
fully, and be as unreserved with him as you are with me. You can do so
in full security; I do not know a stronger character than his. I have
said and repeated to him how happy I am to see the affection he bears
you. For there will be at least one man who will love you and understand
you when I am gone. Farewell; enough sermons for to-day; a man must be
as I am, in his eightieth year, to write such long homilies. Fortunately
you are accustomed to mine, and do not mind them.”
At last, on the first of June, here is the letter announcing the great
fact: “My dear father, I have just sent out the following telegram:
_Monsieur Biot, Collège de France, Paris. I transform tartaric acid into
racemic acid; please inform MM. Dumas and Senarmont._ Here is at last
that racemic acid (which I went to seek at Vienna) artificially obtained
through tartaric acid. I long believed that that transformation was
impossible. This discovery will have incalculable consequences.”
“I congratulate you,” answered Biot on the second of June. “Your
discovery is now complete. M. de Senarmont will be as delighted as I am.
Please congratulate also Mme. Pasteur from me; she must be as pleased as
you.” It was by maintaining tartrate of cinchonin at a high temperature
for several hours that Pasteur had succeeded in transforming tartaric
acid into racemic acid. Without entering here into technical details
(which are to be found in a report of the Paris Pharmaceutical Society,
concerning the prize accorded to Pasteur for the artificial production
of racemic acid) it may be added that he had also produced the neutral
tartaric acid--that is: with no action on polarized light--which
appeared at the expense of racemic acid already formed. There were
henceforth four different tartaric acids:--(1) the right or
dextro-tartaric acid; (2) the left or lævo-tartaric acid; (3) the
combination of the right and the left or racemic acid; and (4) the
meso-tartaric acid, optically inactive.
The reports of the Académie des Sciences also contain accounts of
occasional discoveries, of researches of all kinds accessory to the
history of racemic acid. Thus aspartic acid had caused Pasteur to make a
sudden journey from Strasburg to Vendôme. A chemist named
Dessaignes--who was municipal receiver of that town, and who found time
through sheer love of science for researches on the constitution of
divers substances--had announced a fact which Pasteur wished to verify;
it turned out to be inaccurate.
One whole sitting of the Académie, the third of January, 1853, was given
up to Pasteur’s name and growing achievements.
After all this Pasteur came back to Arbois with the red ribbon of the
Legion of Honour. He had not won it in the same way as his father had,
but he deserved it as fully. Joseph Pasteur, delighting in his
illustrious son, wrote effusively to Biot; indeed the old scientist had
had his share in this act of justice. Biot answered in the following
letter, which is a further revelation of his high and independent ideal
of a scientific career.
“Monsieur, your good heart makes out my share to be greater than it is.
The splendid discoveries made by your worthy and excellent son, his
devotion to science, his indefatigable perseverance, the conscientious
care with which he fulfils the duties of his situation, all this had
made his position such that there was no need to solicit for him what he
had so long deserved. But one might boldly point out that it would be a
real loss to the Order if he were not promptly included within its
ranks. That is what I did, and I am very glad to see that the too long
delay is now at an end. I wished for this all the more as I knew of your
affectionate desire that this act of justice should be done. Allow me to
add, however, that in our profession our real distinction depends on us
alone, fortunately, and not on the favour or indifference of a minister.
In the position that your son has acquired, his reputation will grow
with his work, no other help being needed; and the esteem he already
enjoys, and which will grow day by day, will be accorded to him, without
gainsaying or appeal, by the Grand Jury of scientists of all nations--an
absolutely just tribunal, the only one we recognize.
“Allow me to add to my congratulations the expression of the esteem and
cordial affection with which you have inspired me.”
On his return to Strasburg Pasteur went to live in a house in the Rue
des Couples, which suited him as being near the Académie and his
laboratory; it also had a garden where his children could play. He was
full of projects, and what he called the “spirit of invention” daily
suggested some new undertaking. The neighbourhood of Germany, at that
time a veritable hive of busy bees, was a fertile stimulant to the
French Faculty at Strasburg.
But material means were lacking. When Pasteur received the prize of
1,500 francs given him by the Pharmaceutical Society, he gave up half of
it to buying instruments which the Strasburg laboratory was too poor to
afford. The resources then placed by the State at his disposal by way of
contribution to the expenses of a chemistry class only consisted of
1,200 francs under the heading “class expenses.” Pasteur had to pay the
wages of his laboratory attendant out of it. Now that he was better
provided, thanks to his prize, he renewed his studies on crystals.
Taking up an octahedral crystal, he broke off a piece of it, then
replaced it in its mother-liquor. Whilst the crystal was growing larger
in every direction by a deposit of crystalline particles, a very active
formation was taking place on the mutilated part; after a few hours the
crystal had again assumed its original shape. The healing up of wounds,
said Pasteur, might be compared to that physical phenomenon. Claude
Bernard, much struck later on by these experiments of Pasteur’s and
recalling them with much praise, said in his turn--
“These reconstituting phenomena of crystalline redintegration afford a
complete comparison with those presented by living beings in the case of
a wound more or less deep. In the crystal as in the animal, the damaged
part heals, gradually taking back its original shape, and in both cases
the reformation of tissue is far more active in that particular part
than under ordinary evolutive conditions.”
Thus those two great minds saw affinities hidden under facts apparently
far apart. Other similarities yet more unexpected carried Pasteur away
towards the highest region of speculation. He spoke with enthusiasm of
molecular dissymmetry; he saw it everywhere in the universe. These
studies in dissymmetry gave birth twenty years later to a new science
arising immediately out of his work, viz. stereo-chemistry, or the
chemistry of space. He also saw in molecular dissymmetry the influence
of a great cosmic cause--
“The universe,” he said one day, “is a dissymmetrical whole. I am
inclined to think that life, as manifested to us, must be a function of
the dissymmetry of the universe and of the consequences it produces. The
universe is dissymmetrical; for, if the whole of the bodies which
compose the solar system were placed before a glass moving with their
individual movements, the image in the glass could not be superposed to
the reality. Even the movement of solar life is dissymmetrical. A
luminous ray never strikes in a straight line the leaf where vegetable
life creates organic matter. Terrestrial magnetism, the opposition which
exists between the north and south poles in a magnet, that offered us by
the two electricities positive and negative, are but resultants from
dissymmetrical actions and movements.”
“Life,” he said again, “is dominated by dissymmetrical actions. I can
even foresee that all living species are primordially, in their
structure, in their external forms, functions of cosmic dissymmetry.”
And there appeared to him to be a barrier between mineral or artificial
products and products formed under the influence of life. But he did
not look upon it as an impassable one, and he was careful to say, “It is
a distinction of fact and not of absolute principle.” As nature
elaborates immediate principles of life by means of dissymmetrical
forces, he wished that the chemist should imitate nature, and that,
breaking with methods founded upon the exclusive use of symmetrical
forces, he should bring dissymmetrical forces to bear upon the
production of chemical phenomena. He himself, after using powerful
magnets to attempt to introduce a manifestation of dissymmetry into the
form of crystals, had had a strong clockwork movement constructed, the
object of which was to keep a plant in continual rotatory motion first
in one direction then in another. He also proposed to try to keep a
plant alive, from its germination under the influence of solar rays
reversed by means of a mirror directed by a heliostat.
But Biot wrote to him: “I should like to be able to turn you from the
attempts you wish to make on the influence of magnetism on vegetation.
M. de Senarmont agrees with me. To begin with, you will spend a great
deal on the purchase of instruments with the use of which you are not
familiar, and of which the success is very doubtful. They will take you
away from the fruitful course of experimental researches which you have
followed hitherto, where there is yet so much for you to do, and will
lead you from the certain to the uncertain.”
“Louis is rather too preoccupied with his experiments,” wrote Mme.
Pasteur to her father-in-law; “you know that those he is undertaking
this year will give us, if they succeed, a Newton or a Galileo.”
But success did not come. “My studies are going rather badly,” wrote
Pasteur in his turn (December 30). “I am almost afraid of failing in all
my endeavours this year, and of having no important achievement to
record by the end of next year. I am still hoping, though I suppose it
was rather mad to undertake what I have undertaken.”
Whilst he was thus struggling, an experiment, which for others would
have been a mere chemical curiosity, interested him passionately.
Recalling one day how his first researches had led him to the study of
ferments: “If I place,” he said, “one of the salts of racemic acid,
paratartrate or racemate of ammonia, for instance, in the ordinary
conditions of fermentation, the dextro-tartaric acid alone ferments, the
other remains in the liquor. I may say, in passing, that this is the
best means of preparing lævo-tartaric acid. Why does the
dextro-tartaric acid alone become putrefied? Because the ferments of
that fermentation feed more easily on the right than on the left
molecules.”
“I have done yet more,” he said much later, in a last lecture to the
Chemical Society of Paris; “I have kept alive some little seeds of
_penicillium glaucum_--that mucor which is to be found everywhere--on
the surface of ashes and paratartaric acid and I have seen the
lævo-tartaric acid appear....”
What seemed to him startling in those two experiments was to find
molecular dissymmetry appear as a modifying agent on chemical affinities
in a phenomenon of the physiological order.
By an interesting coincidence it was at the very moment when his studies
were bringing him towards fermentations that he was called to a country
where the local industry was to be the strongest stimulant to his new
researches.
CHAPTER IV
1855--1859
In September, 1854, he was made Professor and Dean of the new Faculté
des Sciences at Lille. “I need not, Sir,” wrote the Minister of Public
Instruction, M. Fortoul, in a letter where private feelings were mixed
with official solemnity, “recall to your mind the importance which is
attached to the success of this new Faculty of Science, situated in a
town which is the richest centre of industrial activity in the north of
France. By giving you the direction of it, I show the entire confidence
which I have placed in you. I am convinced that you will fulfil the
hopes which I have founded upon your zeal.”
Built at the expense of the town, the Faculté was situated in the Rue
des Fleurs. In the opening speech which he pronounced on December 7,
1854, the young Dean expressed his enthusiasm for the Imperial decree of
August 22, which brought two happy innovations into the Faculties of
Science: (1) The pupils might, for a small annual sum, enter the
laboratory and practise the principal experiments carried out before
them at the classes; and (2) a new diploma was created. After two years
of practical and theoretical study the young men who wished to enter an
industrial career could obtain this special diploma and be chosen as
foremen or overseers. Pasteur was overjoyed at being able to do useful
work in that country of distilleries, and to attract large audiences to
the new Faculty. “Where in your families will you find,” he said, to
excite indolent minds--“where will you find a young man whose curiosity
and interest will not immediately be awakened when you put into his
hands a potato, when with that potato he may produce sugar, with that
sugar alcohol, with that alcohol æther and vinegar? Where is he that
will not be happy to tell his family in the evening that he has just
been working out an electric telegraph? And, gentlemen, be convinced of
this, such studies are seldom if ever forgotten. It is somewhat as if
geography were to be taught by travelling; such geography is remembered
because one has seen the places. In the same way your sons will not
forget what the air we breathe contains when they have once analysed it,
when in their hands and under their eyes the admirable properties of its
elements have been resolved.”
After stating his wish to be directly useful to these sons of
manufacturers and to put his laboratory at their disposal, he eloquently
upheld the rights of theory in teaching--
“Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can
bring forth and develop the spirit of invention. It is to you specially
that it will belong not to share the opinion of those narrow minds who
disdain everything in science which has not an immediate application.
You know Franklin’s charming saying? He was witnessing the first
demonstration of a purely scientific discovery, and people round him
said: ‘But what is the use of it?’ Franklin answered them: ‘What is the
use of a new-born child?’ Yes, gentlemen, what is the use of a new-born
child? And yet, perhaps, at that tender age, germs already existed in
you of the talents which distinguish you! In your baby boys, fragile
beings as they are, there are incipient magistrates, scientists, heroes
as valiant as those who are now covering themselves with glory under the
walls of Sebastopol. And thus, gentlemen, a theoretical discovery has
but the merit of its existence: it awakens hope, and that is all. But
let it be cultivated, let it grow, and you will see what it will become.
“Do you know when it first saw the light, this electric telegraph, one
of the most marvellous applications of modern science? It was in that
memorable year, 1822: Oersted, a Danish physicist, held in his hands a
piece of copper wire, joined by its extremities to the two poles of a
Volta pile. On his table was a magnetized needle on its pivot, and he
suddenly saw (by chance you will say, but chance only favours the mind
which is prepared) the needle move and take up a position quite
different from the one assigned to it by terrestrial magnetism. A wire
carrying an electric current deviates a magnetized needle from its
position. That, gentlemen, was the birth of the modern telegraph.
Franklin’s interlocutor might well have said when the needle moved: ‘But
what is the use of that?’ And yet that discovery was barely twenty years
old when it produced by its application the almost supernatural effects
of the electric telegraph!”
The small theatre where Pasteur gave his chemistry lessons soon became
celebrated in the students’ world.
The faults had disappeared with which Pasteur used to reproach himself
when he first taught at Dijon and later at Strasburg. He was sure of
himself, he was clear in his explanations; the chain of thought, the
fitness of words, all was perfect. He made few experiments, but those
were decisive. He endeavoured to bring out every observation or
comparison they might suggest. The pupil who went away delighted from
the class did not suspect the care each of those apparently easy lessons
had cost. When Pasteur had carefully prepared all his notes, he used to
make a summary of them; he had these summaries bound together
afterwards. We may thus sketch the outline of his work; but who will
paint the gesture of demonstration, the movement, the grave penetrating
voice, the life in short?
After a few months the Minister wrote to M. Guillemin, the rector, that
he was much pleased with the success of this Faculty of Sciences at
Lille, “which already owes it to the merit of the teaching--solid and
brilliant at the same time--of that clever Professor, that it is able to
rival the most flourishing Faculties.” The Minister felt he must add
some official advice: “But M. Pasteur must guard against being carried
away by his love for science, and he must not forget that the teaching
of the Faculties, whilst keeping up with scientific theory, should, in
order to produce useful and far-reaching results, appropriate to itself
the special applications suitable to the real wants of the surrounding
country.”
A year after the inauguration of the new Faculty, Pasteur wrote to
Chappuis: “Our classes are very well attended; I have 250 to 300 people
at my most popular lectures, and we have twenty-one pupils entered for
laboratory experiments. I believe that this year, like last year, Lille
holds the first rank for that innovation, for I am told that at Lyons
there were but eight entries.” It was indeed a success to distance
Lyons. “The zeal of all is a pleasure to watch (January, 1856). It
reaches that point that four of the professors take the trouble to have
their manuscript lessons printed; there are already 120 subscribers for
the course of applied mechanics.
“Our building is fortunately completed; it is large and handsome, but
will soon become insufficient owing to the progress of practical
teaching.
“We are very comfortably settled on the first floor, and I have (on the
ground floor immediately below) what I have always wished for, a
laboratory where I can go at any time. This week, for instance, the gas
remains on, and operations follow their course whilst I am in bed. In
this way I try to make up a little of the time which I have to give to
the direction of all the rather numerous departments in our Faculties.
Add to this that I am a member of two very active societies, and that I
have been entrusted, at the suggestion of the Conseil-Général,[24] with
the testing of manures for the département of the Nord, a considerable
work in this rich agricultural land, but one which I have accepted
eagerly, so as to popularize and enlarge the influence of our young
Faculty.
“Do not fear lest all this should keep me from the studies I love. I
shall not give them up, and I trust that what is already accomplished
will grow without my help, with the growth that time gives to everything
that has within it the germ of life. Let us all work; that only is
enjoyable. I am quoting M. Biot, who certainly is an authority on that
subject. You saw the share he took the other day in a great discussion
at the Académie des Sciences; his presence of mind, high reasoning
powers, and youthfulness were magnificent, and he is eighty-four!”
In a mere study on Pasteur as a scientific man, the way in which he
understood his duties as Dean would only be a secondary detail. It is
not so here, the very object of this book being to paint what he was in
all the circumstances, all the trials of life. Besides his professional
obligations, his kindness in leaving his laboratory, however hard the
sacrifice, bears witness to an ever present devotion. For instance, he
took his pupils round factories and foundries at Aniche, Denain,
Valenciennes, St. Omer. In July, 1856, he organized for the same pupils
a tour in Belgium. He took them to visit factories, iron foundries,
steel and metal works, questioning the foremen with his insatiable
curiosity, pleased to induce in his tall students a desire to learn. All
returned from these trips with more pleasure in their work; some with
the fiery enthusiasm that Pasteur wished to see.
The sentence in his Lille speech, “in the fields of observation, chance
only favours the mind which is prepared,” was particularly applicable to
him. In the summer of 1856 a Lille manufacturer, M. Bigo, had, like many
others that same year, met with great disappointments in the manufacture
of beetroot alcohol. He came to the young Dean for advice. The prospect
of doing a kindness, of communicating the results of his observations to
the numerous hearers who crowded the small theatre of the Faculty, and
of closely studying the phenomena of fermentation which preoccupied him
to such a degree, caused Pasteur to consent to make some experiments. He
spent some time almost daily at the factory. On his return to his
laboratory--where he only had a student’s microscope and a most
primitive coke-fed stove--he examined the globules in the fermentation
juice, he compared filtered with non-filtered beetroot juice, and
conceived stimulating hypotheses often to be abandoned in face of a fact
in contradiction with them. Above some note made a few days previously,
where a suggested hypothesis had not been verified by fact, he would
write: “error,” “erroneous,” for he was implacable in his criticism of
himself.
M. Bigo’s son, who studied in Pasteur’s laboratory, has summed up in a
letter how these accidents of manufacture became a starting point to
Pasteur’s investigations on fermentation, particularly alcoholic
fermentation. “Pasteur had noticed through the microscope that the
globules were round when fermentation was healthy, that they lengthened
when alteration began, and were quite long when fermentation became
lactic. This very simple method allowed us to watch the process and to
avoid the failures in fermentation which we used so often to meet
with.... I had the good fortune to be many times the confidant of the
enthusiasms and disappointments of a great man of science.” Young Bigo
indeed remembered the series of experiments, the numerous observations
noted, and how Pasteur, whilst studying the causes of those failures in
the distillery, had wondered whether he was not confronted with a
general fact, common to all fermentations. Pasteur was on the road to a
discovery the consequences of which were to revolutionize chemistry.
During months and months he worked to assure himself that he was not a
prey to error.
In order to appreciate the importance of the ideas which from that
small laboratory were about to inundate the world, and in order to take
account of the effort necessitated to obtain the triumph of a theory
which was to become a doctrine, it is necessary to go back to the
teachings of that time upon the subject of fermentations. All was
darkness, pierced in 1836 by a momentary ray of light. The physicist
Cagniard-Latour, studying the ferment of beer called yeast, had observed
that that ferment was composed of cells “susceptible of reproduction by
a sort of budding, and probably acting on sugar through some effect of
their vegetation.” Almost at the same time the German doctor Schwann was
making analogous observations. However, as the fact seemed isolated,
nothing similar being met with elsewhere, Cagniard-Latour’s remark was
but a curious parenthesis in the history of fermentations.
When such men as J. B. Dumas said that perhaps there might be a sequel
to Cagniard-Latour’s statement, they emitted the idea so timidly that,
in a book _On Contagion_ published at Montpellier in 1853, Anglada, the
well known author, expressed himself thus--
“M. Dumas, who is an authority, looks upon the act of fermentation as
_strange and obscure_; he declares that it gives rise to phenomena the
knowledge of which is only tentative at present. Such a competent
affirmation is of a nature to discourage those who claim to unravel the
mysteries of contagion by the comparative study of fermentation. What is
the advantage of explaining one through the other since both are equally
mysterious!” This word, _obscure_, was to be found everywhere. Claude
Bernard used the same epithet at the Collège de France in March, 1850,
to qualify those phenomena.
Four months before the request of the Lille manufacturer, Pasteur
himself, preparing on a loose sheet of paper a lesson on fermentation,
had written these words: “What does fermentation consist of?--Mysterious
character of the phenomenon.--A word on lactic acid.” Did he speak in
that lesson of his ideas of future experiments? Did he insist upon the
mystery he intended to unveil? With his powers of concentration it is
probable that he restrained himself and decided to wait another year.
The theories of Berzelius and of Liebig then reigned supreme. To the
mind of Berzelius, the Swedish chemist, fermentation was due to contact.
It was said that there was a catalytic force. In his opinion, what
Cagniard-Latour believed he had seen, was but “an immediate vegetable
principle, which became precipitated during the fermentation of beer,
and which, in precipitating, presented forms analogous to the simpler
forms of vegetable life, but formation does not constitute life.”
In the view of the German chemist Liebig, chemical decomposition was
produced by influence: the ferment was an extremely alterable organic
substance which decomposed, and in decomposing set in motion, by the
rupture of its own elements, the molecules of the fermentative matter;
it was the dead portion of the yeast, that which had lived and was being
altered, which acted upon the sugar. These theories were adopted,
taught, and to be found in all treatises on chemistry.
* * * * *
A vacancy at the Académie des Sciences took Pasteur away from his
students for a time and obliged him to go to Paris. Biot, Dumas, Balard
and Senarmont had insisted upon his presenting himself in the section of
mineralogy. He felt himself unfit for the candidature. He was as
incapable of election manœuvres as he was full of his subject when he
had to convince an interlocutor or to interest an audience in his works
on crystallography. (These works had just procured the bestowal on him
of the great Rumford medal, conferred by the London Royal Society.)
During this detested canvassing campaign he had one happy day: he was
present on February 5, 1857, at the reception of Biot by the Académie
Française.
Biot, who had entered the Académie des Sciences fifty-four years
earlier, and was now the oldest member of the Institute, took advantage
of his great age to distribute, in the course of his speech, a good deal
of wise counsel, much applauded by Pasteur from the ranks of the
audience. Biot, with his calm irony, aimed this epigram at men of
science who disdained letters: “Their science was not the more apparent
through their want of literary culture.” He ended by remarks which
formed a continuation of his last letter to Pasteur’s father. Making an
appeal to those whose high ambition is to consecrate themselves to pure
science, he proudly said: “Perhaps your name, your existence will be
unknown to the crowd. But you will be known, esteemed, sought after by a
small number of eminent men scattered over the face of the earth, your
rivals, your peers in the intellectual Senate of minds; they alone have
the right to appreciate you and to assign to you your rank, a
well-merited rank, which no princely will, no popular caprice can give
or take away, and which will remain yours as long as you remain faithful
to Science, which bestows it upon you.”
Guizot, to whom it fell to welcome Biot to the Académie, rendered homage
to his independence, to his worship of disinterested research, to his
ready counsels. “The events which have overturned everything around
you,” he said, “have never turned the course of your free and firm
judgment, or of your peaceful labours.” On that occasion the decline of
Biot’s life seemed like a beautiful summer evening in the north, before
nightfall, when a soft light still envelops all things. No disciple ever
felt more emotion than Pasteur when participating in that last joy of
his aged master. In Regnault’s laboratory, a photograph had been taken
of Biot seated with bent head and a weary attitude, but with the old
sparkle in his eyes. Biot offered it to Pasteur, saying: “If you place
this proof near a portrait of your father, you will unite the pictures
of two men who have loved you very much in the same way.”
Pasteur, between two canvassing visits, gave himself the pleasure of
going to hear a young professor that every one was then speaking of. “I
have just been to a lecture by Rigault, at the Collège de France,” he
wrote on March 6, 1857. “The room is too small, it is a struggle to get
in. I have come away delighted; it is a splendid success for the
Université, there is nothing to add, nothing to retrench. Fancy a
professor in one of the Paris _lycées_ making such a début at the
Collège de France!”
Pasteur preferred Rigault to St. Marc Girardin. “And Rigault is only
beginning!” But, under Rigault’s elegance and apparent ease, lurked
perpetual constraint. One day that St. Marc Girardin was congratulating
him, “Ah,” said Rigault, “you do not see the steel corsets that I wear
when I am speaking!” That comparison suited his delicate, ingenious,
slightly artificial mind, never unrestrained even in simple
conversation, at the same time conscientious and self-conscious. He who
had once written that “Life is a work of art to be fashioned by a
skilful hand if the faculties of the mind are to be fully enjoyed,” made
the mistake of forcing his nature. He died a few months after that
lecture.
Pasteur’s enthusiastic lines about Rigault show the joy he felt at the
success of others. He did not understand envy, ill-will, or jealousy,
and was more than astonished, indeed amazed, when he came across such
feelings. One day that he had read an important paper at the Académie
des Sciences, “Would you believe it,” he wrote to his father, “I met a
Paris Professor of chemistry the very next day, whom I know to have been
present, who had indeed come purposely to hear my reading, and he never
said a word! I then remembered a saying of M. Biot’s: ‘When a colleague
reads a paper and no one speaks to him about it afterwards, it is
because it has been thought well of....’”
The election was at hand. Pasteur wrote (March 11): “My dear father, I
am certain to fail.” He thought he might count upon twenty votes; thirty
were necessary. He resigned himself philosophically. His candidature
would at any rate bring his works into greater prominence. In spite of a
splendid report by Senarmont, enumerating the successive steps by which
Pasteur had risen since his first discoveries concerning the connection
between internal structure and external crystalline forms, Pasteur only
obtained sixteen votes.
On his return to Lille he set to work with renewed energy; he took up
again his study of fermentations, and in particular that of sour milk,
called lactic fermentation; he made notes of his experiments day by day;
he drew in a notebook the little globules, the tiny bodies that he found
in a grey substance sometimes arranged in a zone. Those globules, much
smaller than those of yeast, had escaped the observation of chemists and
naturalists because it was easy to confound them with other products of
lactic fermentation. After isolating and then scattering in a liquid a
trace of that grey substance, Pasteur saw some well-characterized lactic
fermentation appear. That matter, that grey substance was indeed the
ferment.
Whilst all the writings of the chemists who followed in the train of
Liebig and Berzelius united in rejecting the idea of an influence of
life in the cause of fermentations, Pasteur recognized therein a
phenomenon correlative to life. That special lactic yeast, Pasteur could
see budding, multiplying, and offering the same phenomena of
reproduction as beer yeast.
It was not to the Académie des Sciences, as is generally believed, that
Pasteur sent the paper on lactic fermentation, the fifteen pages of
which contained such curious and unexpected facts. With much delicacy of
feeling, Pasteur made to the Lille Scientific Society this communication
(August, 1857) which the Académie des Sciences only saw three months
later.
How was it that he desired to leave this Faculty at Lille to which he
had rendered such valuable service? The Ecole Normale was going through
difficult times. “In my opinion,” wrote Pasteur with a sadness that
betrayed his attachment to the great school, “of all the objects of care
to the authorities, the Ecole Normale should be the first; it is now but
the shadow of its former self.” He who so often said, “Do not dwell upon
things already acquired!” thought that the Lille Faculty was henceforth
sure of its future and needed him no longer. Was it not better to come
to the assistance of the threatened weak point? At the Ministry of
Public Instruction his wish was understood and approved of. Nisard had
just been made Director of the Ecole Normale with high and supreme
powers; his sub-director of literary studies was M. Jacquinet. The
administration was reserved for Pasteur, who was also entrusted with the
direction of the scientific studies. To that task were added “the
surveillance of the economic and hygienic management, the care of
general discipline, intercourse with the families of the pupils and the
literary or scientific establishments frequented by them.”
The rector of the Lille Faculty announced in these terms the departure
of the Dean: “Our Faculty loses a professor and a scientist of the very
first order. You have yourselves, gentlemen, been able to appreciate
more than once all the vigour and clearness of that mind at once so
powerful and so capable.”
At the Ecole Normale, Pasteur’s labours were not at first seconded by
material convenience. The only laboratory in the Rue d’Ulm building was
occupied by Henri Sainte Claire Deville who, in 1851, had taken the
place of Balard, the latter leaving the Ecole Normale for the Collège de
France. Dark rooms, a very few instruments, and a credit of 1,800 francs
a year, that was all Sainte Claire Deville had been able to obtain. It
would have seemed like a dream to Pasteur. He had to organize his
scientific installation in two attics under the roof of the Ecole
Normale; he had no assistance of any kind, not even that of an ordinary
laboratory attendant. But his courage was not of the kind which
evaporates at the first obstacle, and no difficulty could have kept him
from work: he climbed the stairs leading to his pseudo-laboratory with
all the cheerfulness of a soldier’s son. Biot--who had been grieved to
see the chemist Laurent working in a sort of cellar, where that
scientist’s health suffered (he died at forty-three)--was angry that
Pasteur should be relegated to an uninhabitable garret. Neither did he
understand the “economic and hygienic surveillance” attributed to
Pasteur. He hoped Pasteur would reduce to their just proportions those
secondary duties. “They have made him an administrator,” he said with
mock pomposity; “let them believe that he will administrate.” Biot was
mistaken. The _de minimis non curat_ did not exist for Pasteur.
On one of his agenda leaves, besides subjects for lectures, we find
notes such as these: “Catering; ascertain what weight of meat per pupil
is given out at the Ecole Polytechnique. Courtyard to be strewn with
sand. Ventilation of classroom. Dining hall door to be repaired.” Each
detail was of importance in his eyes, when the health of the students
was in question.
He inaugurated his garret by some work almost as celebrated as that on
lactic fermentation. In December, 1857, he presented to the Académie des
Sciences a paper on alcoholic fermentation. “I have submitted,” he said,
“alcoholic fermentation to the method of experimentation indicated in
the notes which I recently had the honour of presenting to the Académie.
The results of those labours should be put on the same lines, for they
explain and complete each other.” And in conclusion: “The deduplication
of sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid is correlative to a phenomenon
of life, an organization of globules....”
The reports of the Académie des Sciences for 1858 show how Pasteur
recognized complex phenomena in alcoholic fermentation. Whilst chemists
were content to say: “So much sugar gives so much alcohol and so much
carbonic acid,” Pasteur went further. He wrote to Chappuis in June: “I
find that alcoholic fermentation is constantly accompanied by the
production of glycerine; it is a very curious fact. For instance, in one
litre of wine there are several grammes of that product which had not
been suspected.” Shortly before that he had also recognized the normal
presence in alcoholic fermentation of succinic acid. “I should be
pursuing the consequences of these facts,” he added, “if a temperature
of 36° C. did not keep me from my laboratory. I regret to see the
longest days in the year lost to me. Yet I have grown accustomed to my
attic, and I should be sorry to leave it. Next holidays I hope to
enlarge it. You too are struggling against material hindrances in your
work; let it stimulate us, my dear fellow, and not discourage us. Our
discoveries will have the greater merit.”
The year 1859 was given up to examining further facts concerning
fermentation. Whence came those ferments, those microscopic bodies,
those transforming agents, so weak in appearance, so powerful in
reality? Great problems were working in his mind; but he was careful not
to propound them hastily, for he was the most timid, the most hesitating
of men until he held proofs in his hands. “In experimental science,” he
wrote, “it is always a mistake not to doubt when facts do not compel you
to affirm.”
In September he lost his eldest daughter. She died of typhoid fever at
Arbois, where she was staying with her grandfather. On December 30
Pasteur wrote to his father: “I cannot keep my thoughts from my poor
little girl, so good, so happy in her little life, whom this fatal year
now ending has taken away from us. She was growing to be such a
companion to her mother and to me, to us all.... But forgive me, dearest
father, for recalling these sad memories. She is happy; let us think of
those who remain and try as much as lies in our power to keep from them
the bitterness of this life.”
CHAPTER V
1860--1864
On January 30, 1860, the Académie des Sciences conferred on Pasteur the
Prize for Experimental Physiology. Claude Bernard, who drew up the
report, recalled how much Pasteur’s experiments in alcoholic
fermentation, lactic fermentation, the fermentation of tartaric acid,
had been appreciated by the Académie. He dwelt upon the great
physiological interest of the results obtained. “It is,” he concluded,
“by reason of that physiological tendency in Pasteur’s researches, that
the Commission has unanimously selected him for the 1859 Prize for
Experimental Physiology.”
That same January, Pasteur wrote to Chappuis: “I am pursuing as best I
can these studies on fermentation which are of great interest, connected
as they are with the impenetrable mystery of Life and Death. I am hoping
to mark a decisive step very soon by solving, without the least
confusion, the celebrated question of spontaneous generation. Already I
could speak, but I want to push my experiments yet further. There is so
much obscurity, together with so much passion, on both sides, that I
shall require the accuracy of an arithmetical problem to convince my
opponents by my conclusions. I intend to attain even that.”
This progress was depicted to his father in the following letter, dated
February 7, 1860--
“I think I told you that I should read a second and last lecture on my
old researches on Friday, at the Chemical Society, before several
members of the Institute--amongst others, Messrs. Dumas and Claude
Bernard. That lecture has had the same success as the first. M. Biot
heard about it the next day through some distinguished persons who were
in the audience, and sent for me in order to kindly express his great
satisfaction.
“After I had finished, M. Dumas, who occupied the chair, rose and
addressed me in these words. After praising the zeal I had brought to
this novel kind of teaching at the Society’s request, and the _so great
penetration I had given proof of, in the course of the work I had just
expounded, he added, ‘The Académie, sir, rewarded you a few days ago for
other profound researches; your audience of this evening will applaud
you as one of the most distinguished professors we possess._’
“All I have underlined was said in those very words by M. Dumas, and was
followed by great applause.
“All the students of the scientific section of the Ecole Normale were
present; they felt deeply moved and several of them have expressed their
emotion to me.
“As for myself, I saw the realization of what I had foreseen. You know
how I have always told you confidentially that time would see the growth
of my researches on the molecular dissymmetry of natural organic
products. Founded as they were on varied notions borrowed from divers
branches of science--crystallography, physics, and chemistry--those
studies could not be followed by most scientists so as to be fully
understood. On this occasion I presented them in the aggregate with some
clearness and power and every one was struck by their importance.
“It is not by their form that these two lectures have delighted my
hearers, it is by their contents; it is the future reserved to those
great results, so unexpected, and opening such entirely new vistas to
physiology. I have dared to say so, for at these heights all sense of
personality disappears, and there only remains that sense of dignity
which is ever inspired by true love of science.
“God grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a little stone to
the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep
mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably
failed.
“P.S.--Yesterday I presented to the Academy my researches on spontaneous
generation; they seemed to produce a great sensation. More later.”
When Biot heard that Pasteur wished to tackle this study of spontaneous
generation, he interposed, as he had done seven years before, to arrest
him on the verge of his audacious experiments on the part played by
dissymmetrical forces in the development of life. Vainly Pasteur,
grieved at Biot’s disapprobation, explained that this question, in the
course of such researches, had become an imperious necessity; Biot
would not be convinced. But Pasteur, in spite of his quasi-filial
attachment to Biot, could not stop where he was; he had to go through to
the end.
“You will never find your way out,” cried Biot.
“I shall try,” said Pasteur modestly.
Angry and anxious, Biot wished Pasteur to promise that he would
relinquish these apparently hopeless researches. J. B. Dumas, to whom
Pasteur related the more than discouraging remonstrances of Biot,
entrenched himself behind this cautious phrase--
“I would advise no one to dwell too long on such a subject.”
Senarmont alone, full of confidence in the ingenious curiosity of the
man who could read nature by dint of patience, said that Pasteur should
be allowed his own way.
It is regrettable that Biot--whose passion for reading was so
indefatigable that he complained of not finding enough books in the
library at the Institute--should not have thought of writing the history
of this question of spontaneous generation. He could have gone back to
Aristotle, quoted Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Pliny. Philosophers, poets,
naturalists, all believed in spontaneous generation. Time went on, and
it was still believed in. In the sixteenth century, Van Helmont--who
should not be judged by that one instance--gave a celebrated recipe to
create mice: any one could work that prodigy by putting some dirty linen
in a receptacle, together with a few grains of wheat or a piece of
cheese. Some time later an Italian, Buonanni, announced a fact no less
fantastic: certain timberwood, he said, after rotting in the sea,
produced worms which engendered butterflies, and those butterflies
became birds.
Another Italian, less credulous, a poet and a physician, Francesco Redi,
belonging to a learned society calling itself The Academy of Experience,
resolved to carefully study one of those supposed phenomena of
spontaneous generation. In order to demonstrate that the worms found in
rotten meat did not appear spontaneously, he placed a piece of gauze
over the meat. Flies, attracted by the odour, deposited their eggs on
the gauze. From those eggs were hatched the worms, which had until then
been supposed to begin life spontaneously in the flesh itself. This
simple experiment marked some progress. Later on another Italian, a
medical professor of Padua, Vallisneri, recognized that the grub in a
fruit is also hatched from an egg deposited by an insect before the
development of the fruit.
The theory of spontaneous generation, still losing ground, appeared to
be vanquished when the invention of the microscope at the end of the
seventeenth century brought fresh arguments to its assistance. Whence
came those thousands of creatures, only distinguishable on the slide of
the microscope, those infinitely small beings which appeared in rain
water as in any infusion of organic matter when exposed to the air? How
could they be explained otherwise than through spontaneous generation,
those bodies capable of producing 1,000,000 descendants in less than
forty-eight hours.
The world of salons and of minor courts was pleased to have an opinion
on this question. The Cardinal of Polignac, a diplomat and a man of
letters, wrote in his leisure moments a long Latin poem entitled the
_Anti-Lucretius_. After scouting Lucretius and other philosophers of the
same school, the cardinal traced back to one Supreme Foresight the
mechanism and organization of the entire world. By ingenious
developments and circumlocutions, worthy of the Abbé Delille, the
cardinal, while vaunting the wonders of the microscope, which he called
“eye of our eye,” saw in it only another prodigy offered us by Almighty
Wisdom. Of all those accumulated and verified arguments, this simple
notion stood out: “The earth, which contains numberless germs, has not
produced them. Everything in this world has its germ or seed.”
Diderot, who disseminated so many ideas (since borrowed by many people
and used as if originated by them), wrote in some tumultuous pages on
nature: “Does living matter combine with living matter? how? and with
what result? And what about dead matter?”
About the middle of the eighteenth century the problem was again raised
on scientific ground. Two priests, one an Englishman, Needham, and the
other an Italian, Spallanzani, entered the lists. Needham, a great
partisan of spontaneous generation, studied with Buffon some microscopic
animalculæ. Buffon afterwards built up a whole system which became
fashionable at that time. The force which Needham found in matter, a
force which he called productive or vegetative, and which he regarded as
charged with the formation of the organic world, Buffon explained by
saying that there are certain primitive and incorruptible parts common
to animals and to vegetables. These organic molecules cast themselves
into the moulds or shapes which constituted different beings. When one
of those moulds was destroyed by death, the organic molecules became
free; ever active, they worked the putrefied matter, appropriating to
themselves some raw particles and forming, said Buffon, “by their
reunion, a multitude of little organized bodies, of which some, like
earthworms, and fungi, seem to be fair-sized animals or vegetables, but
of which others, in almost infinite numbers, can only be seen through
the microscope.”
All those bodies, according to him, only existed through spontaneous
generation. Spontaneous generation takes place continually and
universally after death and sometimes during life. Such was in his view
the origin of intestinal worms. And, carrying his investigations
further, he added, “The eels in flour paste, those of vinegar, all those
so-called microscopic animals, are but different shapes taken
spontaneously, according to circumstances, by that ever active matter
which only tends to organization.”
The Abbé Spallanzani, armed with a microscope, studied these
infinitesimal beings. He tried to distinguish them and their mode of
life. Needham had affirmed that by enclosing putrescible matter in vases
and by placing those vases on warm ashes, he produced animalculæ.
Spallanzani suspected: firstly that Needham had not exposed the vases to
a sufficient degree of heat to kill the seeds which were inside; and
secondly, that seeds could easily have entered those vases and given
birth to animalculæ, for Needham had only closed his vases with cork
stoppers, which are very porous.
“I repeated that experiment with more accuracy,” wrote Spallanzani. “I
used hermetically sealed vases. I kept them for an hour in boiling
water, and after having opened them and examined their contents within a
reasonable time I found not the slightest trace of animalculæ, though I
had examined with the microscope the infusions from nineteen different
vases.”
Thus dropped to the ground, in Spallanzani’s eyes, Needham’s singular
theory, this famous vegetative force, this occult virtue. Yet Needham
did not own himself beaten. He retorted that Spallanzani had much
weakened, perhaps destroyed, the vegetative force of the infused
substances by leaving his vases in boiling water during an hour. He
advised him to try with less heat.
The public took an interest in this quarrel. In an opuscule entitled
_Singularities of Nature_ (1769), Voltaire, a born journalist, laughed
at Needham, whom he turned into an Irish Jesuit to amuse his readers.
Joking on this race of so-called eels which began life in the gravy of
boiled mutton, he said: “At once several philosophers exclaimed at the
wonder and said, ‘There is no germ; all is made, all is regenerated by a
vital force of nature.’ ‘Attraction,’ said one; ‘Organized matter,’ said
another, ‘they are organic molecules which have found their casts.’
Clever physicists were taken in by a Jesuit.”
In those pages, lightly penned, nothing remained of what Voltaire called
“the ridiculous mistake, the unfortunate experiments of Needham, so
triumphantly refuted by M. Spallanzani and rejected by whoever has
studied nature at all.” “It is now demonstrated to sight and to reason
that there is no vegetable, no animal but has its own germ.” In his
_Philosophic Dictionary_, at the word God, “It is very strange,” said
Voltaire, “that men should deny a creator and yet attribute to
themselves the power of creating eels!” The Abbé Needham, meeting with
these religious arguments, rather unexpected from Voltaire, endeavoured
to prove that the hypothesis of spontaneous generation was in perfect
accordance with religious beliefs. But both on Needham’s side and on
Spallanzani’s there was a complete lack of conclusive proofs.
Philosophic argumentation always returned to the fore. As recently as
1846 Ernest Bersot (a moralist who became later a director of the Ecole
Normale) wrote in his book on Spiritualism: “The doctrine of spontaneous
generation pleases simplicity-loving minds; it leads them far beyond
their own expectations. But it is yet only a private opinion, and, were
it recognized, its virtue would have to be limited and narrowed down to
the production of a few inferior animals.”
That doctrine was about to be noisily re-introduced.
* * * * *
On December 20, 1858, a correspondent of the Institute, M. Pouchet,
director of the Natural History Museum of Rouen, sent to the Académie
des Sciences a _Note on Vegetable and Animal Proto-organisms
spontaneously Generated in Artificial Air and in Oxygen Gas_. The note
began thus: “At this time when, seconded by the progress of science,
several naturalists are endeavouring to reduce the domain of spontaneous
generation or even to deny its existence altogether, I have undertaken a
series of researches with the object of elucidating this vexed
question.” Pouchet, declaring that he had taken excessive precautions to
preserve his experiments from any cause of error, proclaimed that he was
prepared to demonstrate that “animals and plants could be generated in a
medium absolutely free from atmospheric air, and in which, therefore, no
germ of organic bodies could have been brought by air.”
On one copy of that communication, the opening of a four years’
scientific campaign, Pasteur had underlined the passages which he
intended to submit to rigorous experimentation. The scientific world was
discussing the matter; Pasteur set himself to work.
A new installation, albeit a summary one, allowed him to attempt some
delicate experiments. At one of the extremities of the façade of the
Ecole Normale, on the same line as the doorkeeper’s lodge, a pavilion
had been built for the school architect and his clerk. Pasteur succeeded
in obtaining possession of this small building, and transformed it into
a laboratory. He built a drying stove under the staircase; though he
could only reach the stove by crawling on his knees, yet this was better
than his old attic. He also had a pleasant surprise--he was given a
curator. He had deserved one sooner, for he had founded the institution
of _agrégés préparateurs_. Remembering his own desire, on leaving the
Ecole Normale, to have a year or two for independent study, he had
wished to facilitate for others the obtaining of those few years of
research and perhaps inspiration. Thanks to him, five places as
laboratory curators were exclusively reserved to Ecole Normale students
who had taken their degree (_agrégés_). The first curator who entered
the new laboratory was Jules Raulin, a young man with a clear and
sagacious mind, a calm and tenacious character, loving difficulties for
the sake of overcoming them.
Pasteur began by the microscopic study of atmospheric air. “If germs
exist in atmosphere,” he said, “could they not be arrested on their
way?” It then occurred to him to draw--through an aspirator--a current
of outside air through a tube containing a little plug of cotton wool.
The current as it passed deposited on this sort of filter some of the
solid corpuscles contained in the air; the cotton wool often became
black with those various kinds of dust. Pasteur assured himself that
amongst various detritus those dusts presented spores and germs. “There
are therefore in the air some organized corpuscles. Are they germs
capable of vegetable productions, or of infusions? That is the question
to solve.” He undertook a series of experiments to demonstrate that the
most putrescible liquid remained pure indefinitely if placed out of the
reach of atmospheric dusts. But it was sufficient to place in a pure
liquid a particle of the cotton-wool filter to obtain an immediate
alteration.
A year before starting any discussion Pasteur wrote to Pouchet that the
results which he had attained were “not founded on facts of a faultless
exactitude. I think you are wrong, not in believing in spontaneous
generation (for it is difficult in such a case not to have a
preconceived idea), but in affirming the existence of spontaneous
generation. In experimental science it is always a mistake not to doubt
when facts do not compel affirmation.... In my opinion, the question is
whole and untouched by decisive proofs. What is there in air which
provokes organization? Are they germs? is it a solid? is it a gas? is it
a fluid? is it a principle such as ozone? All this is unknown and
invites experiment.”
After a year’s study, Pasteur reached this conclusion: “Gases, fluids,
electricity, magnetism, ozone, things known or things occult, there is
nothing in the air that is conditional to life, except the germs that it
carries.”
Pouchet defended himself vigorously. To suppose that germs came from air
seemed to him impossible. How many millions of loose eggs or spores
would then be contained in a cubic millimetre of atmospheric air?
“What will be the outcome of this giant’s struggle?” grandiloquently
wrote an editor of the _Moniteur Scientifique_ (April, 1860). Pouchet
answered this anonymous writer by advising him to accept the doctrine of
spontaneous generation adopted of old by so many “men of genius.”
Pouchet’s principal disciple was a lover of science and of letters, M.
Nicolas Joly, an _agrégé_ of natural science, doctor of medicine, and
professor of physiology at Toulouse. He himself had a pupil, Charles
Musset, who was preparing a thesis for his doctor’s degree under the
title: _New Experimental Researches on Heterogenia, or Spontaneous
Generation_. By the words heterogenia or spontaneous generation Joly
and Musset agreed in affirming that “they did not mean a creation out of
nothing, but the production of a new organized being, lacking parents,
and of which the primordial elements are drawn from ambient organic
matter.”
Thus supported, Pouchet multiplied objections to the views of Pasteur,
who had to meet every argument. Pasteur intended to narrow more and more
the sphere of discussion. It was an ingenious operation to take the
dusts from a cotton-wool filter, to disseminate them in a liquid, and
thus to determine the alteration of that liquid; but the cotton wool
itself was an organic substance and might be suspected. He therefore
substituted for the cotton wool a plug of asbestos fibre, a mineral
substance. He invented little glass flasks with a long curved neck; he
filled them with an alterable liquid, which he deprived of germs by
ebullition; the flask was in communication with the outer air through
its curved tube, but the atmospheric germs were deposited in the curve
of the neck without reaching the liquid; in order that alteration should
take place, the vessel had to be inclined until the point where the
liquid reached the dusts in the neck.
But Pouchet said, “How could germs contained in the air be numerous
enough to develop in every organic infusion? Such a crowd of them would
produce a thick mist as dense as iron.” Of all the difficulties this
last seemed to Pasteur the hardest to solve. Could it not be that the
dissemination of germs was more or less thick according to places?
“Then,” cried the heterogenists, “there would be sterile zones and
fecund zones, a most convenient hypothesis, indeed!” Pasteur let them
laugh whilst he was preparing a series of flasks reserved for divers
experiments. If spontaneous generation existed, it should invariably
occur in vessels filled with the same alterable liquid. “Yet it is ever
possible,” affirmed Pasteur, “to take up in certain places a notable
though limited volume of ordinary air, having been submitted to no
physical or chemical change, and still absolutely incapable of producing
any alteration in an eminently putrescible liquor.” He was ready to
prove that nothing was easier than to increase or to reduce the number
either of the vessels where productions should appear or of the vessels
where those productions should be lacking. After introducing into a
series of flasks of a capacity of 250 cubic centimetres a very easily
corrupted liquid, such as yeast water, he submitted each flask to
ebullition. The neck of those vessels was ended off in a vertical point.
Whilst the liquid was still boiling, he closed, with an enameller’s
lamp, the pointed opening through which the steam had rushed out, taking
with it all the air contained in the vessel. Those flasks were indeed
calculated to satisfy both partisans or adversaries of spontaneous
generation. If the extremity of the neck of one of these vessels was
suddenly broken, all the ambient air rushed into the flask, bringing in
all the suspended dusts; the bulb was closed again at once with the
assistance of a jet of flame. Pasteur could then carry it away and place
it in a temperature of 25-30° C., quite suitable for the development of
germs and mucors.
In those series of tests some flasks showed some alteration, others
remained pure, according to the place where the air had been admitted.
During the beginning of the year 1860 Pasteur broke his bulb points and
enclosed ordinary air in many different places, including the cellars of
the Observatory of Paris. There, in that zone of an invariable
temperature, the absolutely calm air could not be compared to the air he
gathered in the yard of the same building. The results were also very
different: out of ten vessels opened in the cellar, closed again and
placed in the stove, only one showed any alteration; whilst eleven
others, opened in the yard, all yielded organized bodies.
In a letter to his father (June, 1860), Pasteur wrote: “I have been
prevented from writing by my experiments, which continue to be very
curious. But it is such a wide subject that I have almost too many ideas
of experiments. I am still being contradicted by two naturalists, M.
Pouchet of Rouen and M. Joly of Toulouse. But I do not waste my time in
answering them; they may say what they like, truth is on my side. They
do not know how to experiment; it is not an easy art; it demands,
besides certain natural qualities, a long practice which naturalists
have not generally acquired nowadays.”
When the long vacation approached, Pasteur, who intended to go on a
voyage of experiments, laid in a store of glass flasks. He wrote to
Chappuis, on August 10, 1860: “I fear from your letter that you will not
go to the Alps this year.... Besides the pleasure of having you for a
guide, I had hoped to utilize your love of science by offering you the
modest part of curator. It is by some study of air on heights afar from
habitations and vegetation that I want to conclude my work on so-called
spontaneous generation. The real interest of that work for me lies in
the connection of this subject with that of ferments which I shall take
up again November.”
Pasteur started for Arbois, taking with him seventy-three flasks; he
opened twenty of them not very far from his father’s tannery, on the
road to Dôle, along an old road, now a path which leads to the mount of
the Bergère. The vine labourers who passed him wondered what this
holiday tourist could be doing with all those little phials; no one
suspected that he was penetrating one of nature’s greatest secrets.
“What would you have?” merrily said his old friend, Jules Vercel; “it
amuses him!” Of those twenty vessels, opened some distance away from any
dwelling, eight yielded organized bodies.
Pasteur went on to Salins and climbed Mount Poupet, 850 metres above the
sea-level. Out of twenty vessels opened, only five were altered. Pasteur
would have liked to charter a balloon in order to prove that the higher
you go the fewer germs you find, and that certain zones absolutely pure
contain none at all. It was easier to go into the Alps.
He arrived at Chamonix on September 20, and engaged a guide to make the
ascent of the Montanvert. The very next morning this novel sort of
expedition started. A mule carried the case of thirty-three vessels,
followed very closely by Pasteur, who watched over the precious burden
and walked alongside of precipices supporting the case with one hand so
that it should not be shaken.
When the first experiments were started an incident occurred. Pasteur
has himself related this fact in his report to the Académie. “In order
to close again the point of the flasks after taking in the air, I had
taken with me an eolipyle spirit-lamp. The dazzling whiteness of the ice
in the sunlight was such that it was impossible to distinguish the jet
of burning alcohol, and as moreover that was slightly moved by the wind,
it never remained on the broken glass long enough to hermetically seal
my vessel. All the means I might have employed to make the flame visible
and consequently directable would inevitably have given rise to causes
of error by spreading strange dusts into the air. I was therefore
obliged to bring back to the little inn of Montanvert, unsealed, the
flasks which I had opened on the glacier.”
The inn was a sort of hut, letting in wind and rain. The thirteen open
vessels were exposed to all the dusts in the room where Pasteur slept;
nearly all of them presented alterations.
In the meanwhile the guide was sent to Chamonix where a tinker undertook
to modify the lamp in view of the coming experiment.
The next morning, twenty flasks, which have remained celebrated in the
world of scientific investigators, were brought to the Mer de Glace.
Pasteur gathered the air with infinite precautions; he used to enjoy
relating these details to those people who call everything easy. After
tracing with a steel point a line on the glass, careful lest dusts
should become a cause of error, he began by heating the neck and fine
point of the bulb in the flame of the little spirit-lamp. Then raising
the vessel above his head, he broke the point with steel nippers, the
long ends of which had also been heated in order to burn the dusts which
might be on their surface and which would have been driven into the
vessel by the quick inrush of the air. Of those twenty flasks, closed
again immediately, only one was altered. “If all the results are
compared that I have obtained until now,” he wrote, on March 5, 1880,
when relating this journey to the Académie, “it seems to me that it can
be affirmed that the dusts suspended in atmospheric air are the
exclusive origin, the necessary condition of life in infusions.”
And in an unnoticed little sentence, pointing already then to the goal
he had in view, “What would be most desirable would be to push those
studies far enough to prepare the road for a serious research into the
origin of various diseases.” The action of those little beings, agents
not only of fermentation but also of disorganization and putrefaction,
already dawned upon him.
While Pasteur was going from the Observatoire cellars to the Mer de
Glace, Pouchet was gathering air on the plains of Sicily, making
experiments on Etna, and on the sea. He saw everywhere, he wrote, “air
equally favourable to organic genesis, whether surcharged with detritus
in the midst of our populous cities, or taken on the summit of a
mountain, or on the sea, where it offers extreme purity. With a cubic
decimetre of air, taken where you like, I affirm that you can ever
produce legions of microzoa.”
And the heterogenists proclaimed in unison that “everywhere, strictly
everywhere, air is constantly favourable to life.” Those who followed
the debate nearly all leaned towards Pouchet. “I am afraid,” wrote a
scientific journalist in _La Presse_ (1860), “that the experiments you
quote, M. Pasteur, will turn against you.... The world into which you
wish to take us is really too fantastic....”
And yet some adversaries should have been struck by the efforts of a
mind which, while marching forward to establish new facts, was ever
seeking arguments against itself, and turned back to strengthen points
which seemed yet weak. In November, Pasteur returned to his studies on
fermentations in general and lactic fermentation in particular.
Endeavouring to bring into evidence the animated nature of the lactic
ferment, and to indicate the most suitable surroundings for the
self-development of that ferment, he had come across some complications
which hampered the purity and the progress of that culture. Then he had
perceived another fermentation, following upon lactic fermentation and
known as butyric fermentation. As he did not immediately perceive the
origin of this butyric acid--which causes the bad smell in rancid
butter--he ended by being struck by the inevitable coincidence between
the (then called) infusory animalculæ and the production of this acid.
“The most constantly repeated tests,” he wrote in February, 1861, “have
convinced me that the transformation of sugar, mannite and lactic acid
into butyric acid is due exclusively to those Infusories, and they must
be considered as the real butyric ferment.” Those vibriones that Pasteur
described as under the shape of small cylindric rods with rounded ends,
sliding about, sometimes in a chain of three or four articles, he sowed
in an appropriate medium, as he sowed beer yeast. But, by a strange
phenomenon, “those infusory animalculæ,” he said, “live and multiply
indefinitely, without requiring the least quantity of air. And not only
do they live without air, but air actually kills them. It is sufficient
to send a current of atmospheric air during an hour or two through the
liquor where those vibriones were multiplying to cause them all to
perish and thus to arrest butyric fermentation, whilst a current of pure
carbonic acid gas passing through that same liquor hindered them in no
way. Thence this double proposition,” concluded Pasteur; “the butyric
ferment is an infusory; that infusory lives without free oxygen.” He
afterwards called anaërobes those beings which do not require air, in
opposition to the name of aërobes given to other microscopic beings who
require air to live.
Biot, without knowing all the consequences of these studies, had not
been long in perceiving that he had been far too sceptical, and that
physiological discoveries of the very first rank would be the outcome of
researches on so-called spontaneous generation. He would have wished,
before he died, not only that Pasteur should be the unanimously selected
candidate for the 1861 Zecker prize in the Chemistry Section, but also
that his friend, forty-eight years younger than himself, should be a
member of the Institute. At the beginning of 1861, there was one vacancy
in the Botanical Section. Biot took advantage of the researches pursued
by Pasteur within the last three years, to say and to print that he
should be nominated as a candidate. “I can hear the commonplace
objection: he is a chemist, a physicist, not a professional botanist....
But that very versatility, ever active and ever successful, should be a
title in his favour.... Let us judge of men by their works and not by
the destination more or less wide or narrow that they have marked out
for themselves. Pasteur made his début before the Académie in 1848, with
the remarkable treatise which contained by implication the resolution of
the paratartaric acid into its two components, right and left. He was
then twenty-six; the sensation produced is not forgotten. Since then,
during the twelve years which followed, he has submitted to your
appreciation twenty-one papers, the last ten relating to vegetable
physiology. All are full of new facts, often very unexpected, several
very far reaching, not one of which has been found inaccurate by
competent judges. If to-day, by your suffrage, you introduce M. Pasteur
into the Botanical Section, as you might safely have done for Théodore
de Saussure or Ingenhousz, you will have acquired for the Académie and
for that particular section an experimentalist of the same order as
those two great men.”
Balard, who in this academic campaign made common cause with Biot, was
also making efforts to persuade several members of the Botanical
Section. He was walking one day in the Luxembourg with Moquin-Tandon,
pouring out, in his rasping voice, arguments in favour of Pasteur.
“Well,” said Moquin-Tandon, “let us go to Pasteur’s, and if you find a
botanical work in his library I shall put him on the list.” It was a
witty form given to the scruples of the botanists. Pasteur only had
twenty-four votes; Duchartre was elected.
The study of a microscopic fungus, capable by itself of transforming
wine into vinegar, the bringing to light of the action of that
mycoderma, endowed with the power of taking oxygen from air and fixing
it upon alcohol, thus transforming the latter into acetic acid; the most
ingenious experiments to demonstrate the absolute and exclusive power of
the little plant, all gave reason to Biot’s affirmation that such skill
in the observation of inferior vegetables equalled any botanist’s claim.
Pasteur, showing that the interpretations of the causes which act in the
formation of vinegar were false, and that alone the microscopic fungus
did everything, was constantly dwelling on this power of the
infinitesimally small. “Mycoderma,” he said, “can bring the action of
combustion of the oxygen in air to bear on a number of organic materia.
If microscopic beings were to disappear from our globe, the surface of
the earth would be encumbered with dead organic matter and corpses of
all kinds, animal and vegetable. It is chiefly they who give to oxygen
its powers of combustion. Without them, life would become impossible
because death would be incomplete.”
Pasteur’s ideas on fermentation and putrefaction were being adopted by
disciples unknown to him. “I am sending you,” he wrote to his father, “a
treatise on fermentation, which was the subject of a recent competition
at the Montpellier Faculty. This work is dedicated to me by its author,
whom I do not know at all, a circumstance which shows that my results
are spreading and exciting some attention.
“I have only read the last pages, which have pleased me; if the rest is
the same, it is a very good _résumé_, entirely conceived in the new
direction of my labours, evidently well understood by this young doctor.
“M. Biot is very well, only suffering a little from insomnia. He has,
fortunately for his health, finished that great account of my former
results which will be the greatest title I can have to the esteem of
scientists.”
Biot died without having realized his last wish, which was to have
Pasteur for a colleague. It was only at the end of the year 1862 that
Pasteur was nominated by the Mineralogical Section for the seat of
Senarmont. This new candidature did not go without a hitch. In his study
on tartrates, Pasteur, as will be remembered, had discovered that their
crystalline forms were hemihedral. When he examined the characteristic
faces, he held the crystal in a particular way and said: “It is
hemihedral on the right side.” A German mineralogist, named
Rammelsberg, holding the crystal in the opposite direction, said: “It is
hemihedral on the left side.” It was a mere matter of conventional
orientation; nothing was changed in the scientific results announced by
Pasteur. But some adversaries made a weapon of that inverted crystal;
not a dangerous weapon, thought Pasteur at first, fancying that a few
words would clear the misunderstanding. But the campaign persisted, with
insinuations, murmurs, whisperings. When Pasteur saw this simple
difference in the way the crystal was held stigmatised as a cause of
error, he desired to cut short this quarrel made in Germany. He then had
with him no longer Raulin, but M. Duclaux, who was beginning his
scientific life. M. Duclaux remembers one day when Pasteur, seeing that
incontrovertible arguments were required, sent for a cabinet maker with
his tools. He superintended the making of a complete wooden set of the
crystalline forms of tartrates, a gigantic set, such as Gulliver might
have seen in Brobdingnag if he had studied geometrical forms in that
island. A coating of coloured paper finished the work; green paper
marked the hemihedral face. A member of the Philomathic Society, Pasteur
asked the Society to give up the meeting of November 8, 1862, to the
discussion of that subject. Several of his colleagues vainly endeavoured
to dissuade him from that intention; Pasteur hearkened to no one. He
took with him his provision of wooden crystals, and gave a vivid and
impassioned lecture. “If you know the question,” he asked his
adversaries, “where is your conscience? If you know it not, why meddle
with it?” And with one of his accustomed sudden turns, “What is all
this?” he added. “One of those incidents to which we all, more or less,
are exposed by the conditions of our career; no bitterness remains
behind. Of what account is it in the presence of those mysteries, so
varied, so numerous, that we all, in divers directions, are working to
clear? It is true I have had recourse to an unusual means of defending
myself against attacks not openly published, but I think that means was
safe and loyal, and deferential towards you. And,” he added, thinking of
Biot and Senarmont, “will you have my full confession? You know that I
had during fifteen years the inestimable advantage of the intercourse of
two men who are no more, but whose scientific probity shone as one of
the beacons of the Académie des Sciences. Before deciding on the course
I have now followed, I questioned my memory and endeavoured to revive
their advice, and it seemed to me that they would not have disowned me.”
M. Duclaux said about this meeting: “Pasteur has since then won many
oratorical victories. I do not know of a greater one than that deserved
by that acute and penetrating improvisation. He was still much heated as
we were walking back to the Rue d’Ulm, and I remember making him laugh
by asking him why, in the state of mind he was in, he had not concluded
by hurling his wooden crystals at his adversaries’ heads.”
On December 8, 1862, Pasteur was elected a member of the Académie des
Sciences; out of sixty voters he received thirty-six suffrages.
The next morning, when the gates of the Montparnasse cemetery were
opened, a woman walked towards Biot’s grave with her hands full of
flowers. It was Mme. Pasteur who was bringing them to him who lay there
since February 5, 1862, and who had loved Pasteur with so deep an
affection.
A letter picked up at a sale of autographs, one of the last Biot wrote,
gives a finishing touch to his moral portrait. It is addressed to an
unknown person discouraged with this life. “Sir,--The confidence you
honour me with touches me. But I am not a physician of souls. However,
in my opinion, you could not do better than seek remedies to your moral
suffering in work, religion, and charity. A useful work taken up with
energy and persevered in will revive by occupation the forces of your
mind. Religious feelings will console you by inspiring you with
patience. Charity manifested to others will soften your sorrows and
teach you that you are not alone to suffer in this life. Look around
you, and you will see afflicted ones more to be pitied than yourself.
Try to ease their sufferings; the good you will do to them will fall
back upon yourself and will show you that a life which can thus be
employed is not a burden which cannot, which must not be borne.”
On his entering the Académie des Sciences, Balard and Dumas advised
Pasteur to let alone his wooden crystals and to continue his studies on
ferments. He undertook to demonstrate that “the hypothesis of a
phenomenon of mere contact is not more admissible than the opinion which
placed the ferment character exclusively in dead albuminoid matter.”
Whilst continuing his researches on beings which could live without air,
he tried, as he went along, à propos of spontaneous generation, to find
some weak point in his work. Until now the liquids he had used, however
alterable they were, had been brought up to boiling point. Was there not
some new and decisive experiment to make? Could he not study organic
matter as constituted by life and expose to the contact of air deprived
of its germs some fresh liquids, highly putrescible, such as blood and
urine? Claude Bernard, joining in these experiments of Pasteur’s,
himself took some blood from a dog. This blood was sealed up in a glass
phial, with every condition of purity, and the phial remained in a stove
constantly heated up to 30°C. from March 3 until April 20, 1862, when
Pasteur laid it on the Académie table. The blood had suffered no sort of
putrefaction; neither had some urine treated in the same way. “The
conclusions to which I have been led by my first series of experiments,”
said Pasteur before the Académie, “are therefore applicable in all cases
to organic substances.”
While studying putrefaction, which is itself but a fermentation applied
to animal materia, while showing the marvellous power of the
infinitesimally small, he foresaw the immensity of the domain he had
conquered, as will be proved by the following incident. Some time after
the Académie election, in March, 1863, the Emperor, who took an interest
in all that took place in the small laboratory of the Rue d’Ulm, desired
to speak with Pasteur. J. B. Dumas claimed the privilege of presenting
his former pupil, and the interview took place at the Tuileries.
Napoleon questioned Pasteur with a gentle, slightly dreamy insistence.
Pasteur wrote the next day: “I assured the Emperor that all my ambition
was to arrive at the knowledge of the causes of putrid and contagious
diseases.”
In the meanwhile, the chapter on ferments was not yet closed; Pasteur
was attracted by studies on wine. At the beginning of the 1863 holidays,
just before starting for Arbois, he drew up this programme with one of
his pupils: “From the 20th to the 30th (August) preparation in Paris of
all the vessels, apparatus, products, that we must take. September 1,
departure for the Jura; installation; purchase of the products of a
vineyard. Immediate beginning of tests of all kinds. We shall have to
hurry; grapes do not keep long.”
Whilst he was preparing this vintage tour, which he intended to make
with three “Normaliens,” Duclaux, Gernez and Lechartier, the three
heterogenists, Pouchet, Joly and Musset, proposed to use that same time
in fighting Pasteur on his own ground. They started from
Bagnères-de-Luchon followed by several guides and taking with them all
kinds of provisions and some little glass flasks with a slender pointed
neck. They crossed the pass of Venasque without incident, and decided to
go further, to the Rencluse. Some isard-stalkers having come towards the
strange-looking party, they were signalled away; even the guides were
invited to stand aside. It was necessary to prevent any dusts from
reaching the bulbs, which were thus opened at 8 p.m. at a height of
2,083 metres. But eighty-three metres higher than the Montanvert did not
seem to them enough, they wished to go higher. “We shall sleep on the
mountain,” said the three scientists. Fatigue and bitter cold, they
withstood everything with the courage inspired by a problem to solve.
The next morning they climbed across that rocky chaos, and at last
reached the foot of one of the greatest glaciers of the Maladetta, 3,000
metres above the sea-level. “A very deep narrow crevasse,” says Pouchet,
“seemed to us the most suitable place for our experiments.” Four phials
(filled with a decoction of hay) were opened and sealed again with
precautions that Pouchet considered as exaggerated.
Pouchet, in his merely scientific report, does not relate the return
journey, yet more perilous than the ascent. At one of the most dangerous
places, Joly slipped, and would have rolled into a precipice, but for
the strength and presence of mind of one of the guides. All three at
last came back to Luchon, forgetful of dangers run, and glorying at
having reached 1,000 metres higher than Pasteur. They triumphed when
they saw alteration in their flasks! “Therefore,” said Pouchet, “the air
of the Maladetta, and of high mountains in general, is not incapable of
producing alteration in an eminently putrescible liquor; therefore
heterogenia or the production of a new being devoid of parents, but
formed at the expense of ambient organic matter, is for us a reality.”
The Academy of Sciences was taking more and more interest in this
debate. In November, 1863, Joly and Musset expressed a wish that the
Academy should appoint a Commission, before whom the principal
experiments of Pasteur and of his adversaries should be repeated. On
this occasion Flourens expressed his opinion thus: “I am blamed in
certain quarters for giving no opinion on the question of spontaneous
generation. As long as my opinion was not formed, I had nothing to say.
It is now formed, and I give it: M. Pasteur’s experiments are decisive.
If spontaneous generation is real, what is required to obtain
animalculæ? Air and putrescible liquor. M. Pasteur puts air and
putrescible liquor together and nothing happens. Therefore spontaneous
generation is not. To doubt further is to misunderstand the question.”
Already in the preceding year, the Académie itself had evidenced its
opinion by giving Pasteur the prize of a competition proposed in these
terms: “To attempt to throw some new light upon the question of
so-called spontaneous generation by well-conducted experiments.”
Pasteur’s treatise on _Organized Corpuscles existing in Atmosphere_ had
been unanimously preferred. Pasteur might have entrenched himself behind
the suffrages of the Academy, but begged it, in order to close those
incessant debates, to appoint the Commission demanded by Joly and
Musset.
The members of the Commission were Flourens, Dumas, Brongniart,
Milne-Edwards, and Balard. Pasteur wished that the discussion should
take place as soon as possible, and it was fixed for the first fortnight
in March. But Pouchet, Joly and Musset asked for a delay on account of
the cold. “We consider that it might compromise, perhaps prevent, our
results, to operate in a temperature which often goes below zero even in
the south of France. How do we know that it will not freeze in Paris
between the first and fifteenth of March?” They even asked the
Commission to adjourn experiments until the summer. “I am much
surprised,” wrote Pasteur, “at the delay sought by Messrs. Pouchet, Joly
and Musset; it would have been easy with a stove to raise the
temperature to the degree required by those gentlemen. For my part I
hasten to assure the Academy that I am at its disposal, and that in
summer, or in any other season, I am ready to repeat my experiments.”
Some evening scientific lectures had just been inaugurated at the
Sorbonne; such a subject as spontaneous generation was naturally on the
programme. When Pasteur entered the large lecture room of the Sorbonne
on April 7, 1864, he must have been reminded of the days of his youth,
when crowds came, as to a theatrical performance, to hear J. B. Dumas
speak. Dumas’ pupil, now a master, in his turn found a still greater
crowd invading every corner. Amongst the professors and students, such
celebrities as Duruy, Alexandre Dumas senior, George Sand, Princess
Mathilde, were being pointed out. Around them, the inevitable “smart”
people who must see everything and be seen everywhere, without whom no
function favoured by fashion would be complete; in short what is known
as the “Tout Paris.” But this “Tout Paris” was about to receive a novel
impression, probably a lasting one. The man who stood before this
fashionable audience was not one of those speakers who attempt by an
insinuating exordium to gain the good graces of their hearers; it was a
grave-looking man, his face full of quiet energy and reflective force.
He began in a deep, firm voice, evidently earnestly convinced of the
greatness of his mission as a teacher: “Great problems are now being
handled, keeping every thinking man in suspense; the unity or
multiplicity of human races; the creation of man 1,000 years or 1,000
centuries ago, the fixity of species, or the slow and progressive
transformation of one species into another; the eternity of matter; the
idea of a God unnecessary. Such are some of the questions that humanity
discusses nowadays.”
He had now, he continued, entered upon a subject accessible to
experimentation, and which he had made the object of the strictest and
most conscientious studies. Can matter organize itself? Can living
beings come into the world without having been preceded by beings
similar to them? After showing that the doctrine of spontaneous
generation had gradually lost ground, he explained how the invention of
the microscope had caused it to reappear at the end of the seventeenth
century, “in the face of those beings, so numerous, so varied, so
strange in their shapes, the origin of which was connected with the
presence of all dead vegetable and animal matter in a state of
disorganization.” He went on to say how Pouchet had taken up this study,
and to point out the errors that this new partisan of an old doctrine
had committed, errors difficult to recognize at first. With perfect
clearness and simplicity, Pasteur explained how the dusts which are
suspended in air contain germs of inferior organized beings and how a
liquid preserved, by certain precautions, from the contact of these
germs can be kept indefinitely, giving his audience a glimpse of his
laboratory methods.
“Here,” he said, “is an infusion of organic matter, as limpid as
distilled water, and extremely alterable. It has been prepared to-day.
To-morrow it will contain animalculæ, little infusories, or flakes of
mouldiness.
“I place a portion of that infusion into a flask with a long neck, like
this one. Suppose I boil the liquid and leave it to cool. After a few
days, mouldiness or animalculæ will develop in the liquid. By boiling, I
destroyed any germs contained in the liquid or against the glass; but
that infusion being again in contact with air, it becomes altered, as
all infusions do. Now suppose I repeat this experiment, but that, before
boiling the liquid, I draw (by means of an enameller’s lamp) the neck of
the flask into a point, leaving, however, its extremity open. This being
done, I boil the liquid in the flask, and leave it to cool. Now the
liquid of this second flask will remain pure not only two days, a month,
a year, but three or four years--for the experiment I am telling you
about is already four years old, and the liquid remains as limpid as
distilled water. What difference is there, then, between those two
vases? They contain the same liquid, they both contain air, both are
open! Why does one decay and the other remain pure? The only difference
between them is this: in the first case, the dusts suspended in air and
their germs can fall into the neck of the flask and arrive into contact
with the liquid, where they find appropriate food and develop; thence
microscopic beings. In the second flask, on the contrary, it is
impossible, or at least extremely difficult, unless air is violently
shaken, that dusts suspended in air should enter the vase; they fall on
its curved neck. When air goes in and out of the vase through diffusions
or variations of temperature, the latter never being sudden, the air
comes in slowly enough to drop the dusts and germs that it carries at
the opening of the neck or in the first curves.
“This experiment is full of instruction; for this must be noted, that
everything in air save its dusts can easily enter the vase and come into
contact with the liquid. Imagine what you choose in the
air--electricity, magnetism, ozone, unknown forces even, all can reach
the infusion. Only one thing cannot enter easily, and that is dust,
suspended in air. And the proof of this is that if I shake the vase
violently two or three times, in a few days it contains animalculæ or
mouldiness. Why? because air has come in violently enough to carry dust
with it.
“And, therefore, gentlemen, I could point to that liquid and say to you,
I have taken my drop of water from the immensity of creation, and I have
taken it full of the elements appropriated to the development of
inferior beings. And I wait, I watch, I question it, begging it to
recommence for me the beautiful spectacle of the first creation. But it
is dumb, dumb since these experiments were begun several years ago; it
is dumb because I have kept it from the only thing man cannot produce,
from the germs which float in the air, from Life, for Life is a germ and
a germ is Life. Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation
recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment.”
The public enthusiastically applauded these words, which ended the
lecture:
“No, there is now no circumstance known in which it can be affirmed that
microscopic beings came into the world without germs, without parents
similar to themselves. Those who affirm it have been duped by illusions,
by ill-conducted experiments, spoilt by errors that they either did not
perceive or did not know how to avoid.”
In the meanwhile, besides public lectures and new studies, Pasteur
succeeded in “administering” the Ecole Normale in the most complete
sense of the word. His influence was such that students acquired not a
taste but a passion for study; he directed each one in his own line, he
awakened their instincts. It was already through his wise inspiration
that five “Normaliens agrégés” should have the chance of the five
curators’ places; but his solicitude did not stop there. If some
disappointment befell some former pupil, still in that period of youth
which doubts nothing or nobody, he came vigorously to his assistance; he
was the counsellor of the future. A few letters will show how he
understood his responsibility.
A Normalien, Paul Dalimier, received 1st at the _agrégation_ of Physics
in 1858, afterwards Natural History curator at the Ecole, and who,
having taken his doctor’s degree, asked to be sent to a Faculty, was
ordered to go to the Lycée of Chaumont.
In the face of this almost disgrace he wrote a despairing letter to
Pasteur. He could do nothing more, he said, his career was ruined. “My
dear sir,” answered Pasteur, “I much regret that I could not see you
before your departure for Chaumont. But here is the advice which I feel
will be useful to you. Do not manifest your just displeasure; but
attract attention from the very first by your zeal and talent. In a
word, aggravate, by your fine discharge of your new duties, the
injustice which has been committed. The discouragement expressed in
your last letter is not worthy of a man of science. Keep but three
objects before your eyes: your class, your pupils and the work you have
begun.... Do your duty to the best of your ability, without troubling
about the rest.”
Pasteur undertook the rest himself. He went to the Ministry to complain
of the injustice and unfairness, from a general point of view, of that
nomination.
“Sir,” answered the Chaumont exile, “I have received your kind letter.
My deep respect for every word of yours will guarantee my intention to
follow your advice. I have given myself up entirely to my class. I have
found here a Physics cabinet in a deplorable state, and I have
undertaken to reorganise it.”
He had not time to finish: justice was done, and Paul Dalimier was made
_maître des conférences_ at the Ecole Normale. He died at twenty-eight.
The wish that masters and pupils should remain in touch with each other
after the three years at the Ecole Normale had already in 1859 inspired
Pasteur to write a report on the desirableness of an annual report
entitled, _Scientific Annals of the Ecole Normale_.
The initiative of pregnant ideas often is traced back to France. But,
through want of tenacity, she allows those same ideas to fall into decay
and they are taken up by other nations, transplanted, developed, until
they come back unrecognized to their mother country. Germany had seen
the possibilities of such a publication as Pasteur’s projected _Annals_.
Renan wrote about that time to the editors of the _Revue Germanique_, a
Review intended to draw France and Germany together: “In France, nothing
is made public until achieved and ripened. In Germany, a work is given
out provisionally, not as a teaching, but as an incitement to think, as
a ferment for the mind.”
Pasteur felt all the power of that intellectual ferment. In the volume
entitled _Centenary of the Ecole Normale_, M. Gernez has recalled
Pasteur’s enthusiasm when he spoke of those _Annals_. Was it not for
former pupils, away in the provinces, a means of collaborating with
their old masters and of keeping in touch with Paris?
It was in June, 1864, that Pasteur presented the first number of this
publication to the Académie des Sciences. M. Gernez, who was highly
thought of by Pasteur, has not related in the _Centenary_ that the book
opened with some of his own researches on the rotatory power of certain
liquids and their steam.
At that same time, the heterogenists had at last placed themselves at
the disposal of the Académie and were invited to meet Pasteur before the
Natural History Commission at M. Chevreul’s laboratory. “I affirm,” said
Pasteur, “that in any place it is possible to take up from the ambient
atmosphere a determined volume of air containing neither egg nor spore
and producing no generation in putrescible solutions.” The Commission
declared that, the whole contest bearing upon one simple fact, one
experiment only should take place. The heterogenists wanted to
recommence a whole series of experiments, thus reopening the discussion.
The Commission refused, and the heterogenists, unwilling to concede the
point, retired from the field, repudiating the arbiters that they had
themselves chosen.
And yet Joly had written to the Académie, “If one only of our flasks
remains pure, we will loyally own our defeat.” A scientist who later
became Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences, Jamin, wrote
about this conflict: “The heterogenists, however they may have coloured
their retreat, have condemned themselves. If they had been sure of the
fact--which they had solemnly engaged to prove or to own themselves
vanquished,--they would have insisted on showing it, it would have been
the triumph of their doctrine.”
The heterogenists appealed to the public. A few days after their defeat,
Joly gave a lecture at the Faculty of Medicine. He called the trial, as
decided on by the Commission, a “circus competition”; he was applauded
by those who saw other than scientific questions in the matter. The
problem was now coming down from mountains and laboratories into the
arena of society discussions. If all comes from a germ, people said,
whence came the first germ? We must bow before that mystery, said
Pasteur; it is the question of the origin of all things, and absolutely
outside the domain of scientific research. But an invincible curiosity
exists amongst most men which cannot admit that science should have the
wisdom to content itself with the vast space between the beginning of
the world and the unknown future. Many people transform a question of
fact into a question of faith. Though Pasteur had brought into his
researches a solely scientific preoccupation, many people approved or
blamed him as the defender of a religious cause.
Vainly had he said, “There is here no question of religion, philosophy,
atheism, materialism, or spiritualism. I might even add that they do not
matter to me as a scientist. It is a question of fact; when I took it up
I was as ready to be convinced by experiments that spontaneous
generation exists as I am now persuaded that those who believe it are
blindfolded.”
It might have been thought that Pasteur’s arguments were in support of a
philosophical theory! It seemed impossible to those whose ideas came
from an ardent faith, from the influence of their surroundings, from
personal pride or from interested calculations to understand that a man
should seek truth for its own sake and with no other object than to
proclaim it. Hostilities were opened, journalists kept up the fire. A
priest, the Abbé Moigno spoke of converting unbelievers through the
proved non-existence of spontaneous generation. The celebrated novelist,
Edmond About, took up Pouchet’s cause with sparkling irony. “M. Pasteur
preached at the Sorbonne amidst a concert of applause which must have
gladdened the angels.”
Thus, among the papers and reviews of that time we can follow the divers
ideas brought out by these discussions. Guizot, then almost eighty,
touched on this problem with the slightly haughty assurance of one
conscious of having given much thought to his beliefs and destiny. “Man
has not been formed through spontaneous generation, that is by a
creative and organizing force inherent in matter; scientific observation
daily overturns that theory, by which, moreover, it is impossible to
explain the first appearance upon the earth of man in his complete
state.” And he praised “M. Pasteur, who has brought into this question
the light of his scrupulous criticism.”
Nisard was a wondering witness of what took place in the small
laboratory of the Ecole Normale. Ever preoccupied by the relations
between science and religion, he heard with some surprise Pasteur saying
modestly, “Researches on primary causes are not in the domain of
Science, which only recognizes facts and phenomena which it can
demonstrate.”
Pasteur did not disinterest himself from the great problems which he
called the eternal subjects of men’s solitary meditations. But he did
not admit the interference of religion with science any more than that
of science with religion.
His eagerness during a conflict was only equalled by his absolute
forgetfulness after the conflict was over. He answered some one who,
years later, reminded him of that past so full of attacks and praises.
“A man of science should think of what will be said of him in the
following century, not of the insults or the compliments of one day.”
Pasteur, anxious to regain lost time, hurried to return to his studies
on wine. “Might not the diseases of wines,” he said at the Académie des
Sciences in January, 1864, “be caused by organized ferments, microscopic
vegetations, of which the germs would develop when certain circumstances
of temperature, of atmospheric variations, of exposure to air, would
favour their evolution or their introduction into wines?... I have
indeed reached this result that the alterations of wines are co-existent
with the presence and multiplication of microscopic vegetations.” Acid
wines, bitter wines, “ropy” wines, sour wines, he had studied them all
with a microscope, his surest guide in recognizing the existence and
form of the evil.
As he had more particularly endeavoured to remedy the cause of the
acidity which often ruins the Jura red or white wines in the wood, the
town of Arbois, proud of its celebrated rosy and tawny wines, placed an
impromptu laboratory at his disposal during the holidays of 1864; the
expenses were all to be covered by the town. “This spontaneous offer
from a town dear to me for so many reasons,” answered Pasteur to the
Mayor and Town Council, “does too much honour to my modest labours, and
the way in which it is made covers me with confusion.” He refused it
however, fearing that the services he might render should not be
proportionate to the generosity of the Council. He preferred to camp out
with his curators in an old coffee room at the entrance of the town, and
they contented themselves with apparatus of the most primitive
description, generally made by some local tinker or shoeing smith.
The problem consisted, in Pasteur’s view, in opposing the development of
organized ferments or parasitic vegetations, causes of the diseases of
wines. After some fruitless endeavours to destroy all vitality in the
germs of these parasites, he found that it was sufficient to keep the
wine for a few moments at a temperature of 50° C. to 60° C. “I have also
ascertained that wine was never altered by that preliminary operation,
and as nothing prevents it afterwards from undergoing the gradual
action of the oxygen in the air--the only cause, as I think, of its
improvement with age--it is evident that this process offers every
advantage.”
It seems as if that simple and practical means, applicable to every
quality of wine, now only had to be tried. But not so. Every progress is
opposed by prejudice, petty jealousies, indolence even. A devoted
obstinacy is required in order to overcome this opposition. Pasteur’s
desire was that his country should benefit by his discovery. An
Englishman had written to him: “People are astonished in France that the
sale of French wines should not have become more extended here since the
Commercial Treaties. The reason is simple enough. At first we eagerly
welcomed those wines, but we soon had the sad experience that there was
too much loss occasioned by the diseases to which they are subject.”
Pasteur was in the midst of those discussions, experimental sittings,
etc., when J. B. Dumas suddenly asked of him the greatest of sacrifices,
that of leaving the laboratory.
CHAPTER VI
1865--1870
An epidemic was ruining in terrible proportions the industry of the
cultivation of silkworms. J. B. Dumas had been desired, as Senator, to
draw up a report on the wishes of over 3,500 proprietors in
sericicultural departments, all begging the public authorities to study
the question of the causes of the protracted epidemic. Dumas was all the
more preoccupied as to the fate of sericiculture that he himself came
from one of the stricken departments. He was born on July 14, 1800, in
one of the back streets of the town of Alais, to which he enjoyed
returning as a celebrated scientist and a dignitary of the Empire. He
gave much attention to all the problems which interested the national
prosperity and considered that the best judges in these matters were the
men of science. He well knew the conscientious tenacity--besides other
characteristics--which his pupil and friend brought into any
undertaking, and anxiously urged him to undertake this study. “Your
proposition,” wrote Pasteur in a few hurried lines, “throws me into a
great perplexity; it is indeed most flattering and the object is a high
one, but it troubles and embarrasses me! Remember, if you please, that I
have never even touched a silkworm. If I had some of your knowledge on
the subject I should not hesitate; it may even come within the range of
my present studies. However, the recollection of your many kindnesses to
me would leave me bitter regrets if I were to decline your pressing
invitation. Do as you like with me.” On May 17, 1865, Dumas wrote: “I
attach the greatest value to seeing your attention fixed on the question
which interests my poor country; the distress is beyond anything you can
imagine.”
Before his departure for Alais, Pasteur had read an essay on the history
of the silkworm, published by one of his colleagues, Quatrefages, born
like Dumas in the Gard. Quatrefages attributed to an Empress of China
the first knowledge of the art of utilizing silk, more than 4,000 years
ago. The Chinese, in possession of the precious insect, had jealously
preserved the monopoly of its culture, even to the point of making it a
capital offence to take beyond the frontiers of the Empire the eggs of
the silkworm. A young princess, 2,000 years later, had the courage to
infringe this law for love of her betrothed, whom she was going to join
in the centre of Asia, and also through the almost equally strong desire
to continue her fairy-like occupation after her marriage.
Pasteur appreciated the pretty legend, but was more interested in the
history of the acclimatizing of the mulberry tree. From Provence Louis
XI took it to Touraine: Catherine de Medici planted it in Orléanais.
Henry IV had some mulberry trees planted in the park at Fontainebleau
and in the Tuileries where they succeeded admirably. He also encouraged
a _Treatise on the Gathering of Silk_ by Olivier de Serres. This
earliest agricultural writer in France was much appreciated by the king,
in spite of the opposition of Sully, who did not believe in this new
fortune for France. Documentary evidence is lacking as to the
development of the silk industry.
From 1700 to 1788, wrote Quatrefages, France produced annually about
6,000,000 kilogrammes of cocoons. This was decreased by one-half under
the Republic; wool replaced silk perhaps from necessity, perhaps from
affectation.
Napoleon I restored that luxury. The sericicultural industry prospered
from the Imperial Epoch until the reign of Louis Philippe, to such an
extent as to reach in one year a total of 20,000,000 kilogrammes of
cocoons, representing 100,000,000 francs. The name of Tree of Gold given
to the mulberry, had never been better deserved.
Suddenly all these riches fell away. A mysterious disease was destroying
the nurseries. “Eggs, worms, chrysalides, moths, the disease may
manifest itself in all the organs,” wrote Dumas in his report to the
Senate. “Whence does it come? how is it contracted? No one knows. But
its invasion is recognized by little brown or black spots.” It was
therefore called “corpuscle disease”; it was also designated as
“_gattine_” from the Italian _gattino_, kitten; the sick worms held up
their heads and put out their hooked feet like cats about to scratch.
But of all those names, that of “pébrine” adopted by Quatrefages was the
most general. It came from the patois word _pébré_ (pepper). The spots
on the diseased worms were, in fact, rather like pepper grains.
The first symptoms had been noticed by some in 1845, by others in 1847.
But in 1849 it was a disaster. The South of France was invaded. In 1853,
seed had to be procured from Lombardy. After one successful year the
same disappointments recurred. Italy was attacked, also Spain and
Austria. Seed was procured from Greece, Turkey, the Caucasus, but the
evil was still on the increase; China itself was attacked, and, in 1864,
it was only in Japan that healthy seed could be found.
Every hypothesis was suggested, atmospheric conditions, degeneration of
the race of silkworms, disease of the mulberry tree, etc.--books and
treatises abounded, but in vain.
When Pasteur started for Alais (June 16, 1865), entrusted with this
scientific mission by the Minister of Agriculture, his mind saw but that
one point of interrogation, “What caused these fatal spots?” On his
arrival he sympathetically questioned the Alaisians. He received
confused and contradictory answers, indications of chimerical remedies;
some cultivators poured sulphur or charcoal powder on the worms, some
mustard meal or castor sugar; ashes and soot were used, quinine powders,
etc. Some cultivators preferred liquids, and syringed the mulberry
leaves with wine, rum or absinthe. Fumigations of chlorine, of coal tar,
were approved by some and violently objected to by others. Pasteur, more
desirous of seeking the origin of the evil than of making a census of
these remedies, unceasingly questioned the nursery owners, who
invariably answered that it was something like the plague or cholera.
Some worms languished on the frames in their earliest days, others in
the second stage only, some passed through the third and fourth
moultings, climbed the twig and spun their cocoon. The chrysalis became
a moth, but that diseased moth had deformed antennæ and withered legs,
the wings seemed singed. Eggs (technically called seed) from those moths
were inevitably unsuccessful the following year. Thus, in the same
nursery, in the course of the two months that a larva takes to become a
moth, the pébrine disease was alternately sudden or insidious: it burst
out or disappeared, it hid itself within the chrysalis and reappeared in
the moth or the eggs of a moth which had seemed sound. The discouraged
Alaisians thought that nothing could overcome pébrine.
Pasteur did not admit such resignation. But he began by one aspect only
of the problem. He resolved to submit those corpuscles of the silkworm
which had been observed since 1849 to microscopical study. He settled
down in a small _magnanerie_ near Alais; two series of worms were being
cultivated. The first set was full grown; it came from some Japanese
seed guaranteed as sound, and had produced very fine cocoons. The
cultivator intended to keep the seed of the moths to compensate himself
for the failure of the second set, also of Japanese origin, but not
officially guaranteed. The worms of this second series were sickly and
did not feed properly. And yet these worms, seen through the microscope,
only exceptionally presented corpuscles; whilst Pasteur was surprised to
find some in almost every moth or chrysalis from the prosperous nursery.
Was it then elsewhere than in the worms that the secret of the pébrine
was to be found?
Pasteur was interrupted in the midst of his experiments by a sudden
blow. Nine days after his arrival, a telegram called him to Arbois: his
father was very ill. He started, full of anguish, remembering the sudden
death of his mother before he had had time to reach her, and that of
Jeanne, his eldest daughter, who had also died far away from him in the
little house at Arbois. His sad presentiment oppressed him during the
whole of the long journey, and was fully justified; he arrived to find,
already in his coffin, the father he so dearly loved and whose name he
had made an illustrious one.
In the evening, in the empty room above the tannery, Pasteur wrote:
“Dear Marie, dear children, the dear grandfather is no more; we have
taken him this morning to his last resting place, close to little
Jeanne’s. In the midst of my grief I have felt thankful that our little
girl had been buried there.... Until the last moment I hoped I should
see him again, embrace him for the last time ... but when I arrived at
the station I saw some of our cousins all in black, coming from Salins;
it was only then that I understood that I could but accompany him to the
grave.
“He died on the day of your first communion, dear Cécile; those two
memories will remain in your heart, my poor child. I had a presentiment
of it when that very morning, at the hour when he was struck down, I was
asking you to pray for the grandfather at Arbois. Your prayers will
have been acceptable unto God, and perhaps the dear grandfather himself
knew of them and rejoiced with dear little Jeanne over Cécile’s piety.
“I have been thinking all day of the marks of affection I have had from
my father. For thirty years I have been his constant care, I owe
everything to him. When I was young he kept me from bad company and
instilled into me the habit of working and the example of the most loyal
and best-filled life. He was far above his position both in mind and in
character.... You did not know him, dearest Marie, at the time when he
and my mother were working so hard for the children they loved, for me
especially, whose books and schooling cost so much.... And the touching
part of his affection for me is that it never was mixed with ambition.
You remember that he would have been pleased to see me the headmaster of
Arbois College? He foresaw that advancement would mean hard work,
perhaps detrimental to my health. And yet I am sure that some of the
success in my scientific career must have filled him with joy and pride;
his son! his name! the child he had guided and cherished! My dear
father, how thankful I am that I could give him some satisfaction!
“Farewell, dearest Marie, dear children. We shall often talk of the dear
grandfather. How glad I am that he saw you all again a short time ago,
and that he lived to know little Camille. I long to see you all, but
must go back to Alais, for my studies would be retarded by a year if I
could not spend a few days there now.
“I have some ideas on this disease, which is indeed a scourge for all
those southern departments. The one _arrondissement_ of Alais has lost
an income of 120,000,000 francs during the last fifteen years. M. Dumas
is a million times right; it must be seen to, and I am going to continue
my experiments. I am writing to M. Nisard to have the admission
examinations in my absence, which can easily be done.”
Nisard wrote to him (June 19): “My dear friend, I heard of your loss,
and I sympathize most cordially with you.... Take all the time necessary
to you. You are away in the service of science, probably of humanity.
Everything will be done according to your precise indications. I foresee
no difficulty ... everything is going on well at the Ecole. In spite of
your reserve--which is a part of your talent--I see that you are on the
track, as M. Biot would have said, and that you will have your prey.
Your name will stand next to that of Olivier de Serres in the annals of
sericiculture.”
On his return to Alais Pasteur went back to his observations with his
scientific ardour and his customary generous eagerness to lighten the
burden of others. He wrote in the introduction to his _Studies on
Silkworm Disease_ the following heartfelt lines--
“A traveller coming back to the Cévennes mountains after an absence of
fifteen years would be saddened to see the change wrought in that
countryside within such a short time. Formerly he might have seen robust
men breaking up the rock to build terraces against the side and up to
the summit of each mountain; then planting mulberry trees on these
terraces. These men, in spite of their hard work, were then bright and
happy, for ease and contentment reigned in their homes.
“Now the mulberry plantations are abandoned, the ‘golden tree’ no longer
enriches the country, faces once beaming with health and good humour are
now sad and drawn. Distress and hunger have succeeded to comfort and
happiness.”
Pasteur thought with sorrow of the sufferings of the Cévenol
populations. The scientific problem was narrowing itself down. Faced by
the contradictory facts that one successful set of cocoons had produced
corpuscled moths, while an apparently unsuccessful set of worms showed
neither corpuscles nor spots, he had awaited the last period of these
worms with an impatient curiosity. He saw, amongst those which had
started spinning, some which as yet showed no spots and no corpuscles.
But corpuscles were abundant in the chrysalides, those especially which
were in full maturity, on the eve of becoming moths; and none of the
moths were free from them. Perhaps the fact that the disease appeared in
the chrysalis and moth only explained the failures of succeeding series.
“It was a mistake,” wrote Pasteur (June 26, 1865), “to look for the
symptom, the corpuscle, exclusively in the eggs or the worms; either
might carry in themselves the germ of the disease, without presenting
distinct and microscopically visible corpuscles.” The evil developed
itself chiefly in the chrysalides and the moths, it was there that it
should chiefly be sought. There should be an infallible means of
procuring healthy seed by having recourse to moths free from
corpuscles.
This idea was like a searchlight flashed into the darkness. Pasteur thus
formulated his hypothesis: “Every moth containing corpuscles must give
birth to diseased seed. If a moth only has a few corpuscles, its eggs
will provide worms without any, or which will only develop them towards
the end of their life. If the moth is much infected, the disease will
show itself in the earliest stages of the worm, either by corpuscles or
by other unhealthy symptoms.”
Pasteur studied hundreds of moths under the microscope. Nearly all, two
or three couples excepted, were corpuscled, but that restricted quantity
was increased by a precious gift. Two people, who had heard Pasteur
ventilate his theories, brought him five moths born of a local race of
silkworms and nurtured in the small neighbouring town of Anduze in the
Turkish fashion, i.e. without any of the usual precautions consisting in
keeping the worms in nurseries heated at an equal temperature.
Everything having been tried, this system had also had its turn, without
any appreciable success. By a fortunate circumstance, four out of those
five moths were healthy.
Pasteur looked forward to the study in comparisons that the following
spring would bring when worms were hatched both from the healthy and the
diseased seed. In the meanwhile, only a few of the Alaisians, including
M. Pagès, the Mayor, and M. de Lachadenède, really felt any confidence
in these results. Most of the other silkworm cultivators were disposed
to criticize everything, without having the patience to wait for
results. They expressed much regret that the Government should choose a
“mere chemist” for those investigations instead of some zoologist or
silkworm cultivator. Pasteur only said, “Have patience.”
He returned to Paris, where fresh sorrow awaited him: Camille, his
youngest child, only two years old, was seriously ill. He watched over
her night after night, spending his days at his task in the laboratory,
and returning in the evening to the bedside of his dying child. During
that same period he was asked for an article on Lavoisier by J. B.
Dumas, who had been requested by the Government to publish his works.
“No one,” wrote Dumas to Pasteur--“has read Lavoisier with more
attention than you have; no one can judge of him better.... The chance
which caused me to be born before you has placed me in communication
with surroundings and with men in whom I have found the ideas and
feelings which have guided me in this work. But, had it been yours, I
should have allowed no one else to be the first in drawing the world’s
attention to it. It is from this motive, also from a certain conformity
of tastes and of principles which has long made you dear to me, that I
now ask you to give up a few hours to Lavoisier.”
“My dear and illustrious master,” answered Pasteur (July 18, 1865), “in
the face of your letter and its expressions of affectionate confidence,
I cannot refuse to submit to you a paper which you must promise to throw
away if it should not be exactly what you want. I must also ask you to
grant me much time, partly on account of my inexperience, and partly on
account of the fatigue both mental and bodily imposed on me by the
illness of our dear child.”
Dumas replied: “Dear friend and colleague, I thank you for your kind
acquiescence in Lavoisier’s interests, which might well be your own, for
no one at this time represents better than you do his spirit and
method,--a method in which reasoning had more share than anything else.
“The art of observation and that of experimentation are very distinct.
In the first case, the fact may either proceed from logical reasons or
be mere good fortune; it is sufficient to have some penetration and the
sense of truth in order to profit by it. But the art of experimentation
leads from the first to the last link of the chain, without hesitation
and without a blank, making successive use of Reason, which suggests an
alternative, and of Experience, which decides on it, until, starting
from a faint glimmer, the full blaze of light is reached. Lavoisier made
this art into a method, and you possess it to a degree which always
gives me a pleasure for which I am grateful to you.
“Take your time. Lavoisier has waited seventy years! It is a century
since his first results were produced! What are weeks and months?
“I feel for you with all my heart! I know how heartrending are those
moments by the deathbed of a suffering child. I hope and trust this
great sorrow will be spared you, as indeed you deserve that it should
be.”
The promise made by Dumas to give to France an edition of Lavoisier’s
works dated very far back. It was in May, 1836, in one of his eloquent
lectures at the Collège de France, that Dumas had declared his intention
of raising a scientific monument to the memory of this, perhaps the
greatest of all French scientists. He had hoped that a Bill would be
passed by the Government of Louis Philippe decreeing that this edition
of Lavoisier’s works would be produced at the expense of the State. But
the usual obstacles and formalities came in the way. Governments
succeeded each other, and it was only in 1861 that Dumas obtained the
decree he wished for and that the book appeared.
Certainly Pasteur knew and admired as much as any one the discoveries of
Lavoisier. But, in the presence of the series of labours accomplished,
in spite of many other burdens, during that life cut off in its prime by
the Revolutionary Tribunal (1792), labours collated for the first time
by Dumas, Pasteur was filled with a new and vivid emotion. His logic in
reasoning and his patience in observing nature had in no wise diminished
the impetuous generosity of his feelings; a beautiful book, a great
discovery, a brilliant exploit or a humble act of kindness would move
him to tears. Concerning such a man as Lavoisier, Pasteur’s curiosity
became a sort of worship. He would have had the history of such a life
spread everywhere. “Though one discovery always surpasses another, and
though the chemical and physical knowledge accumulated since his time
has gone beyond all Lavoisier’s dreams,” wrote Pasteur, “his work, like
that of Newton and a few other rare spirits, will remain ever young.
Certain details will age, as do the fashions of another time, but the
foundation, the method, constitute one of those great aspects of the
human mind, the majesty of which is only increased by years....”
Pasteur’s article appeared in the _Moniteur_ and was much praised by the
celebrated critic Sainte Beuve, whose literary lectures were often
attended by Pasteur, between 1857 and 1861. The chronological order that
we are following in this history of Pasteur’s life allows us to follow
the ideas and feelings with which he lived his life of hard daily work
combined with daily devotion to others. Joys and sorrows can be
chronicled, thanks to the confidences of those who loved him. His fame
is indeed part of the future, but the tenderness which he inspired
revives the memories of the past.
In September, 1865, little Camille died. Pasteur took the tiny coffin to
Arbois and went back to his work. A letter written in November alludes
to the depth of his grief.
It was à propos of a candidature to the Académie des Sciences, Sainte
Beuve was asked to help that of a young friend of his, Charles Robin.
Robin occupied a professor’s chair specially created for him at the
_Faculté de Médecine_; he had made a deep microscopical study of the
tissues of living bodies, of cellular life, of all which constitutes
histology. He was convinced that outside his own studies, numerous
questions would fall more and more into the domain of experimentation,
and he believed that the faith in spiritual things could not “stand the
struggle against the spirit of the times, wholly turned to positive
things.” He did not, like Pasteur, understand the clear distinction
between the scientist on the one hand and the man of sentiment on the
other, each absolutely independent. Neither did he imitate the reserve
of Claude Bernard who did not allow himself to be pressed by any urgent
questioner into enrolment with either the believers or the unbelievers,
but answered: “When I am in my laboratory, I begin by shutting the door
on materialism and on spiritualism; I observe facts alone; I seek but
the scientific conditions under which life manifests itself.” Robin was
a disciple of Auguste Comte, and proclaimed himself a Positivist, a word
which for superficial people was the equivalent of materialist. The same
efforts which had succeeded in keeping Littré out of the Académie
Française in 1863 were now attempted in order to keep Robin out of the
Académie des Sciences in 1865.
Sainte Beuve, whilst studying medicine, had been a Positivist; his quick
and impressionable nature had then turned to a mysticism which had
inspired him to pen some fine verses. He had now returned to his former
philosophy, but kept an open mind, however, criticism being for him not
the art of dictating, but of understanding, and he was absolutely averse
to irrelevant considerations when a candidature was in question.
The best means with Pasteur, who was no diplomat, was to go straight to
the point. Sainte Beuve therefore wrote to him: “Dear Sir, will you
allow me to be indiscreet enough to solicit your influence in favour of
M. Robin, whose work I know you appreciate?
“M. Robin does not perhaps belong to the same philosophical school as
you do; but it seems to me--from an outsider’s point of view--that he
belongs to the same scientific school. If he should differ
essentially--whether in metaphysics or otherwise--would it not be worthy
of a great scientist to take none but positive work into account?
Nothing more, nothing less.
“Forgive me; I have much resented the injustice towards you of certain
newspapers, and I have sometimes asked myself if there were not some
simple means of showing up all that nonsense, and of disproving those
absurd and ill-intentioned statements. If M. Robin deserves to be of the
Académie why should he not attain to it through you?...
“My sense of gratitude towards you for those four years during which you
have done me the honour of including such a man as you are in my
audience, also a feeling of friendship, are carrying me too far. I
intended to mention this to you the other day at the Princess’s; she had
wished me to do so, but I feel bolder with a pen....”
The Princess in question was Princess Mathilde. Her salon, a rendezvous
of men of letters, men of science and artists, was a sort of second
Academy which consoled Théophile Gautier for not belonging to the other.
Sainte Beuve prided himself on being, so to speak, honorary secretary to
this accomplished and charming hostess.
Pasteur answered by return of post. “Sir and illustrious colleague, I
feel strongly inclined towards M. Robin, who would represent a new
scientific element at the Academy--the microscope applied to the study
of the human organism. I do not trouble about his philosophical school
save for the harm it may do to his work.... I confess frankly, however,
that I am not competent on the question of our philosophical schools. Of
M. Comte I have only read a few absurd passages; of M. Littré I only
know the beautiful pages you were inspired to write by his rare
knowledge and some of his domestic virtues. My philosophy is of the
heart and not of the mind, and I give myself up, for instance, to those
feelings about eternity which come naturally at the bedside of a
cherished child drawing its last breath. At those supreme moments, there
is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world
may be more than a mere combination of phenomena proper to a mechanical
equilibrium brought out of the chaos of the elements simply through the
gradual action of the forces of matter. I admire them all, our
philosophers! We have experiments to straighten and modify our ideas,
and we constantly find that nature is other than we had imagined. They,
who are always guessing, how can they know!...”
Sainte Beuve was probably not astonished at Pasteur’s somewhat hasty
epithet applied to Auguste Comte, whom he had himself defined as “an
obscure, abstruse, often diseased brain.” After Robin’s election he
wrote to his “dear and learned colleague”--
“I have not allowed myself to thank you for the letter, so beautiful, if
I may say so, so deep and so exalted in thought, which you did me the
honour of writing in answer to mine. Nothing now forbids me to tell you
how deeply I am struck with your way of thinking and with your action in
this scientific matter.”
That “something in the depths of our souls” of which Pasteur spoke in
his letter to Sainte Beuve, was often perceived in his conversation;
absorbed as he was in his daily task, he yet carried in himself a
constant aspiration towards the Ideal, a deep conviction of the reality
of the Infinite and a trustful acquiescence in the Mystery of the
universe.
During the last term of the year 1865, he turned from his work for a
time in order to study cholera. Coming from Egypt, the scourge had
lighted on Marseilles, then on Paris, where it made in October more than
two hundred victims per day; it was feared that the days of 1832 would
be repeated, when the deaths reached twenty-three per 1,000. Claude
Bernard, Pasteur, and Sainte Claire Deville went into the attics of the
Lariboisière hospital, above a cholera ward.
“We had opened,” said Pasteur, “one of the ventilators communicating
with the ward; we had adapted to the opening a glass tube surrounded by
a refrigerating mixture, and we drew the air of the ward into our tube,
so as to condense into it as many as we could of the products of the air
in the ward.”
Claude Bernard and Pasteur afterwards tried blood taken from patients,
and many other things; they were associated in those experiments, which
gave no result. Henri Sainte Claire Deville once said to Pasteur,
“Studies of that sort require much courage.” “What about duty?” said
Pasteur simply, in a tone, said Deville afterwards, worth many sermons.
The cholera did not last long; by the end of the autumn all danger had
disappeared.
Napeoleon the Third loved science, and found in it a sense of assured
stability which politics did not offer him. He desired Pasteur to come
and spend a week at the Palace of Compiègne.
The very first evening a grand reception took place. The diplomatic
world was represented by M. de Budberg, ambassador of Russia, and the
Prussian ambassador, M. de Goltz. Among the guests were: Dr. Longet,
celebrated for his researches and for his _Treatise on Physiology_, a
most original physician, whose one desire was to avoid patients and so
have more time for pure science; Jules Sandeau, the tender and delicate
novelist, with his somewhat heavy aspect of a captain in the Garde
Nationals; Paul Baudry, the painter, then in the flower of his youth and
radiant success; Paul Dubois, the conscientious artist of the _Chanteur
Florentin_ exhibited that very year; the architect, Viollet le Duc, an
habitué of the palace. The Emperor drew Pasteur aside towards the
fireplace, and the scientist soon found himself instructing his
Sovereign, talking about ferments and molecular dissymmetry.
Pasteur was congratulated by the courtiers on the favour shown by this
immediate confidential talk, and the Empress sent him word that she
wished him to talk with her also. Pasteur remembered this conversation,
an animated one, a little disconnected, chiefly about animalculæ,
infusories and ferments. When the guests returned to the immense
corridor into which the rooms opened, each with the name of the guests
on the door, Pasteur wrote to Paris for his microscope and for some
samples of diseased wines.
The next morning a stag hunt was organized; riders in handsome costumes,
open carriages drawn by six horses and containing guests, entered the
forest; a stag was soon brought to bay by the hounds. In the evening,
after dinner, there was a torchlight procession in the great courtyard.
Amid a burst of trumpets, the footmen in state livery, standing in a
circle, held aloft the flaming torches. In the centre, a huntsman held
part of the carcase of the stag and waved it to and fro before the
greedy eyes of the hounds, who, eager to hurl themselves upon it, and
now restrained by a word, then let loose, and again called back all
trembling at their discomfiture, were at length permitted to rush upon
and devour their prey.
The next day offered another item on the programme, a visit to the
castle of Pierrefonds, marvellously restored by Viollet le Duc at the
expense of the Imperial purse. Pasteur, who, like the philosopher, might
have said, “I am never bored but when I am being entertained,” made his
arrangements so that the day should not be entirely wasted. He made an
appointment for his return with the head butler, hoping to find a few
diseased wines in the Imperial cellar. That department, however, was so
well administered that he was only able to find seven or eight
suspicious-looking bottles. The tall flunkeys, who scarcely realized the
scientific interest offered by a basketful of wine bottles, watched
Pasteur more or less ironically as he returned to his room, where he had
the pleasure of finding his microscope and case of instruments sent from
the Rue d’Ulm. He remained upstairs, absorbed as he would have been in
his laboratory, in the contemplation of a drop of bitter wine revealing
the tiny mycoderma which caused the bitterness.
In the meanwhile some of the other guests were gathered in the smoking
room, smilingly awaiting the Empress’s five o’clock tea, whilst others
were busy with the preparations for the performance of Racine’s
_Plaideurs_, which Provost, Regnier, Got, Delaunay, Coquelin, and
Mademoiselle Jouassain were going to act that very evening in the
theatre of the palace.
On the Sunday, at 4 p.m., he was received privately by their Majesties,
for their instruction and edification. He wrote in a letter to a friend:
“I went to the Emperor with my microscope, my wine samples, and all my
paraphernalia. When I was announced, the Emperor came up to meet me and
asked me to come in. M. Conti, who was writing at a table, rose to leave
the room, but was invited to stay. Then he fetched the Empress, and I
began to show their Majesties various objects under the microscope and
to explain them; it lasted a whole hour.”
The Empress had been much interested, and wished that her five o’clock
friends--who were waiting in the room where tea was served--should also
acquire some notions of these studies. She merrily took up the
microscope, laughing at her new occupation of laboratory attendant, and
arrived thus laden in the drawing-room, much to the surprise of her
privileged guests. Pasteur came in behind her, and gave a short and
simple account of a few general ideas and precise discoveries.
In the same way, the preceding week, Le Verrier[25] had spoken of his
planet, and Dr. Longet had given a lecture on the circulation of the
blood. That butterfly world of the Court, taking a momentary interest in
scientific things, did not foresee that the smallest discovery made in
the poor laboratory of the Rue d’Ulm would leave a more lasting
impression than the fêtes of the Tuileries of Fontainebleau and of
Compiègne.
In the course of their private interview, Napoleon and Eugénie
manifested some surprise that Pasteur should not endeavour to turn his
discoveries and their applications to a source of legitimate profit. “In
France,” he replied, “scientists would consider that they lowered
themselves by doing so.”
He was convinced that a man of pure science would complicate his life,
the order of his thoughts, and risk paralysing his inventive faculties,
if he were to make money by his discoveries. For instance, if he had
followed up the industrial results of his studies on vinegar, his time
would have been too much and too regularly occupied, and he would not
have been free for new researches.
“My mind is free,” he said. “I am as full of ardour for the new question
of silkworm disease as I was in 1863, when I took up the wine question.”
What he most wished was to be able to watch the growth of the silkworms
from the very first day, and to pursue without interruption this serious
study in which the future of France was interested. That, and the desire
to have one day a laboratory adequate to the magnitude of his works were
his only ambitions. On his return to Pam he obtained leave to go back to
Alais.
“My dear Raulin,” wrote Pasteur to his former pupil in January, 1866. “I
am again entrusted by the Minister of Agriculture with a mission for the
study of silkworm disease, which will last at least five months, from
February 1 to the end of June. Would you care to join me?”
Raulin excused himself; he was then preparing, with his accustomed slow
conscientiousness, his doctor’s thesis, a work afterwards considered by
competent judges to be a masterpiece.
“I must console myself,” wrote Pasteur, expressing his regrets, “by
thinking that you will complete your excellent thesis.”
One of Raulin’s fellow students at the Ecole Normale, M. Gernez, was now
a professor at the Collège Louis le Grand. His mind was eminently
congenial to Pasteur’s. Duruy, then Minister of Public Instruction, was
ever anxious to smooth down all difficulties in the path of science: he
gave a long leave of absence to M. Gernez, in order that he might take
Raulin’s place. Another young _Normalien_, Maillot, prepared to join the
scientific party, much to his delight. The three men left Paris at the
beginning of February. They began by spending a few days in an hotel at
Alais, trying to find a suitable house where they would set up their
temporary laboratory. After a week or two in a house within the town,
too far, to be convenient, from the restaurant where they had their
meals, Maillot discovered a lonely house at the foot of the Mount of the
Hermitage, a mountain once covered with flourishing mulberry trees, but
now abandoned, and growing but a few olive trees.
This house, at Pont Gisquet, not quite a mile from Alais, was large
enough to hold Pasteur, his family and his pupils; a laboratory was soon
arranged in an empty orangery.
“Then began a period of intense work,” writes M. Gernez. “Pasteur
undertook a great number of trials, which he himself followed in their
minutest details; he only required our help over similar operations by
which he tested his own. The result was that above the fatigues of the
day, easily borne by us strong young men, he had to bear the additional
burden of special researches, importunate visitors, and an equally
importunate correspondence, chiefly dealing out criticisms....”
Madame Pasteur, who had been detained in Paris for her children’s
education, set out for Alais with her two daughters. Her mother being
then on a visit to the rector of the Chambéry Academy, M. Zevort, she
arranged to spend a day or two in that town. But hardly had she arrived
when her daughter Cécile, then twelve years old, became ill with typhoid
fever. Madame Pasteur had the courage not to ask her husband to leave
his work and come to her; but her letters alarmed him, and the anxious
father gave up his studies for a few days and arrived at Chambéry. The
danger at that time seemed averted, and he only remained three days at
Chambéry. Cécile, apparently convalescent, had recovered her smile, that
sweet, indefinable smile which gave so much charm to her serious, almost
melancholy face. She smiled thus for the last time at her little sister
Marie-Louise, about the middle of May, lying on a sofa by a sunny
window.
On May 21, her doctor, Dr. Flesschutt, wrote to Pasteur: “If the
interest I take in the child were not sufficient to stimulate my
efforts, the mother’s courage would keep up my hopes and double my
ardent desire for a happy issue.” Cécile died on May 23 after a sudden
relapse. Pasteur only arrived at Chambéry in time to take to Arbois the
remains of the little girl, which were buried near those of his mother,
of his two other daughters, Jeanne and Camille, and of his father,
Joseph Pasteur. The little cemetery indeed represented a cup of sorrows
for Pasteur.
“Your father has returned from his sad journey to Arbois,” wrote Madame
Pasteur from Chambéry to her son who was at school in Paris. “I did
think of going back to you, but I could not leave your poor father to go
back to Alais alone after this great sorrow.” Accompanied by her who was
his greatest comfort, and who gave him some of her own courage, Pasteur
came back to the Pont Gisquet and returned to his work. M. Duclaux in
his turn joined the hard-working little party.
At the beginning of June, Duruy, with the solicitude of a Minister who
found time to be also a friend, wrote affectionately to Pasteur--
“You are leaving me quite in the dark, yet you know the interest I take
in your work. Where are you? and what are you doing? Finding out
something I feel certain....”
Pasteur answered, “Monsieur le Ministre, I hasten to thank you for your
kind reminder. My studies have been associated with sorrow; perhaps your
charming little daughter, who used to play sometimes at M. Le Verrier’s,
will remember Cécile Pasteur among other little girls of her age that
she used to meet at the Observatoire. My dear child was coming with her
mother to spend the Easter holidays with me at Alais, when, during a
few days’ stay at Chambéry, she was seized with an attack of typhoid
fever, to which she succumbed after two months of painful suffering. I
was only able to be with her for a few days, being kept here by my work,
and full of deceiving hopes for a happy issue from that terrible
disease.
“I am now wholly wrapped up in my studies, which alone take my thoughts
from my deep sorrow.
“Thanks to the facilities which you have put in my way, I have been able
to collect a quantity of experimental observations, and I think I
understand on many points this disease which has been ruining the South
for fifteen or twenty years. I shall be able on my return to propose to
the Commission of Sericiculture a practical means of fighting the evil
and suppressing it in the course of a few years.
“I am arriving at this result that there is no silkworm disease. There
is but an exaggeration of a state of things which has always existed,
and it is not difficult, in my view, to return to the former situation,
even to improve on it. The evil was sought for in the worm and even in
the seed; that was something, but my observations prove that it develops
chiefly in the chrysalis, especially in the mature chrysalis, at the
moment of the moth’s formation, on the eve of the function of
reproduction. The microscope then detects its presence with certitude,
even when the seed and the worm seem very healthy. The practical result
is this: you have a nursery full; it has been successful or it has not;
you wish to know whether to smother the cocoons or whether to keep them
for reproduction. Nothing is simpler. You hasten the development of
about 100 moths through an elevation of temperature, and you examine
these moths through the microscope, which will tell you what to do.
“The sickly character is then so easy to detect that a woman or a child
can do it. If the cultivator should be a peasant, without the material
conditions required for this study, he can do this: instead of throwing
away the moths after they have laid their eggs, he can bottle a good
many of them in brandy and send them to a testing office or to some
experienced person who will determine the value of the seed for the
following year.”
The Japanese Government sent some cases of seed supposed to be healthy
to Napoleon III, who distributed them in the silkworm growing
departments. Pasteur, in the meanwhile, was stating the results he had
arrived at, and they were being much criticized. In order to avoid the
pébrine, which was indeed the disease caused by the corpuscles so
clearly visible through the microscope, he averred that no seed should
be used that came from infected moths. In order to demonstrate the
infectious character of the pébrine he would give to some worms meals of
leaves previously contaminated by means of a brush dipped in water
containing corpuscles. The worms absorbed the food, and the disease
immediately appeared and could be found in the chrysalides and moths
from those worms.
“I hope I am in the right road--close to the goal, perhaps, but I have
not yet reached it,” wrote Pasteur to his faithful Chappuis; “and as
long as the final proof is not acquired complications and errors are to
be feared. Next year, the growth of the numerous eggs I have prepared
will obviate my scruples, and I shall be sure of the value of the
preventive means I have indicated. It is tiresome to have to wait a year
before testing observations already made; but I have every hope of
success.”
While awaiting the renewal of the silkworm season, he was busy editing
his book on wine, full of joy at contributing to the national riches
through practical application of his observations. It was, in fact,
sufficient to heat the wines by the simple process already at that time
known in Austria as _pasteurisation_, to free them from all germs of
disease and make them suitable for keeping and for exportation. He did
not accord much attention to the talk of old gourmets who affirmed that
wines thus “mummified” could not mellow with age, being convinced on the
contrary that the most delicate wines could only be improved by heating.
“The ageing of wines,” he said, “is due, not to fermentation, but to a
slow oxidation which is favoured by heat.”
He alluded in his book to the interest taken by Napoleon III in those
researches which might be worth millions to France. He also related how
the Imperial solicitude had been awakened, and acknowledged gratitude
for this to General Favé, one of the Emperor’s aides de camp.
The General, on reading the proofs, declared that his name must
disappear. Pasteur regretfully gave in to his scruples, but wrote the
following words on the copy presented to General Favé: “General, this
book contains a serious omission--that of your name: it would be an
unpardonable one had it not been made at your own request, according to
your custom of keeping your good works secret. Without you, these
studies on wine would not exist; you have helped and encouraged them.
Leave me at least the satisfaction of writing that name on the first
page of this copy, of which I beg you to accept the homage, while
renewing the expression of my devoted gratitude.”
Another incident gives us an instance of Pasteur’s kindness of heart. In
the year 1866 Claude Bernard suffered from a gastric disease so serious
that his doctors, Rayer and Davaine, had to admit their impotence.
Bernard was obliged to leave his laboratory and retire to his little
house at St. Julien (near Villefranche), his birthplace. But the charm
of his recollections of childhood was embittered by present sadness. His
mind full of projects, his life threatened in its prime, he had the
courage, a difficult thing to unselfish people, of resolutely taking
care of himself. But preoccupied solely with his own diet, his own body
now a subject for experiments, he became a prey to a deep melancholia.
Pasteur, knowing to what extent moral influences react on the physique,
had the idea of writing a review of his friend’s works, and published it
in the _Moniteur Universel_ of November 7, 1866, under the following
title: _Claude Bernard: the Importance of his Works, Teaching and
Method_. He began thus: “Circumstances have recently caused me to
re-peruse the principal treatises which have founded the reputation of
our great physiologist, Claude Bernard.
“I have derived from them so great a satisfaction, and my admiration for
his talent has been confirmed and increased to such an extent that I
cannot resist the somewhat rash desire of communicating my
impressions....”
Amongst Claude Bernard’s discoveries, Pasteur chose that which seemed to
him most instructive, and which Claude Bernard himself appreciated most:
“When M. Bernard became in 1854 a candidate for the Académie des
Sciences, his discovery of the glycogenic functions of the liver was
neither the first nor the last among those which had already placed him
so high in the estimation of men of science; yet it was by that one that
he headed his list of the claims which could recommend him to the
suffrages of the illustrious body. That preference on the part of the
master decides me in mine.”
Claude Bernard had begun by meditating deeply on the disease known as
diabetes and which is characterized, as everybody knows, by a
superabundance of sugar in the whole of the organism, the urine often
being laden with it. But how is it, wondered Claude Bernard, that the
quantity of sugar expelled by a diabetic patient can so far surpass that
with which he is provided by the starchy or sugary substances which form
part of his food? How is it that the presence of sugary matter in the
blood and its expulsion through urine are never completely arrested,
even when all sugary or starchy alimentation is suppressed? Are there in
the human organism sugar-producing phenomena unknown to chemists and
physiologists? All the notions of science were contrary to that mode of
thinking; it was affirmed that the vegetable kingdom only could produce
sugar, and it seemed an insane hypothesis to suppose that the animal
organism could fabricate any. Claude Bernard dwelt upon it however, his
principle in experimentation being this: “When you meet with a fact
opposed to a prevailing theory, you should adhere to the fact and
abandon the theory, even when the latter is supported by great
authorities and generally adopted.”
This is what he imagined, summed up in a few words by Pasteur--
“Meat is an aliment which cannot develop sugar by the digestive process
known to us. Now M. Bernard having fed some carnivorous animals during a
certain time exclusively with meat, he assured himself, with his precise
knowledge of the most perfect means of investigation offered him by
chemistry, that the blood which enters the liver by the portal vein and
pours into it the nutritive substances prepared and rendered soluble by
digestion is absolutely devoid of sugar; whilst the blood which issues
from the liver by the hepatic veins is always abundantly provided with
it.... M. Claude Bernard has also thrown full light on the close
connection which exists between the secretion of sugar in the liver and
the influence of the nervous system. He has demonstrated, with a rare
sagacity, that by acting on some determined portion of that system it
was possible to suppress or exaggerate at will the production of sugar.
He has done more still; he has discovered within the liver the existence
of an absolutely new substance which is the natural source whence this
organ draws the sugar that it produces.”
Pasteur, starting from this discovery of Claude Bernard’s, spoke of the
growing close connection between medicine and physiology. Then, with his
constant anxiety to incite students to enthusiasm, he recommended them
to read the lectures delivered by Bernard at the Collège de France.
Speaking of the _Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine_,
Pasteur wrote: “A long commentary would be necessary to present this
splendid work to the reader; it is a monument raised to honour the
method which has constituted Physical and Chemical Science since Galileo
and Newton, and which M. Bernard is trying to introduce into physiology
and pathology. Nothing so complete, so profound, so luminous has ever
been written on the true principles of the difficult art of
experimentation.... This book will exert an immense influence on medical
science, its teaching, its progress, its language even.” Pasteur took
pleasure in adding to his own tribute praise from other sources. He
quoted, for instance, J. B. Dumas’ answer to Duruy, who asked him, “What
do you think of this great physiologist?” “He is not a great
physiologist; he is Physiology itself.” “I have spoken of the man of
science,” continued Pasteur. “I might have spoken of the man in everyday
life, the colleague who has inspired so many with a solid friendship,
for I should seek in vain for a weak point in M. Bernard; it is not to
be found. His personal distinction, the noble beauty of his physiognomy,
his gentle kindliness attract at first sight; he has no pedantry, none
of a scientist’s usual faults, but an antique simplicity, a perfectly
natural and unaffected manner, while his conversation is deep and full
of ideas....” Pasteur, after informing the public that the graver
symptoms of Bernard’s disease had now disappeared, ended thus: “May the
publicity now given to these thoughts and feelings cheer the illustrious
patient in his enforced idleness, and assure him of the joy with which
his return will be welcomed by his friends and colleagues.”
The very day after this article reached him (November 19, 1860) Bernard
wrote to Pasteur: “My dear friend,--I received yesterday the _Moniteur_
containing the superb article you have written about me. Your great
praise indeed makes me proud, though I feel I am yet very far from the
goal I would reach. If I return to health, as I now hope I may do, I
think I shall find it possible to pursue my work in a more methodical
order and with more complete means of demonstration, better indicating
the general idea towards which my various efforts converge. In the
meanwhile it is a very precious encouragement to me to be approved and
praised by a man such as you. Your works have given you a great name,
and have placed you in the first rank among experimentalists of our
time. The admiration which you profess for me is indeed reciprocated;
and we must have been born to understand each other, for true science
inspires us both with the same passion and the same sentiments.
“Forgive me for not having answered your first letter; but I was really
not equal to writing the notice you wanted. I have deeply felt for you
in your family sorrow; I have been through the same trial, and I can
well understand the sufferings of a tender and delicate soul such as
yours.”
Henri Sainte Claire Deville, who was as warm-hearted as he was witty,
had, on his side, the ingenious idea of editing an address of collective
wishes for Claude Bernard, who answered: “My dear friend,--You are
evidently as clever in inventing friendly surprises as in making great
scientific discoveries. It was indeed a most charming idea, and one for
which I am very grateful to you--that of sending me a collective letter
from my friends. I shall carefully preserve that letter: first, because
the feelings it expresses are very dear to me; and also because it is a
collection of illustrious autographs which should go down to posterity.
I beg you will transmit my thanks to our friends and colleagues, E.
Renan, A. Maury, F. Ravaisson and Bellaguet. Tell them how much I am
touched by their kind wishes and congratulations on my recovery. It is,
alas, not yet a cure, but I hope I am on a fair way to it.
“I have received the article Pasteur has written about me in the
_Moniteur_; that article paralysed the vasomotor nerves of my
sympathetic system, and caused me to blush to the roots of my hair. I
was so amazed that I don’t know what I wrote to Pasteur; but I did not
dare say to him that he had wrongly exaggerated my merits. I know he
believes all that he writes, and I am happy and proud of his opinion,
because it is that of a scientist and experimentalist of the very first
rank. Nevertheless, I cannot help thinking that he has seen me through
the prism of his kindly heart, and that I do not deserve such excessive
praise. I am more than thankful for all the marks of esteem and
friendship which are showered upon me. They make me cling closer to
life, and feel that I should be very foolish not to take care of myself
and continue to live amongst those who love me, and who deserve my love
for all the happiness they give me. I intend to return to Paris some
time this month, and, in spite of your kind advice, I should like to
take up my Collège de France classes again this winter. I hope to be
allowed not to begin before January. But we shall talk of all this in
Paris. I remain your devoted and affectionate friend.”
To end this academic episode, we will quote from Joseph Bertrand’s
letter of thanks to Pasteur, who had sent him the article: “...The
public will learn, among other things, that the eminent members of the
Academy admire and love each other sometimes with no jealousy. This was
rare in the last century, and, if all followed your example, we should
have over our predecessors one superiority worth many another.”
Thus Pasteur showed himself a man of sentiment as well as a man of
science; the circle of his affections was enlarging, as was the scope of
his researches, but without any detriment to the happy family life of
his own intimate circle. That little group of his family and close
friends identified itself absolutely with his work, his ideas and his
hopes, each member of it willingly subordinating his or her private
interests to the success of his investigations. He was at that time
violently attacked by his old adversaries as well as his new
contradictors. Pouchet announced everywhere that the question of
spontaneous generation was being taken up again in England, in Germany,
in Italy and in America. Joly, Pouchet’s inseparable friend, was about
to make some personal studies and to write some general considerations
on the new silkworm campaign. Pasteur, who had confidently said, “The
year 1867 must be the last to bear the complaints of silkworm
cultivators!” went back to Alais in January, 1867. But, before leaving
Paris, Pasteur wrote out for himself a list of various improvements and
reforms which he desired to effect in the administration of the Ecole
Normale, showing that his interest in the great school had by no means
abated, in spite of his necessary absence. He brought with him his wife
and daughter, and Messrs. Gernez and Maillot; M. Duclaux was to come
later. The worms hatched from the eggs of healthy moths and those from
diseased ones were growing more interesting every day; they were in
every instance exactly what Pasteur had prophesied they would be. But
besides studying his own silkworms, he liked to see what was going on
in neighbouring _magnaneries_. A neighbour in the Pont Gisquet, a
cultivator of the name of Cardinal, had raised with great success a
brood originating from the famous Japanese seed. He was disappointed,
however, in the eggs produced by the moths, and Pasteur’s microscope
revealed the fact that those moths were all corpuscled, in spite of
their healthy origin. Pasteur did not suspect that origin, for the worms
had shown health and vigour through all their stages of growth, and
seemed to have issued from healthy parents. But Cardinal had raised
another brood, the produce of unsound seed, immediately above these
healthy worms. The excreta from this second brood could fall on to the
frames of those below them, and the healthy worms had become
contaminated. Pasteur demonstrated that the pébrine contagion might take
place in one or two different ways: either from direct contact between
the worms on the same frame, or by the soiling of the food from the very
infectious excreta. The remedy for the pébrine seemed now found. “The
corpuscle disease,” said Pasteur, “is as easily avoided as it is easily
contracted.” But when he thought he had reached his goal a sudden
difficulty rose in his way. Out of sixteen broods of worms which he had
raised, and which presented an excellent appearance, the sixteenth
perished almost entirely immediately after the first moulting. “In a
brood of a hundred worms,” wrote Pasteur, “I picked up fifteen or twenty
dead ones every day, black and rotting with extraordinary rapidity....
They were soft and flaccid like an empty bladder. I looked in vain for
corpuscles; there was not a trace of them.”
Pasteur was temporarily troubled and discouraged. But he consulted the
writings of former students of silkworm diseases, and, when he
discovered vibriones in those dead worms, he did not doubt that he had
under his eyes a well characterized example of the flachery disease--a
disease independent and distinct from the pébrine. He wrote to Duruy,
and acquainted him with the results he had obtained and the obstacles he
encountered. Duruy wrote back on April 9, 1867--
“Thank you for your letter and the good news it contains.
“Not very far from you, at Avignon, a statue has been erected to the
Persian who imported into France the cultivation of madder; what then
will not be done for the rescuer of two of our greatest industries! Do
not forget to inform me when you have mastered the one or two lame
facts which still stand in the way. As a citizen, as head of the
Université, and, if I may say so, as your friend, I wish I could follow
your experiments day by day.
“You know that I should like to found a special college at Alais. Please
watch for any useful information on that subject. We will talk about it
on your return.
“I am obliged to M. Gernez for his assiduous and intelligent
collaboration with you.”
This letter from the great Minister is all the more interesting that it
is dated from the eve of the day when the law on the reorganization of
primary teaching was promulgated.
The introduction into the curriculum of historical and geographical
notions; the inauguration of 10,000 schools and 30,000 adult classes;
the transformation of certain flagging classical colleges into technical
training schools; a constant struggle to include the teaching of girls
in Université organization; reforms and improvements in general
teaching; the building of laboratories, etc., etc.--into the
accomplishment of all these projects Duruy carried his bold and
methodical activity. No one was more suited than he to the planning out
of a complete system of national education. He and Pasteur were indeed
fitted to understand each other, for each had in the same degree those
three forms of patriotism: love for the land, memories for the past, and
hero worship.
In May, 1867, Pasteur received at Alais the news that a grand prize
medal of the 1867 exhibition was conferred upon him for his works on
wines. He hastened to write to Dumas--
“My dear master, ... Nothing has surprised me more--or so
agreeably,--than the news of this Exhibition prize medal, which I was
far from expecting. It is a new proof of your kindness, for I feel sure
that I have to thank you for originating such a favour. I shall do all I
can to make myself worthy of it by my perseverance in putting all
difficulties aside from the subject I am now engaged in, and in which
the light is growing brighter every day. If that flachery disease had
not come to complicate matters, everything would be well by now. I
cannot tell you how absolutely sure I now feel of my conclusions
concerning the corpuscle disease. I could say a great deal about the
articles of Messrs. Béchamp, Estor and Balbiani, but I will follow your
advice and answer nothing....”
Dumas had been advising Pasteur not to waste his time by answering his
adversaries and contradictors. Pasteur’s system was making way; ten
microscopes were set up, here and there, in the town of Alais; most seed
merchants were taking up the examination of the dead moths, and the
Pont-Gisquet colony had samples brought in daily for inspection. “I have
already prevented many failures for next year,” he wrote to Dumas (June,
1867), “but I always beg as a favour that a little of the condemned seed
may be raised, so as to confirm the exactness of my judgment.”
His system was indeed quite simple; at the moment when the moths leave
their cocoons and mate with each other, the cultivator separates them
and places each female on a little square of linen where it lays its
eggs. The moth is afterwards pinned up in a corner of the same square of
linen, where it gradually dries up; later on, in autumn or even in
winter, the withered moth is moistened in a little water, pounded in a
mortar, and the paste examined with a microscope. If the least trace of
corpuscles appears the linen is burnt, together with the seed which
would have perpetuated the disease.
Pasteur came back to Paris to receive his medal; perhaps his presence
was not absolutely necesary, but he did not question the summons he
received. He always attached an absolute meaning to words and to things,
not being one of those who accept titles and homage with an inward and
ironical smile.
The pageant of that distribution of prizes was well worth seeing, and
July 1, 1867, is now remembered by many who were children at that time.
Paris afforded a beautiful spectacle; the central avenue of the
Tuileries garden, the Place de la Concorde, the Avenue des Champs
Elysées, were lined along their full length by regiments of infantry,
dragoons, Imperial Guards, etc., etc., standing motionless in the bright
sunshine, waiting for the Emperor to pass. The Imperial carriage, drawn
by eight horses, escorted by the Cent-Gardes in their pale blue uniform,
and by the Lancers of the Household, advanced in triumphant array.
Napoleon III sat next to the Empress, the Prince Imperial and Prince
Napoleon facing them. From the Palais de l’Elysée, amidst equally
magnificent ceremonial, the Sultan Abdul-Aziz and his son arrived; then
followed a procession of foreign princes: the Crown Prince of Prussia,
the Prince of Wales, Prince Humbert of Italy, the Duke and Duchess of
Aosta, the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, all of whom have since borne a
part in European politics. They entered the Palais de l’Industrie and
sat around the throne. From the ground to the first floor an immense
stand was raised, affording seats for 17,000 persons. The walls were
decorated with eagles bearing olive branches, symbolical of strength and
peace. The Emperor in his speech dwelt upon these hopes of peace, whilst
the Empress in white satin, wearing a diadem, and surrounded by
white-robed princesses, brightly smiled at these happy omens.
On their names being called out, the candidates who had won Grand
Prizes, and those about to be promoted in the Legion of Honour, went up
one by one to the throne. Marshal Vaillant handed each case to the
Emperor, who himself gave it to the recipient. This old Field-Marshal,
with his rough bronzed face, who had been a captain in the retreat from
Moscow and was now a Minister of Napoleon III, seemed a natural and
glorious link between the First and the Second Empires. He was born at
Dijon in humble circumstances, of which he was somewhat proud, a very
cultured soldier, interested in scientific things, a member of the
Institute. The names of certain members of the Legion of Honour promoted
to a higher rank, such as Gérôme and Meissonier, that of Ferdinand de
Lesseps, rewarded for the achievement of the Suez Canal, excited great
applause. Pasteur was called without provoking an equal curiosity: his
scientific discoveries, in spite of their industrial applications, being
as yet known but to a few. “I was struck,” writes an eye-witness, “with
his simplicity and gravity; the seriousness of his life was visible in
his stern, almost sad eyes.”
At the end of the ceremony, when the Imperial procession left the Palais
de l’Industrie, an immense chorus, accompanied by an orchestra, sang
_Domine salvum fac imperatorem_.
On his return to his study in the Rue d’Ulm, Pasteur again took up the
management of the scientific studies of the Ecole Normale. But an
incident put an end to his directorship, while bringing perturbation
into the whole of the school. Sainte Beuve was the indirect cause of
this small revolution. The Senate, of which he was a member, had had to
examine a protest from 102 inhabitants of St. Etienne against the
introduction into their popular libraries of the works of Voltaire, J.
J. Rousseau, Balzac, E. Renan, and others. The committee had approved
this petition in terms which identified the report with the petition
itself. Sainte Beuve, too exclusively literary in his tastes, and too
radical in his opinions to be popular in the Senate, rose violently
against this absolute and arbitrary judgment, forgetting everything but
the jeopardy of free opinions before the excessive and inquisitorial
zeal of the Senate. His speech was very unfavourably received, and one
of his colleagues, M. Lacaze, aged sixty-eight, challenged him to a
duel. Sainte Beuve, himself then sixty-three years old, refused to enter
into what he called “the summary jurisprudence which consists in
strangling a question and suppressing a man within forty-eight hours.”
The students of the Ecole Normale deputed one of their number to
congratulate Sainte Beuve on his speech, and wrote the following
letter--
“We have already thanked you for defending freedom of thought when
misjudged and attacked; now that you have again pleaded for it, we beg
you to receive our renewed thanks.
“We should be happy if the expression of our grateful sympathy could
console you for this injustice. Courage is indeed required to speak in
the Senate in favour of the independence and the rights of thought; but
the task is all the more glorious for being more difficult. Addresses
are now being sent from everywhere; you will forgive the students of the
Ecole Normale for having followed the general lead and having sent their
address to M. Sainte Beuve.”
This letter was published in a newspaper. Etienne Arago published it
without remembering the Université by-laws which forbade every sort of
political manifestation to the students. It had given pleasure to Sainte
Beuve, the pleasure that elderly men take in the applause of youth; but
he soon became uneasy at the results of this noisy publicity.
Nisard, the Director of the school, could not very well tolerate this
breach of discipline. In spite of the entreaties of Sainte Beuve, the
student who had signed the letter was provisionally sent back to his
family. His comrades revolted at this and imperiously demanded his
immediate restoration. Pasteur attempted to pacify them by speaking to
them, but failed utterly; his influence was very great over his own
pupils, the students on the scientific side, but the others, the
“_littéraires_,” were the most violent on this question, and he was not
diplomatic and conciliating enough to bring them round. They rose in a
body, marched to the door, and the whole school was soon parading the
streets. “Before such disorder,” concluded the _Moniteur_, relating the
incident (July 10), “the authorities were obliged to order an immediate
closure. The school will be reconstituted and the classes will reopen on
October 15.”
Both the literary and the political world were temporarily agitated; the
Minister was interviewed. M. Thiers wrote to Pasteur on July 10: “My
dear M. Pasteur,--I have been talking with some members of the Left, and
I am certain or almost certain, that the Ecole Normale affair will be
smoothed over in the interest of the students. M. Jules Simon intends to
work in that direction; keep this information for yourself, and do the
best you can on your side.”
At the idea that the Ecole was about to be reconstituted, that is, that
the three great chiefs, Nisard, Pasteur and Jacquinet, would be changed,
deep regret was manifested by Pasteur’s scientific students. One of
them, named Didon, expressed it in these terms: “If your departure from
the school is not definitely settled, if it is yet possible to prevent
it, all the students of the Ecole will be only too happy to do
everything in their power.... As for me, it is impossible to express my
gratitude towards you. No one has ever shown me so much interest, and
never in my life shall I forget what you have done for me.”
Pasteur’s interest in young men, his desire to excite in them scientific
curiosity and enthusiasm, were now so well known that Didon and several
others who had successfully passed the entrance examinations both for
the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Normale, had chosen to enter the
latter in order to be under him; by the _Normaliens_ of the scientific
section, he was not only understood and admired, but beloved, almost
worshipped.
Sainte Beuve, who continued to be much troubled at the consequences of
his speech, wrote to the Minister of Public Instruction in favour of the
rusticated student. Duruy thought so much of Sainte Beuve that the
student, instead of being exiled to some insignificant country school,
was made professor of _seconde_ in the college of Sens. But it was
specified that in the future no letter should be written, no public
responsibility taken in the name of the Ecole without the authorization
of the Director.
Nisard left; Dumas had just been made President of the Monetary
Commission, thus leaving vacant a place as Inspector-General of Higher
Education. Duruy, anxious to do Pasteur justice, thought this post most
suitable to him as it would allow him to continue his researches. The
decree was about to be signed, when Balard, professor of chemistry at
the Faculty of Sciences, applied for the post. Pasteur wrote
respectfully to the Minister of Public Instruction (July 31): “Your
Excellency must know that twenty years ago, when I left the Ecole
Normale, I was made a curator, thanks to M. Balard, who was then a
professor at the Ecole Normale. A grateful pupil cannot enter into
competition with a revered master, especially for a post where
considerations of age and experience should have great weight.”
When Pasteur spoke of his masters, dead or living, Biot or Senarmont,
Dumas or Balard, it might indeed have been thought that to them alone he
owed it that he was what he was. He was heard on this occasion, and
Balard obtained the appointment.
Nisard was succeeded by M. F. Bouillier, whose place as
Inspector-General of Secondary Education devolved on M. Jacquinet. The
directorship of scientific studies was given to Pasteur’s old and
excellent friend, the faithful Bertin. After teaching in Alsace for
eighteen years, he had become _maître des conférences_ at the Ecole
Normale in 1866, and also assistant of Regnault at the Collège de
France. It had only been by dint of much persuasion that Pasteur had
enticed him to Paris. “What is the good?” said the unambitious Bertin;
“beer is not so good in Paris as in Strasburg.... Pasteur does not
understand life; he is a genius, that is all!” But, under this apparent
indolence, Bertin was possessed of the taste for and the art of
teaching; Pasteur knew this, and, when Bertin was appointed, Pasteur’s
fears for the scientific future of his beloved Ecole were abated. Duruy,
much regretting the break of Pasteur’s connection with the great school,
offered him the post of _maître des conférences_, besides the chair of
chemistry which Balard’s appointment had left vacant at the Sorbonne.
But Pasteur declined the tempting offer; he knew the care and trouble
that his public lectures cost him, and felt that the two posts would be
beyond his strength; if his time were taken up by that double task it
would be almost impossible for him to pursue his private researches,
which under no circumstances would he abandon.
He carried his scruples so far as to give up his chemistry professorship
at the School of Fine Arts, where he had been lecturing since 1863. He
had endeavoured in his lessons to draw the attention of his artist
pupils, who came from so many distant places, to the actual principles
of Science. “Let us always make application our object,” he said, “but
resting on the stern and solid basis of scientific principles. Without
those principles, application is nothing more than a series of recipes
and constitutes what is called routine. Progress with routine is
possible, but desperately slow.”
Another reason prevented him from accepting the post offered him at the
Ecole Normale; this was that the tiny pavilion which he had made his
laboratory was much too small and too inconvenient to accommodate the
pupils he would have to teach. The only suitable laboratory at the Ecole
was that of his friend, Henri Sainte Claire Deville, and Pasteur was
reluctant to invade it. He had a great affection for his brilliant
colleague, who was indeed a particularly charming man, still youthful in
spite of his forty-nine summers, active, energetic, witty. “I have no
wit,” Pasteur would say quite simply. Deville was a great contrast to
his two great friends, Pasteur and Claude Bernard, with their grave
meditative manner. He enjoyed boarding at the Ecole and having his meals
at the students’ table, where his gaiety brightened and amused
everybody, effacing the distance between masters and pupils and yet
never losing by this familiar attitude a particle of the respect he
inspired.
Sometimes, however, when preoccupied with the heavy expenses of his
laboratory, he would invite himself to lunch with Duruy, from whom--as
from the Emperor or any one else--he usually succeeded in coaxing what
he wanted. The general state of things connected with higher education
was at that time most deplorable. The Sorbonne was as Richelieu had left
it--the Museum was sadly inadequate. At the Collège de France, it was
indeed impossible to call by the name of laboratory the narrow, damp and
unhealthy cellars, which Claude Bernard called “scientists’ graves,” and
where he had contracted the long illness from which he was only just
recovering.
Duruy understood and deplored this penury, but his voice was scarcely
heard in cabinet councils, the other Ministers being absorbed in
politics. Pasteur, whose self-effacing modesty disappeared when the
interests of science were in question, presented to Napoleon, through
the medium of his enlightened aide de camp, General Favé, the following
letter, a most interesting one, for, in it, possibilities of future
discoveries are hinted at, which later became accomplished facts.
“Sire,--My researches on fermentations and on microscopic organisms have
opened to physiological chemistry new roads, the benefit of which is
beginning to be felt both by agricultural industries and by medical
studies. But the field still to be explored is immense. My great desire
would be to explore it with a new ardour, unrestrained by the
insufficiency of material means.
“I should wish to have a spacious laboratory, with one or two outhouses
attached to it, which I could make use of when making experiments
possibly injurious to health, such as might be the scientific study of
putrid and infectious diseases.
“How can researches be attempted on gangrene, virus or inoculations,
without a building suitable for the housing of animals, either dead or
alive? Butchers’ meat in Europe reaches an exorbitant price, in Buenos
Ayres it is given away. How, in a small and incomplete laboratory, can
experiments be made, and various processes tested, which would
facilitate its transport and preservation? The so-called ‘splenic fever’
costs the Beauce[26] about 4,000,000 francs annually; it would be
indispensable to go and spend some weeks in the neighbourhood of
Chartres during several consecutive summers, and make minute
observations.
“These researches and a thousand others which correspond in my mind to
the great act of transformation after death of organic matter, and the
compulsory return to the ground and atmosphere of all which has once
been living, are only compatible with the installation of a great
laboratory. The time has now come when experimental science should be
freed from its bonds....”
The Emperor wrote to Duruy the very next day, desiring that Pasteur’s
wish should be acceded to. Duruy gladly acquiesced and plans began to be
drawn out. Pasteur, who scarcely dared believe in these bright hopes,
was consulted about the situation, size, etc., of the future building,
and looked forward to obtaining the help of Raulin, his former pupil,
when he had room enough to experiment on a larger scale. The proposed
site was part of the garden of the Ecole Normale, where the pavilion
already existing could be greatly added to.
In the meanwhile Pasteur was interviewed by the Mayor and the President
of the Chamber of Commerce of Orleans, who begged him to come to Orleans
and give a public lecture on the results of his studies on vinegar. He
consented with pleasure, ever willing to attempt awakening the interest
of the public in his beloved Science--“Science, which brings man nearer
to God.”
It was on the Monday, November 11, at 7.30 p.m., that Pasteur entered
the lecture room at Orleans. A great many vinegar manufacturers, some
doctors, apothecaries, professors, students, even ladies, had come to
hear him. An account in a contemporary local paper gives us a
description of the youngest member of the Académie des Sciences as he
appeared before the Orleans public. He is described as of a medium
height, his face pale, his eyes very bright through his glasses,
scrupulously neat in his dress, with a tiny Legion of Honour rosette in
his button hole.
He began his lecture with the following simple words: “The Mayor and the
President of the Chamber of Commerce having heard that I had studied the
fermentation which produces vinegar, have asked me to lay before the
vinegar makers of this town the results of my work. I have hastened to
comply with their request, fully sharing in the desire which instigated
it, that of being useful to an industry which is one of the sources of
the fortune of your city and of your department.”
He tried to make them understand scientifically the well known fact of
the transformation of wine into vinegar. He showed that all the work
came from a little plant, a microscopic fungus, the _mycoderma aceti_.
After exhibiting an enlarged picture of that mycoderma, Pasteur
explained that the least trace of that little vinegar-making plant, sown
on the surface of any alcoholic and slightly acid liquid, was sufficient
to produce a prodigious extension of it; in summer or artificial heat,
said Pasteur, a surface of liquid of the same area as the Orleans
Lecture room could be covered in forty-eight hours. The mycodermic veil
is sometimes smooth and hardly visible, sometimes wrinkled and a little
greasy to the touch. The fatty matter which accompanies the development
of the plant keeps it on the surface, air being necessary to the plant;
it would otherwise perish and the acetification would be arrested. Thus
floating, the mycoderma absorbs oxygen from the air and fixes it on the
alcohol, which becomes transformed into acetic acid.
Pasteur explained all the details in his clear powerful voice. Why, in
an open bottle, does wine left to itself become vinegar? Because, thanks
to the air, and to the mycoderma aceti (which need never be sown, being
ever mixed with the invisible dusts in the air), the chemical
transformation of wine into vinegar can take place. Why does not a full,
closed bottle become acetified? Because the mycoderma cannot multiply in
the absence of air. Wine and air heated in the same vessel will not
become sour, the high temperature having killed the germs of mycoderma
aceti both in the wine itself and in the dusts suspended in the air.
But, if a vessel containing wine previously heated is exposed to the
free contact of ordinary air, the wine may become sour, for, though the
germs in the wine have been killed, other germs may fall into it from
the air and develop.
Finally, if pure alcoholized water does not become acetified, though
germs can drop into it from the air, it is because it does not offer to
those germs the food necessary to the plant--food which is present in
wine but not in alcoholized water. But if a suitable aliment for the
little plant is added to the water, acetification takes place.
When the acetification is complete, the mycoderma, if not submerged,
continues to act, and, when not arrested in time, its oxidating power
becomes dangerous; having no more alcohol to act upon, it ends by
transforming acetic acid itself into water and carbonic acid gas, and
the work of death and destruction is thus achieved.
Speaking of that last phase of the mycoderma aceti, he went on to
general laws--laws of the universe by which all that has lived must
disappear. “It is an absolute necessity that the matter of which living
beings are formed should return after their death to the ground and to
the atmosphere in the shape of mineral or gaseous substances, such as
steam, carbonic acid gas, ammoniac gas or nitrogen--simple principles
easily displaced by movements of the atmosphere and in which life is
again enabled to seek the elements of its indefinite perpetuity. It is
chiefly through acts of fermentation and slow combustion that this law
of dissolution and return to a gaseous state is accomplished.”
Coming back to his special subject, he pointed out to vinegar
manufacturers the cause of certain failures and the danger of certain
errors.
It was imagined for instance that some microscopic beings, anguillulæ,
of which Pasteur projected an enlarged wriggling image on the screen,
and which were to be found in the tubs of some Orleans vinegar works,
were of some practical utility. Pasteur explained their injurious
character: as they require air to live, and as the mycoderma, in order
to accomplish its work, is equally dependent on oxygen, a struggle takes
place between the anguillulæ and the mycoderma. If acetification is
successful, if the mycoderma spreads and invades everything, the
vanquished anguillulæ are obliged to take refuge against the sides of
the barrel, from which their little living army watches the least
accidental break of the veil. Pasteur, armed with a magnifying glass,
had many times witnessed the struggle for life which takes place between
the little fungi and the tiny animals, each fighting for the surface of
the liquid. Sometimes, gathering themselves into masses, the anguillulæ
succeed in sinking a fragment of the mycodermic veil and victoriously
destroying the action of the drowned plants.
Pasteur related all this in a vivid manner, evidently happy that his
long and delicate laboratory researches should now pass into the domain
of industry. He had been pleased to find that some Orleans wine
merchants heated wine according to his advice in order to preserve it;
and he now informed them that the temperature of 55° C. which killed
germs and vegetations in wine could be applied with equal success to
vinegar after it was produced. The active germs of the mycoderma aceti
were thus arrested at the right moment, the anguillulæ were killed and
the vinegar remained pure and unaltered. “Nothing,” concluded Pasteur,
“is more agreeable to a man who has made science his career than to
increase the number of discoveries, but his cup of joy is full when the
result of his observations is put to immediate practical use.”
This year 1867 marks a specially interesting period in Pasteur’s life.
At Alais he had shown himself an incomparable observer, solely
preoccupied with the silkworm disease, thinking, speaking of nothing
else. He would rise long before anyone else so as to begin earlier the
study of the experiments he had started, and would give his thought and
attention to some detail for hours at a time. After this minute
observation he would suddenly display a marvellous ingenuity in varying
tests, foreseeing and avoiding causes of error, and at last, after so
many efforts, a clear and decisive experiment would come, as it had done
in the cases of spontaneous generation and of ferments.
The contrasts in his mind had their parallel in his character: this
usually thoughtful, almost dreamy man, absorbed in one idea, suddenly
revealed himself a man of action if provoked by some erroneous newspaper
report or some illogical statement, and especially when he heard of some
unscrupulous silkworm seed merchant sowing ruin in poor _magnaneries_
for the sake of a paltry gain. When, on his return to Paris, he found
himself mixed up with the small revolution in the Ecole Normale, he was
seen to efface himself modestly before his masters when honours and
titles came in question. Now he had interrupted his researches in order
to do a kindness to the people of Orleans, who, practical as they were,
and perhaps a little disdainful of laboratory theories, had been
surprised to find him as careful of the smallest detail as they
themselves were.
He was then in the full maturity of his forty-five years. His great
intuition, his imagination, which equalled any poet’s, often carried him
to a summit whence an immense horizon lay before him; he would then
suddenly doubt this imagination, resolutely, with a violent effort,
force his mind to start again along the path of experimental method,
and, surely and slowly, gathering proofs as he went, he would once more
reach his exalted and general ideas. This constant struggle within
himself was almost dramatic; the words “Perseverance in Effort,” which
he often used in the form of advice to others, or as a programme for his
own work, seemed to bring something far away, something infinite before
his dreamy eyes.
At the end of the year, an obstacle almost arrested the great
experiments he contemplated. He heard that the promises made to him were
vanishing away, the necessary credit having been refused for the
building of the new laboratory. And this, Pasteur sadly reflected, when
millions and millions of francs were being spent on the Opera house!
Wounded in his feelings, both as a scientist and a patriot, he prepared
for the _Moniteur_, then the official paper, an article destined to
shake the culpable indifference of public authorities.
“...The boldest conceptions,” he wrote, “the most legitimate
speculations can be embodied but from the day when they are consecrated
by observation and experiment. Laboratories and discoveries are
correlative terms; if you suppress laboratories, Physical Science will
become stricken with barrenness and death; it will become mere powerless
information instead of a science of progress and futurity; give it back
its laboratories, and life, fecundity and power will reappear. Away from
their laboratories, physicists and chemists are but disarmed soldiers on
a battlefield.
“The deduction from these principles is evident: if the conquests useful
to humanity touch your heart--if you remain confounded before the
marvels of electric telegraphy, of anæsthesia, of the daguerreotype and
many other admirable discoveries--if you are jealous of the share your
country may boast in these wonders--then, I implore you, take some
interest in those sacred dwellings meaningly described as
_laboratories_. Ask that they may be multiplied and completed. They are
the temples of the future, of riches and of comfort. There humanity
grows greater, better, stronger; there she can learn to read the works
of Nature, works of progress and universal harmony, while humanity’s own
works are too often those of barbarism, of fanaticism and of
destruction.
“Some nations have felt the wholesome breath of truth. Rich and large
laboratories have been growing in Germany for the last thirty years, and
many more are still being built; at Berlin and at Bonn two palaces,
worth four million francs each, are being erected for chemical studies.
St. Petersburg has spent three and a half million francs on a
Physiological Institute; England, America, Austria, Bavaria have made
most generous sacrifices. Italy too has made a start.
“And France?
“France has not yet begun....” He mentioned the sepulchre-like cellar
where the great physiologist, Claude Bernard, was obliged to live; “and
where?” wrote Pasteur. “In the very establishment which bears the name
of the mother country, the Collège de France!” The laboratory of the
Sorbonne was no better--a damp, dark room, one metre below the level of
the street. He went on, demonstrating that the provincial Faculties were
as destitute as those of Paris. “Who will believe me when I affirm that
the budget of Public Instruction provides not a penny towards the
progress of physical science in laboratories, that it is through a
tolerated administrative fiction that some scientists, considered as
professors, are permitted to draw from the public treasury towards the
expenses of their own work, some of the allowance made to them for
teaching purposes.”
The manuscript was sent to the _Moniteur_ at the beginning of January,
1868. It had lately been publishing mild articles on Mussulman
architecture, then on herring fishing in Norway. The official whose
business it was to read over the articles sent to the paper literally
jumped in his chair when he read this fiery denunciation; he declared
those pages must be modified, cut down; the Administration could not be
attacked in that way, especially by one of its own functionaries! M.
Dalloz, the editor of the paper, knew that Pasteur would never consent
to any alterations; he advised him to show the proofs to M. Conti,
Napoleon III’s secretary.
“The article cannot appear in the _Moniteur_, but why not publish it in
booklet form?” wrote M. Conti to Pasteur after having shown these
revelations to the Emperor. Napoleon, talking to Duruy the next day,
January 9, showed great concern at such a state of things. “Pasteur is
right,” said Duruy, “to expose such deficiencies; it is the best way to
have them remedied. Is it not deplorable, almost scandalous, that the
official world should be so indifferent on questions of science?”
Duruy felt his combative instincts awakening. How many times, in spite
of his good humour and almost Roman intrepidity, he had asked himself
whether he would ever succeed in causing his ideas on higher education
to prevail with his colleagues, the other Ministers, who, carried away
by their daily discussions, hardly seemed to realize that the true
supremacy of a nation does not reside in speeches, but in the silent and
tenacious work of a few men of science and of letters. Pasteur’s article
entitled _Science’s Budget_ appeared first in the _Revue des cours
scientifiques_, then as a pamphlet. Pasteur, not content with this,
continued his campaign by impetuous speeches whenever the opportunity
offered. On March 10, he saw himself nearing his goal, and wrote to
Raulin: “There is now a marked movement in favour of Science; I think I
shall succeed.”
Six days later, on March 16, whilst the Court was celebrating the
birthday of the Prince Imperial, Napoleon III, who, on reading Pasteur’s
article, had expressed his intention of consulting not only Pasteur,
but also Milne-Edwards, Claude Bernard, and Henri Sainte Claire Deville,
asked the four scientists to his study to meet Rouher, Marshal Vaillant
and Duruy, perhaps the three men of the Empire who were best qualified
to hear them. The Emperor in his slow, detached manner, invited each of
his guests to express his opinion on the course to follow. All agreed in
regretting that pure science should be given up. When Rouher said that
it was not to be wondered at that the reign of applied science should
follow that of pure science, “But if the sources of applications are
dried up!” interposed the Emperor hastily. Pasteur, asked to express his
opinion (he had brought with him notes of what he wished to say),
recalled the fact that the Natural History Museum and the Ecole
Polytechnique, which had had so great a share in the scientific movement
of the early part of the century, were no longer in that heroic period.
For the last twenty years the industrial prosperity of France had
induced the cleverest Polytechnicians to desert higher studies and
theoretical science, though the source of all applications was to be
found in theory. The Ecole Polytechnique was obliged now to recruit its
teaching staff outside, chiefly among Normaliens. What was to be done to
train future scientists? This: to maintain in Paris, during two or three
years, five or six graduates chosen from the best students of the large
schools as curators or preparation masters, doing at the Ecole
Polytechnique and other establishments what was done at the Ecole
Normale. Thanks to that special institution, science and higher teaching
would have a reserve of men who would become an honour to their country.
Next, and this was the second point, no less important than the first,
scientists should be given resources better appropriated to the pursuit
of their work; as in Germany, for instance, where a scientist would
leave one university for another on the express condition that a
laboratory should be built for him, “a laboratory,” said Pasteur,
“usually magnificent, not in its architecture (though sometimes that is
the case, a proof of the national pride in scientific glory), but in the
number and perfection of its appliances. Besides,” he added, “foreign
scientists have their private homes adjoining their laboratories and
collections,” indeed a most pressing inducement to work.
Pasteur did not suggest that a scientist should give up teaching; he
recognized, on the contrary, that public teaching forces him to embrace
in succession every branch of the science he teaches. “But let him not
give too frequent or too varied lectures! they paralyze the faculties,”
he said, being well aware of the cost of preparing classes. He wished
that towns should be interested in the working and success of their
scientific establishments. The Universities of Paris, of Lyons, of
Strasburg, of Montpellier, of Lille, of Bordeaux, and of Toulouse,
forming as a whole the University of France, should be connected to the
neighbourhood which they honour in the same way that German universities
are connected with their surroundings.
Pasteur had the greatest admiration for the German system: popular
instruction liberally provided, and, above it, an intellectually
independent higher teaching. Therefore, when the University of Bonn
resolved in that year, 1868, to offer him as a great homage the degree
of M.D. on account of his works on micro-organisms, he was proud to see
his researches rated at their proper value by a neighbouring nation. He
did not then suspect the other side of German nature, the military side,
then very differently preoccupied. Those preoccupations were pointed out
to the French Government in a spirit of prophecy, and with some
patriotic anguish, by two French officers, General Ducrot, commanding
since 1865 the 6th Military Division, whose headquarters were at
Strasburg, and Colonel Baron Stoffel, military attaché in Prussia since
1866. Their warnings were so little heeded that some Court intrigues
were even then on foot to transfer General Ducrot from Strasburg to
Bourges, so that he might no longer worry people with his monomania of
Prussian ambition.
On March 10, the evening of the day when the Emperor decided upon making
improvements, and when Duruy felt assured, thanks to the promised
allowances, that he could soon offer to French professors “the necessary
appliances with which to compete with their rivals beyond the Rhine,”
Pasteur started for Alais, where his arrival was impatiently awaited,
both by partisans and adversaries of his experiments on silkworm
disease. He would much have liked to give the results of his work in his
inaugural lecture at the Sorbonne. “But,” he wrote to Duruy, “these are
but selfishly sentimental reasons, which must be outweighed by the
interest of my researches.”
On his arrival he found to his joy that those who had practised seeding
according to his rigorous prescriptions had met with complete success.
Other silkworm cultivators, less well advised, duped by the decoying
appearances of certain broods, had not taken the trouble to examine
whether the moths were corpuscled; they were witnesses and victims of
the failure Pasteur had prophesied. He now looked upon pébrine as
conquered; but flachery remained, more difficult to prevent, being
greatly dependent upon the accidents which traverse the life of a
silkworm. Some of those accidents happen in spite of all precautions,
such as a sudden change of temperature or a stormy day; but at least the
leaves of the mulberry tree could be carefully kept from fermentation,
or from contamination by dusts in the nurseries. Either of those two
causes was sufficient to provoke a fatal disorder in silkworms, the
feeding of which is so important that they increase to fifteen thousand
times their own weight during the first month of their life. Accidental
flachery could therefore be avoided by hygienic precautions. In order to
prevent it from becoming hereditary, Pasteur--who had pointed out that
the micro-organism which causes it develops at first in the intestinal
canal of the worm and then becomes localized in the digestive cavity of
the chrysalis--advised the following means of producing a healthy strain
of silkworms: “This means,” writes M. Gernez, Pasteur’s assiduous
collaborator in these studies, “does not greatly complicate operations,
and infallibly ensures healthy seed. It consists in abstracting with the
point of a scalpel a small portion of the digestive cavity of a moth,
then mixing it with a little water and examining it with a microscope.
If the moths do not contain the characteristic micro-organism, the
strain they come from may unhesitatingly be considered as suitable for
seeding. The flachery micro-organism is as easily recognized as the
pébrine corpuscle.”
The seed merchants, made uneasy by these discoveries which so gravely
jeopardized their industry, spread the most slanderous reports about
them and made themselves the willing echo of every imposture, however
incredible. M. Laurent wrote to his daughter, Madame Pasteur, in a
letter dated from Lyons (June 6): “It is being reported here that the
failure of Pasteur’s process has excited the population of your
neighbourhood so much that he has had to flee from Alais, pursued by
infuriated inhabitants throwing stones after him.” Some of these legends
lingered in the minds of ignorant people.
Important news came from Paris to Pasteur in July, and on the 27th he
was able to write to Raulin: “The building of my laboratory is going to
be begun! the orders are given, and the money found. I heard this two
days ago from the Minister.” 30,000 francs had been allowed for the work
by the Minister of Public Instruction, and an equal sum was promised by
the Minister of the Emperor’s household. Duruy was preparing at the same
time a report on two projected decrees concerning laboratories for
teaching purposes and for research. “The laboratory for research,” wrote
Duruy, “will not be useful to the master alone, but more so even to the
students, thus ensuring the future progress of science. Students already
provided with extensive theoretical knowledge will be initiated in the
_teaching laboratories_ into the handling of instruments, elementary
manipulations, and what I may call classical practice; this will gather
them around eminent masters, from whom they will learn the art of
observation and methods of experiment.... It is with similar
institutions that Germany has succeeded in obtaining the great
development of experimental science which we are now watching with an
anxious sympathy.”
Pasteur returned to Paris with his enthusiastic mind overflowing with
plans of all kinds of research. He wanted to be there when the builders
began their work on the narrow space in the Rue d’Ulm. He wrote to
Raulin on August 10, asking his opinion as he would that of an
architect; then went on to say, planning out his busy holidays: “I shall
leave Paris on the 16th with my wife and children to spend three weeks
at the seaside, at St. George’s, near Bordeaux. If you were free at the
end of the month, or at the beginning of September, I wish you could
accompany me to Toulon, where experiments on the heating of wines will
be made by the Minister of the Navy. Great quantities of heated and of
non-heated wine are to be sent to Gabon so as to test the process; at
present our colonial crews have to drink mere vinegar. A commission of
very enlightened men is formed and has begun studies with which it seems
satisfied.... See if you can join me at Bordeaux, where I shall await a
notice from the chairman of the Commission, M. de Lapparent, director of
naval construction at the Ministry of Marine.”
The Commission mentioned by Pasteur had been considering for the last
two years the expediency of applying the heating process to wines
destined for the fleet and to the colonies. A first trial was made at
Brest on the contents of a barrel of 500 litres, half of which was
heated. Then the two wines were sealed in different barrels and placed
in the ship _Jean Bart_, which remained away from the harbour for ten
months. When the vessel returned, the Commission noted the limpidity and
mellowness of the heated wine, adding in the official report that the
wine had acquired the attractive colour peculiar to mature wines. The
non-heated wine was equally limpid, but it had an astringent, almost
acid flavour. It was still fit to drink, said the report, but it were
better to consume it rapidly, as it would soon be entirely spoilt.
Identical results were observed in some bottles of heated and non-heated
wines at Rochefort and Orleans.
M. de Lapparent now organized a decisive experiment, to take place under
Pasteur’s superintendence. The frigate _la Sibylle_ started for a tour
round the world with a complete cargo of heated wine. Pasteur, who
returned to Arbois for a short rest before going back to Paris, wrote
from there to his early confidant, Chappuis (September 21, 1868): “I am
quite satisfied with my experiments at Toulon and with the success of
the Navy tests. We heated 650 hectolitres in two days; the rapidity of
this operation lends itself to quick and considerable commissariat
arrangements. Those 650 hectolitres will be taken to the West Coast of
Africa, together with 50 hectolitres of the same wine non-heated. If the
trial succeeds, that is to say if the 650 hectolitres arrive and can be
kept without alteration, and if the 50 hectolitres become spoilt (I feel
confident after the experiments I have made that such will be the
result), the question will be settled, and, in the future, all the wine
for the Navy will be ensured against disease by a preliminary heating.
The expense will not be more than five centimes per hectolitre. The
result of these experiments will have a great influence on the trade,
ever cautious and afraid of innovations. Yet we have seen, at Narbonne
in particular, some heating practised on a large scale by several
merchants who have spoken to me very favourably about it. The
exportation of our French wines will increase enormously, for at present
our ordinary table wines lend themselves to trade with England and other
countries beyond seas, but only by means of a strong addition of
alcohol, which raises their price and tampers with their hygienic
qualities.”
The experiments were successful. Pasteur’s life was now over full. He
returned to Paris at the beginning of October, and threw himself into
his work, his classes at the Sorbonne, the organization of his
laboratory, some further polemics on the subject of silkworm disease,
and projected experiments for the following year. This accumulation of
mental work brought about extreme cerebral tension.
As soon as he saw M. Gernez, he spoke to him of the coming campaign of
sericiculture, of his desire to reduce his adversaries to silence by
heaping proof upon proof. Nothing could relieve him from that absorbing
preoccupation, not even the gaiety of Bertin, who, living on the same
floor at the Ecole Normale, often used to come in after dinner and try
to amuse him.
On Monday, October 19, Pasteur, though suffering from a strange tingling
sensation of the left side, had a great desire to go and read to the
Academié des Sciences a treatise by Salimbeni, an Italian, who, having
studied and verified Pasteur’s results, declared that the best means of
regenerating the culture of silkworms was due to the French scientist.
This treatise, the diploma of the Bonn University, the Rumford medal
offered by the English, all those testimonials from neighbouring nations
were infinitely agreeable to Pasteur, who was proud to lay such homage
before the shrine of France. On that day, October 19, 1868, a date which
became a bitter memory to his family and friends--in spite of an
alarming shivering fit which had caused him to lie down immediately
after lunch instead of working as usual--he insisted on going to the
Academy sitting at half past two.
Mme. Pasteur, vaguely uneasy, made a pretext of some shopping beyond the
Quai Conti and accompanied him as far as the vestibule of the Institute.
As she was turning back, she met Balard, who was coming up with the
quick step of a young man, stopped him and asked him to walk back with
Pasteur, and not to leave him before reaching his own door, though
indeed it seemed a curious exchange of parts to ask Balard at sixty
years of age to watch over Pasteur still so young. Pasteur read
Salimbeni’s paper in his usual steady voice, remained until the end of
the sitting and walked back with Balard and Sainte Claire Deville. He
dined very lightly and went to bed at nine o’clock; he had hardly got
into bed when he felt himself attacked by the strange symptoms of the
afternoon. He tried to speak, but in vain; after a few moments he was
able to call for assistance. Mme. Pasteur sent at once for Dr. Godélier,
an intimate friend of the family, an army surgeon, Clinical Professor at
the Ecole du Val-de-Grâce[27]; and Pasteur, paralysed one moment and
free again the next, explained his own symptoms during the intervals of
the dark struggle which endangered his life.
The cerebral hæmorrhage gradually brought about absence of movement
along the entire left side. When the next morning Dr. Noël Gueneau de
Mussy, going his regulation round of the Ecole Normale students, came
into his room and said, so as not to alarm him, “I heard you were
unwell, and thought I would come to see you,” Pasteur smiled the sad
smile of a patient with no illusions. Drs. Godélier and Gueneau de Mussy
decided to call Dr. Andral in consultation, and went to fetch him at
three o’clock at the Académie de Médecine. Somewhat disconcerted by the
singular character of this attack of hemiplegia, Andral prescribed the
application of sixteen leeches behind the ears; blood flowed abundantly,
and Dr. Godélier wrote in the evening bulletin (Tuesday): “Speech
clearer, some movements of the paralysed limbs; intelligence perfect.”
Later, at ten o’clock: “Complains of his paralysed arm.” “It is like
lead; if it could only be cut off!” groaned Pasteur. About 2 a.m. Mme
Pasteur thought all hope was gone. The hastily written bulletin reads
thus: “Intense cold, anxious agitation, features depressed, eyes
languid.” The sleep which followed was as the sleep of death.
At dawn Pasteur awoke from this drowsiness. “Mental faculties still
absolutely intact,” wrote M. Godélier at 12.30 on Wednesday, October 21.
“The cerebral lesion, whatever it may be, is not worse; there is an
evident pause.” Two hours later the words, “Mind active,” were followed
by the startling statement, “Would willingly talk science.”
While these periods of calm, agitation, renewed hopes, and despair were
succeeding each other in the course of those thirty-six hours, Pasteur’s
friends hastened to his bedside. He said to Henri Sainte Claire Deville,
one of the first to come: “I am sorry to die; I wanted to do much more
for my country.” Sainte Claire Deville, trying to hide his grief under
apparent confidence, answered, “Never fear; you will recover, you will
make many more marvellous discoveries, you will live happy days; I am
your senior, you will survive me. Promise me that you will pronounce my
funeral oration.... I wish you would; you would say nice things of me,”
he added between tears and smiles.
Bertin, Gernez, Duclaux, Baulin, Didon, then a curator at the Ecole
Normale, Professor Auguste Lamy, the geologist Marcou (the two latter
being Franche-comté friends), all claimed the privilege of helping Mme.
Pasteur and M. Godélier in nursing one who inspired them all, not merely
with an admiring and devoted affection, but with a feeling of tenderness
amounting almost to a cult.
A private letter from a cousin, Mme. Cribier, gives an idea of those
dark days (October 26, 1868): “The news is rather good this morning; the
patient was able to sleep for a few hours last night, which he had not
yet done. He had been so restless all day that M. Godélier felt uneasy
about him and ordered complete silence in the whole flat; it was only in
the study which is farthest away from the bedroom, and which has padded
doors, that one was allowed to talk. That room is full from morning till
night. All scientific Paris comes to inquire anxiously after the
patient; intimate friends take it in turns to watch by him. Dumas, the
great chemist, was affectionately insisting on taking his turn
yesterday. Every morning the Emperor and Empress send a footman for
news, which M. Godélier gives him in a sealed envelope. In fact, every
mark of sympathy is given to poor Marie, and I hope that the worst may
be spared her in spite of the alarming beginning. His mind seems so
absolutely untouched, and he is still so young, that with rest and care
he might yet be able to do some work. His stroke is accompanied by
symptoms which are now occupying the attention of the whole Academy of
Medicine. Paralysis always comes abruptly, whilst for M. Pasteur, it
came in little successive fits, twenty or thirty perhaps, and was only
complete at the end of twenty-four hours, which completely disconcerted
the doctors who watched him, and delayed their having recourse to an
active treatment. It seems that this fact is observed for the first
time, and is puzzling the whole Faculty.”
M. Pasteur’s mind remained clear, luminous, dominating his prostrate
body; he was evidently afraid that he should die before having
thoroughly settled the question of silkworm diseases. “One night that I
was alone with him,” relates M. Gernez, who hardly left his bedside
during that terrible week, “after endeavouring in vain to distract his
thoughts, I despairingly gave up the attempt and allowed him to express
the ideas which were on his mind; finding, to my surprise, that they had
his accustomed clearness and conciseness, I wrote what he dictated
without altering a word, and the next day I brought to his illustrious
colleague, Dumas--who hardly credited his senses--the memorandum which
appeared in the report of the Académie on October 26, 1868, a week after
the stroke which nearly killed him! It was a note on a very ingenious
process for discovering in the earlier tests those eggs which are
predisposed to flachery.”
The members of the Academy were much cheered by the reading of this
note, which seemed to bring Pasteur back into their midst.
The building of the laboratory had been begun, and hoardings erected
around the site. Pasteur, from his bed, asked day by day, “How are they
getting on?” But his wife and daughter, going to the window of the
dining-room which overlooked the Ecole Normale garden, only brought him
back vague answers, for, as a matter of fact, the workmen had
disappeared from the very first day of Pasteur’s illness. All that could
be seen was a solitary labourer wheeling a barrow aimlessly about,
probably under the orders of some official who feared to alarm the
patient.
As Pasteur was not expected to recover, the trouble and expense were
deemed unnecessary. Pasteur soon became aware of this, and one day that
General Favé had come to see him he gave vent to some bitter feelings as
to this cautious interruption of the building works, saying that it
would have been simpler and more straightforward to state from the
beginning that the work was suspended in the expectation of a probable
demise.
Napoleon was informed of this excess of zeal, not only by General Favé,
but by Sainte Claire Deville, who was a guest at Compiègne at the
beginning of November, 1868. He wrote to the Minister of Public
Instruction--
“My dear M. Duruy,--I have heard that--unknown to you probably--the men
who were working at M. Pasteur’s laboratory were kept away from the very
day he became ill; he has been much affected by this circumstance,
which seemed to point to his non-recovery. I beg you will issue orders
that the work begun should be continued. Believe in my sincere
friendship.--Napoleon.”
Duruy immediately sent on this note to M. du Mesnil, whose somewhat long
title was that of “Chief of the Division of Academic Administration of
Scientific Establishments and of Higher Education.” M. du Mesnil
evidently repudiated the charge for himself or for his Minister, for he
wrote in a large hand, on the very margin of the Imperial autograph--
“M. Duruy gave no orders and had to give none. It is at his solicitation
that the works were undertaken, but it is the _Direction of Civic
Buildings_ alone which _can_ have interrupted them; the fact should be
verified.”
M. de Cardaillac, head of the Direction of Civic Buildings, made an
inquiry and the building was resumed.
It was only on November 30 that Pasteur left his bed for the first time
and spent an hour in his armchair. He clearly analyzed to himself his
melancholy condition, stricken down as he was by hemiplegia in his
forty-sixth year; but having noticed that his remarks saddened his wife
and daughter, he spoke no more about his illness, and only expressed his
anxiety not to be a trouble, a burden, he said, to his wife, his son and
daughter, and the devoted friends who helped to watch him at night.
In the daytime each offered to read to him. General Favé, whose active
and inquiring mind was ever on the alert, brought him on one of his
almost daily visits an ideal sick man’s book, easy to read and offering
food for meditation. It was the translation of an English book called
_Self-Help_,[28] and it consisted in a series of biographies, histories
of lives illustrating the power of courage, devotion or intelligence.
The author, glad to expound a discovery, to describe a masterpiece, to
relate noble enterprises, to dwell upon the prodigies which energy can
achieve, had succeeded in making a homogeneous whole of these
unconnected narratives, a sort of homage to Willpower.
Pasteur agreed with the English writer in thinking that the supremacy of
a nation resides in “the sum total of private virtues, activities and
energy.” His thoughts rose higher still; men of science could wish for a
greater glory than that of contributing to the fame and fortune of
their country, they might aspire to originating vast benefits to the
whole of humanity.
It was indeed a sad and a sublime spectacle, that of the contrast
between that ardent, soaring soul and that patient helpless body. It was
probably when thinking of those biographies--some of them too succinct,
to his mind, Jenner’s for instance--that Pasteur wrote: “From the life
of men whose passage is marked by a trace of durable light, let us
piously gather up every word, every incident likely to make known the
incentives of their great soul, for the education of posterity.” He
looked upon the cult of great men as a great principle of national
education, and believed that children, as soon as they could read,
should be made acquainted with the heroic or benevolent souls of great
men. In his pious patriotism he saw a secret of strength and of hope for
a nation in its reverence for the memories of the great, a sacred and
intimate bond between the visible and the invisible worlds. His soul was
deeply religious. During his illness--a time when the things of this
world assume their real proportions--his mind rose far beyond this
earth. The Infinite appeared to him as it did to Pascal, and with the
same rapture; he was less attracted by Pascal, when, proud and
disdainful, he exposes man’s weakness for humiliation’s sake, than when
he declares that “Man is produced but for Infinity,” and “he finds
constant instruction in progress.” Pasteur believed in material progress
as well as in moral improvement; he invariably marked in the books he
was reading--Pascal, Nicole and others--those passages which were both
consoling and exalting.
In one of his favourite books, _Of the Knowledge of God and of Self_, he
much appreciated the passage where Bossuet ascribes to human nature “the
idea of an infinite wisdom, of an absolute power, of an infallible
rectitude, in one word, the idea of perfection.” Another phrase in the
same book seemed to him applicable to experimental method as well as to
the conduct of life: “The greatest aberration of the mind consists in
believing a thing because it is desirable.”
With December, joy began to return to the Ecole Normale: the laboratory
was progressing and seemed an embodiment of renewed hopes of further
work. M. Godélier’s little bulletins now ran: “General condition most
satisfactory. Excellent morale; the progress evidenced daily by the
return of action in the paralysed muscles inspires the patient with
great confidence. He is planning out his future sericiculture campaign,
receives many callers without too much fatigue, converses brightly and
often dictates letters.”
One visit was a great pleasure to Pasteur--that of the Minister, his
cordial friend, Duruy, who brought him good news of the future of Higher
Education. The augmented credit which was granted in the 1869 budget
would make it possible to rebuild other laboratories besides that of the
Ecole Normale, and also to create in other places new centres of study
and research. After so many efforts and struggles, it was at last
possible to foresee the day when chemistry, physics, physiology, natural
history and mathematics would each have an independent department in a
great province, which should be called the Practical School of Higher
Studies. There would be no constraint, no hard and fast rules, no
curriculum but that of free study: young men who were attracted to pure
science, and others who preferred practical application, would find a
congenial career before them as well as those who desired to give
themselves up to teaching. It can well be imagined with what delight
Pasteur heard these good tidings.
The bulletins continued to be favourable: “(December 15): Progress slow
but sure: he has walked from his bed to his armchair with some
assistance. (December 22): he has gone into the dining-room for dinner,
leaning on a chair. (29th): he has walked a few steps without support.”
Pasteur saw in his convalescence but the returning means of working, and
declared himself ready to start again for the neighbourhood of Alais at
once, instead of taking the few months’ rest he was advised to have.
He urged that, after certain moths and chrysalides, had been examined
through a microscope, complete certainty would be acquired as to the
condition of their seed, and that perfect seed would therefore become
accessible to all tradesmen both great and small; would it not be absurd
and culpable to let reasons of personal health interfere with saving so
many poor people from ruin?
His family had to give way, and on January 18, exactly three months
after his paralytic stroke, he was taken to the _Gare de Lyon_ by his
wife and daughter and M. Gernez. He then travelled, lying on the
cushions of a _coupé_ carriage, as far as Alais, and drove from Alais to
St. Hippolyte le Fort, where tests were being made on forced silkworms
by the agricultural society of Le Vigan.
The house he came into was cold and badly arranged. M. Gernez improvised
a laboratory, with the assistance of Maillot and Raulin, who had
followed their master down. From his sofa or from his bed, Pasteur
directed certain experiments on the forced specimens. M. Gernez writes:
“The operations, of which we watched the phases through the microscope,
fully justified his anticipations; and he rejoiced that he had not given
up the game.” In the world of the Institute his departure was blamed by
some and praised by others; but Pasteur merely considered that one man’s
life is worthless if not useful to others.
Dumas wrote to him early in February: “My dear friend and colleague,--I
have been thinking of you so much! I dread fatigue for you, and wish I
could spare it you, whilst hoping that you may successfully achieve your
great and patriotic undertaking. I have hesitated to write to you for
fear you should feel obliged to answer. However, I should like to have
direct news of you, as detailed as possible, and, besides that, I should
be much obliged if you could send me a line to enlighten me on the two
following points--
“1. When are you going back to Alais? And when will your Alais broods be
near enough to their time to be most interesting to visit?
“2. What should I say to people who beg for healthy seed as if my
pockets were full of it? I tell them it is too late; but if you could
tell me a means of satisfying them, I should be pleased, particularly in
the case of General Randon and M. Husson. The Marshal (Vaillant) is full
of solicitude for you, and we never meet but our whole conversation
turns upon you. With me, it is natural. With him less so, perhaps, but
anyhow, he thinks of you as much as is possible, and this gives me a
great deal of pleasure.... Please present to Madame Pasteur our united
compliments and wishes. We wish the South could have the virtues of
Achilles’ lance--of healing the wounds it has caused.--Yours
affectionately.”
Pasteur was reduced to complete helplessness through having slipped and
fallen on the stone floor of his uncomfortable house, and was obliged to
dictate the following letter--
“My dear master,--I thank you for thinking of the poor invalid. I am
very much in the same condition as when I left Paris, my progress
having been retarded by a fall on my left side. Fortunately, I sustained
no fracture, but only bruises, which were naturally painful and very
slow to disappear.
“There are now no remaining traces of that accident, and I am as I was
three weeks ago. The improvement in the movements of the leg and arm
appears to have begun again, but with excessive slowness. I am about to
have recourse to electricity, under the advice and instructions of Dr.
Godélier, by means of a small Ruhmkorff apparatus which he has kindly
sent me. My brain is still very weak.
“This is how my days are spent: in the morning my three young friends
come to see me, and I arrange the day’s work. I get up at twelve, after
having my breakfast in bed, and having had the newspaper read to me. If
fine, I then spend an hour or two in the little garden of this house.
Usually, if I am feeling pretty well, I dictate to my dear wife a page,
or more frequently half a page, of a little book I am preparing, and in
which I intend to give a short account of the whole of my observations.
Before dinner, which I have alone with my wife and my little girl in
order to avoid the fatigue of conversation, my young collaborators bring
me a report of their work. About seven or half past, I always feel
terribly tired and inclined to sleep twelve consecutive hours; but I
invariably wake at midnight, not to sleep again until towards morning,
when I doze again for an hour or two. What makes me hope for an ultimate
cure is the fact that my appetite keeps good, and that those short hours
of sleep appear to be sufficient. You see that on the whole I am doing
nothing rash, being moreover rigorously watched by my wife and little
daughter. The latter pitilessly takes books, pens, papers and pencils
away from me with a perseverance which causes me joy and despair.
“It is because I know your affection for your pupils that I venture to
give you so many details. I will now answer the other questions in your
letter.
“I shall be at Alais from April 1; that will be the time when they will
begin hatching seed for the industrial campaign, which will consequently
be concluded about May 20 at the latest. Seeding will take place during
June, more or less early according to departments. It is indeed very
late to obtain seed, especially indigenous seed prepared according to my
process. I had foreseen that I should receive demands at the last
moment, and that I should do well to put by a few ounces; but, about
three weeks ago, our energetic Minister wrote to ask me for some seed to
distribute to schoolmasters, and I promised him what I had. However I
will take some from his share and send you several lots of five grammes.
The director of a most interesting Austrian establishment has also
ordered two ounces, saying he is convinced of the excellence of my
method. His establishment is a most interesting experimental
_magnanerie_, founded in a handsome Illyrian property. Lastly, I have
also promised two ounces to M. le Comte de Casabianca. One of my young
men is going out to his place in Corsica to do the seeding.
“I was much touched by what you tell me of Marshal Vaillant’s kind
interest in my health, and also by his kind thought in informing me of
the encouragement given to my studies by the Society of Agriculture. I
wish the cultivators of your South had a little of his scientific and
methodical spirit.
“Madame Pasteur joins with me in sending you and your family, dear
master, the expression of my gratitude and affectionate devotion.”
The normal season for the culture of silkworms was now aproaching, and
Pasteur was impatient to accumulate the proofs which would vouch for the
safety of his method; this had been somewhat doubted by the members of
the Lyons Silks Commission, who possessed an experimental nursery. Most
of those gentlemen averred that too much confidence should not be placed
in the micrographs. “Our Commission,” thus ran their report of the
preceding year, “considers the examination of corpuscles as a useful
indication which should be consulted, but of which the results cannot be
presented as a fact from which absolute consequences can be deducted.”
“They _are_ absolute,” answered Pasteur, who did not admit reservations
on a point which he considered as invulnerable.
On March 22, 1869, the Commission asked Pasteur for a little guaranteed
healthy seed. Pasteur not only sent them this, but also sample lots, of
which he thus predicted the future fate:--
1. One lot of healthy seed, which would succeed;
2. One lot of seed, which would perish exclusively from the corpuscle
disease known as pébrine or gattine; 3. One lot of seed, which would
perish exclusively from the flachery disease;
4. One lot of seeds, which would perish partly from corpuscle disease
and partly from flachery.
“It seems to me,” added Pasteur, “that the comparison between the
results of those different lots will do more to enlighten the Commission
on the certainty of the principles I have established than could a mere
sample of healthy seed.
“I desire that this letter should be sent to the Commission at its next
meeting, and put down in the minutes.”
The Commission accepted with pleasure these unexpected surprise boxes.
About the same time one of his assistants, Maillot, started for Corsica
at M. de Casabianca’s request. He took with him six lots of healthy seed
to Vescovato, a few miles from Bastia.
The rest of the colony returned to the Pont Gisquet, near Alais, that
mulberry-planted retreat, where, according to Pasteur, everything was
conducive to work. Pasteur now looked forward to his definitive victory,
and, full of confidence, organized his pupils’ missions. M. Duclaux, who
was coming to the Pont Gisquet to watch the normal broods, would
afterwards go into the Cévennes to verify the seedings made on the
selection system. M. Gernez was to note the results of some seedings
made by Pasteur himself the preceding year at M. Raibaud-Lange’s, at
Paillerols, near Digne (Basses Alpes). Raulin alone would remain at the
Pont Gisquet to study some points of detail concerning the flachery
disease. So many results ought surely to reduce contradictors to
silence!
“My dear friend and colleague,” wrote Dumas to Pasteur, “I need not tell
you with what anxiety we are watching the progress of your precious
health and of your silkworm campaign. I shall certainly be at Alais at
the end of the week, and I shall see, under your kind direction, all
that may furnish me with the means of guiding public opinion. You have
quacks to fight and envy to conquer, probably a hopeless task; the best
is to march right through them, Truth leading the way. It is not likely
that they will be converted or reduced to silence.”
Whilst these expeditions were being planned, a letter from M. Gressier,
the Minister of Agriculture, arrived very inopportunely. M. Gressier was
better versed in _sub rosâ_ ministerial combinations than in seeding
processes, and he asked Pasteur to examine three lots of seeds sent to
him by a Mademoiselle Amat, of Brives-la-Gaillarde, who was celebrated
in the department of the Corrèze for her good management of silkworms.
This _magnanarelle_, having had some successful results, was begging his
Excellency to accord to those humble seeds his particular consideration,
and to have them developed with every possible care.
At the same time she was sending samples of the same seeds to various
places in the Gard, the Bouches du Rhône, etc., etc.
M. Gressier (April 20) asked Pasteur to examine them and to give him a
detailed report. Pasteur answered four days afterwards in terms which
were certainly not softened by the usual administrative precautions--
“Monsieur le Ministre, ... these three sorts of seed are worthless. If
they are developed, even in very small nurseries, they will in every
instance succumb to corpuscle disease. If my seeding process had been
employed, it would not have required ten minutes to discover that
Mademoiselle Amat’s cocoons, though excellent for spinning purposes,
were absolutely unfit for reproduction. My seeding process gives the
means of recognizing those broods which are suitable for seed, whilst
opposing the production of the infected eggs which year by year flood
the silkworm cultivating departments.
“I shall be much obliged, Monsieur le Ministre, if you will kindly
inform the Prefect of the Corrèze of the forecasts which I now impart to
you, and if you will ask _him_ to report to you the results of
Mademoiselle Amat’s three lots.
“For my part, I feel so sure of what I now affirm, that I shall not even
trouble to test, by hatching them, the samples which you have sent me. I
have thrown them into the river....”
J. B. Dumas had come to Alais, Messrs. Gernez and Duclaux now returned
from their expeditions. In two hundred broods, each of one or two ounces
of seed, coming from three different sources and hatched in various
localities, not one failure was recorded. The Lyons Commission, which
had made a note of Pasteur’s bold prognosis, found it absolutely
correct; the excellence of the method was acknowledged by all who had
conscientiously tried it. Now that the scourge was really conquered,
Pasteur imagined that all he had to do was to set up a table of the
results sent to him. But, from the south of France and from Corsica,
jealousies were beginning their work of undermining; pseudo-scientists
in their vanity proclaimed that everything was illusory that was outside
their own affirmations, and the seed merchants, willing to ruin
everybody rather than jeopardize their miserable interests, “did not
hesitate (we are quoting M. Gernez) to perpetrate the most odious
falsehoods.”
Instead of being annoyed, saddened, often indignant as he was, Pasteur
would have done more wisely to look back upon the history of most great
discoveries and of the initial difficulties which beset them. But he
could not look upon such things philosophically; stupidity astonished
him and he could not easily bring himself to believe in bad faith. His
friends in Alais society, M. de Lachadenède, M. Despeyroux, professor of
chemistry, might have reminded him, in their evening conversations, of
the difficulties ever encountered in the service of mankind. The
prejudice against potatoes, for instance, had lasted three hundred
years. When they were brought over from Peru in the fifteenth century,
it was asserted that they caused leprosy; in the seventeenth century,
that accusation was recognized to be absurd, but it was said that they
caused fever. One century later, in 1771, the Besançon Academy of
Medicine having opened a competition for the answer to the following
question of general interest: “What plants can be used to supplement
other foods in times of famine?” a military apothecary, named
Parmentier, competed and proved victoriously that the potato was quite
harmless. After that, he began a propagandist campaign in favour of
potatoes. But prejudice still subsisted in spite of his experimental
fields and of the dinners in the menu of which potatoes held a large
place. Louis XVI had then an inspiration worthy of Henry IV; he appeared
in public, wearing in his buttonhole Parmentier’s little mauve flower,
and thus glorified it in the eyes of the Court and of the crowd.
But such comparisons had no weight with Pasteur; he was henceforth sure
of his method and longed to see it adopted, unable to understand why
there should be further discussions now that the silkworm industry was
saved and the bread of so many poor families assured. He was learning to
know all the bitterness of sterile polemics, and the obstacles placed
one by one in the way of those who attempt to give humanity anything new
and useful. Fortunately he had what so many men of research have lacked,
the active and zealous collaboration of pupils imbued with his
principles, and the rarer and priceless blessing of a home life mingling
with his laboratory life. His wife and his daughter, a mere child,
shared his sericiculture labours; they had become _magnanarelles_ equal
to the most capable in Alais. Another privilege was the advocacy of some
champions quite unknown to him. Those who loved science and who
understood that it would now become, thanks to Pasteur, an important
factor in agricultural and sericicultural matters hailed his
achievements with joy. For instance, a letter was published on July 8,
1869, in the _Journal of Practical Agriculture_ by a cultivator who had
obtained excellent results by applying Pasteur’s method; the letter
concluded as follows: “We should be obliged, if, through the columns of
your paper, you would express to M. Pasteur our feelings of gratitude
for his laborious and valuable researches. We firmly hope that he will
one day reap the fruit of his arduous labours, and be amply compensated
for the passionate attacks of which he is now the object.”
“Monsieur Pasteur,” once said the Mayor of Alais, Dr. Pagès, “if what
you are showing me becomes verified in current practice, nothing can
repay you for your work, but the town of Alais will raise a golden
statue to you.”
Marshal Vaillant began to take more and more interest in this question,
which was not darkened, in his eyes at least, by the dust of polemics.
The old soldier, always scrupulously punctual at the meetings of the
Institute and of the Imperial and Central Society of Agriculture, had
amused himself by organizing a little silkworm nursery on the Pasteur
system, in his own study, in the very centre of Paris. These
experiments, in the Imperial palace might have reminded an erudite
reader of Olivier de Serres’ _Théâtre d’Agriculture_ of the time when
the said Olivier de Serres planted mulberry trees in the Tuileries
gardens at Henry IV’s request, and when, according to the old
agricultural writer, a house was arranged at the end of the gardens
“accommodated with all things necessary as well for the feeding of the
worms as for the preparation of silk.”
The Marshal, though calling himself the most modest of sericicultors,
had been able to appreciate the safety of a method which produced the
same results in Paris as at the Pont Gisquet; the octogenarian veteran
dwelt with complacency on the splendid condition of his silkworms in all
their phases from the minute worm hatched from the seed-like egg to the
splendid cocoon of white or yellow silk.
It occurred to Vaillant to suggest a decisive experiment in favour of
Pasteur and of the silkworm industry. The Prince Imperial owned in
Illyria, about six leagues from Trieste, a property called Villa
Vicentina. One of Napoleon’s sisters, Elisa Bonaparte, had lived
peacefully there after the fall of the first Empire, and had left it to
her daughter, Princess Baciocchi, who bequeathed it to the Prince
Imperial, with the rest of her fortune. Vines and mulberry trees grew
plentifully on that vast domain, but the produce of cocoons was nil,
pébrine and flachery having devastated the place. Marshal Vaillant,
Minister of the Emperor’s Household, desired to render the princely
property once again productive and, at the same time, to give his
colleague of the Institute an opportunity of “definitely silencing the
opposition created by ignorance and jealousy.” In a letter dated October
9, he requested Pasteur to send out 900 ounces of seed to Villa
Vicentina, a large quantity, for one ounce produced, on an average,
thirty kilogrammes of cocoons. Six days later the Marshal wrote to M.
Tisserand, the director of the Crown agricultural establishments, who
knew Villa Vicentina: “I have suggested to the Emperor that M. Pasteur
should be offered a lodging at Villa Vicentina; the Emperor acquiesces
in the most gracious manner. Tell me whether that is possible.”
M. Tisserand, heartily applauding the Marshal’s excellent idea,
described the domain and the dwelling house, Villa Elisa, a white
Italian two-storied house, situated amongst lawns and trees in a park of
sixty hectares. “It would indeed be well,” continued M. Tisserand, “that
M. Pasteur should find peace, rest, and a return of the health he has so
valiantly compromised in his devotion to his country, in the midst of
the lands which will be the first to profit by the fruit of his splendid
discoveries and where his name will be blessed before long.”
Pasteur started three weeks later with his family; the long journey had
to be taken in short stages, the state of his health still being very
precarious. He stopped at Alais on the way, in order to fetch the
selected seed, and on November 25, at 9 p.m., he reached Villa
Vicentina. The fifty tenants of the domain did not suspect that the new
arrival would bring back with him the prosperity of former years.
Raulin, the “temporizer,” joined his master a few weeks later.
This was a period not of rest, but of a great calm, with regular work
under a pure sky. Whilst waiting for hatching time, Pasteur continued to
dictate to his wife the book he had mentioned to J. B. Dumas in a letter
from St. Hippolyte le Fort. But the projected little book was changing
its shape and growing into a two-volume work full of facts and
documents. It was ready to publish by April, 1870.
When the moment for hatching the seed had arrived, Pasteur distributed
twenty-five ounces among the tenants and kept twenty-five ounces for
himself. An incident disturbed these days of work: a steward, who had by
him an old box of Japanese seed, sold this suspicious seed with the
rest. The idea that confiding peasants had thus been swindled sent
Pasteur beside himself; in his violent anger he sent for this steward,
overwhelmed him with reproaches and forbade him ever to show his face
before him again.
“The Marshal,” wrote Dumas to Pasteur, “has told me of the swindles you
have come across and which have upset you so much. Do not worry
unreasonably; if I were you I would merely insert a line in a local
paper: ‘M. Pasteur is only answerable for the seeds he himself sells to
cultivators.’” Those cultivators soon were duly edified. The results of
the seeding process were represented by a harvest of cocoons which
brought in, after all expenses were paid, a profit of 22,000 francs, the
first profit earned by the property for ten years. This was indeed an
Imperial present from Pasteur; the Emperor was amazed and delighted.
The Government then desired to do for Pasteur what had been done for
Dumas and Claude Bernard, that is, give him a seat in the Senate. His
most decided partisan was the competitor that several political
personages suggested against him: Henri Sainte Claire Deville. Deville
wrote to Mme. Pasteur in June: “You must know that if Pasteur becomes a
Senator, and Pasteur alone, you understand--for they cannot elect two
chemists at once!--it will be a triumph for your friend--a triumph and
an unmixed pleasure.”
The projected decree was one of eighteen then in preparation. The final
list--the last under the Empire--where Emile Augier was to represent
French literature was postponed from day to day.
Pasteur left Villa Vicentina on July 6, taking with him the gratitude of
the people whose good genius he had been for nearly eight months. In
northern Italy, as well as in Austria, his process of cellular seeding
was now applied with success.
Before returning to France he went to Vienna and then to Munich: he
desired to talk with the German chemist, Liebig, the most determined of
his adversaries. He thought it impossible that Liebig’s ideas on
fermentation should not have been shaken and altered in the last
thirteen years. Liebig could not still be affirming that the presence of
decomposing animal or vegetable matter should be necessary to
fermentation! That theory had been destroyed by a simple and decisive
experiment of Pasteur’s: he had sown a trace of yeast in water
containing but sugar and mineral crystallized salts, and had seen this
yeast multiply itself and produce a regular alcoholic fermentation.
Since all nitrogenized organic matter (constituting the ferment,
according to Liebig) was absent, Pasteur considered that he thus proved
the life of the ferment and the absence of any action from albuminoid
matter in a stage of decomposition. The death phenomenon now appeared as
a life phenomenon. How could Liebig deny the independent existence of
ferments in their infinite littleness and their power of destroying and
transforming everything? What did he think of all these new ideas? would
he still write, as in 1845: “As to the opinion which explains
putrefaction of animal substances by the presence of microscopic
animalculæ, it may be compared to that of a child who would explain the
rapidity of the Rhine current by attributing it to the violent movement
of the numerous mill wheels of Mayence?”
Since that ingeniously fallacious paragraph, many results had come to
light. Perhaps Liebig, who in 1851 hailed J. B. Dumas as a master, had
now come to Dumas’ point of view respecting the fruitfulness of the
Pastorian theory. That theory was extended to diseases; the infinitely
small appeared as disorganizers of living tissues. The part played by
the corpuscles in the contagious and hereditary pébrine led to many
reflections on the contagious and hereditary element of human diseases.
Even the long-postponed transmission of certain diseases was becoming
clearer now that, within the vibrio of flachery, other corpuscles were
found, germs of the flachery disease, ready to break out from one year
to another.
To convince Liebig, to bring him to acknowledge the triumph of those
ideas with the pleasure of a true _savant_, such was Pasteur’s desire
when he entered Liebig’s laboratory. The tall old man, in a long frock
coat, received him with kindly courtesy; but when Pasteur, who was eager
to come to the object of his visit, tried to approach the delicate
subject, Liebig, without losing his amenity, refused all discussion,
alleging indisposition. Pasteur did not insist, but promised himself
that he would return to the charge.
CHAPTER VII
1870--1872
Pasteur, on his return, spent forty-eight hours in Strasburg, which was
for him full of memories of his laborious days at the Faculty of that
town, between 1848 and 1854, at a time when rivalry already existed
between France and Germany, a generous rivalry of moral and intellectual
effort. He then heard for the first time of the threatening war; all his
hopes of progress founded on peace, through scientific discoveries,
began to crumble away, and his disappointment was embittered by the
recollection of many illusions.
Never was more cruel rebuff given to the generous efforts of a policy of
sentiment: after having laid the foundation of the independence and
unity of Italy, France had sympathized with Germany’s desire for unity,
and few of the counsellors, or even the adversaries of the Empire, would
not have defended this idea, which was supposed to lead to civilization.
During that period of anxious waiting (beginning of July, 1870), when
the most alarming news was daily published in Strasburg, it did not
occur to any one to look back upon quotations from papers only a few
years old, though in that very town a pamphlet might have been found,
written by Edmond About in 1860, and containing the following words--
“Let Germany become united! France has no dearer or more ardent desire,
for she loves the German nation with a disinterested friendship. France
is not alarmed at seeing the formation of an Italian nation of
26,000,000 men in the South; she need not fear to see 32,000,000 Germans
found a great people on the Eastern frontier.”
Proud to be first to proclaim the rights of nations; influenced by
mingled feelings of kindliness, trustfulness, optimism and a certain
vanity of disinterestedness, France, who loves to be loved, imagined
that the world would be grateful for her international sociability, and
that her smiles were sufficient to maintain peace and joy in Europe.
Far from being alarmed by certain symptoms in her neighbours, she
voluntarily closed her eyes to the manœuvres of the Prussian troops, her
ears to the roar of the artillery practice constantly heard across her
eastern frontier; in 1863 patrols of German cavalry had come as far as
Wissemburg. But people thought that Germany was “playing soldiers.”
Duruy, who shared at that time the general delusion, wrote in some
traveller’s notes published in 1864: “We have had your German Rhine, and
though you have garnished it with bristling fortresses and cannon
turning France-wards, we do not wish to have it again, ... for the time
for conquests is past. Conquests shall only now be made with the free
consent of nations. Too much blood has been poured into the Rhine! What
an immense people would arise if they who were struck down by the sword
along its banks could be restored to life!”
After the thunderclap of Sadowa, the French Government, believing, in
its infatuation, that it was entitled to a share of gratitude and
security, asked for the land along the Rhine as far as Mayence; this
territorial aggrandizement might have compensated for Prussia’s
redoubtable conquests. The refusal was not long in coming. The Rhenish
provinces immediately swarmed with Prussian troops. The Emperor, awaking
from his dream, hesitating to make war, sent another proposition to
Prussia: that the Rhenish provinces should become a buffer State. The
same haughty answer was returned. France then hoped for the cession of
Luxemburg, a hope all the more natural in that the populations of
Luxemburg were willing to vote for annexation to France, and such a
policy would have been in accordance with the rights of nations. But
this request, apparently entertained at first by Prussia, was presently
hampered by intrigues which caused its rejection. Duped, not even
treated as an arbiter, but merely as a contemptible witness, France
dazzled herself for a moment with the brilliant Exhibition of 1867. But
it was a last and splendid flash; the word which is the bane of nations
and of sovereigns, “to-morrow,” was on the lips of the ageing Emperor.
The reform in the French army, which should have been bold and
immediate, was postponed and afterwards begun jerkily and
unmethodically. Prussia however affected to be alarmed. Then irritation
at having been duped, the evidence of a growing peril, a lingering hope
in the military fortune of France--everything conspired to give an
incident, provoked by Prussia, the proportions of a _casus belli_. But,
in spite of so many grievances, people did not yet believe in this
sudden return to barbarism. The Imperial policy had indeed been blindly
inconsistent; after opening a wide prospect of unity before the German
people it had been thought possible to say “No further than the Main,”
as if the impetuous force of a popular movement could be arrested after
once being started. France suddenly opened her eyes to her danger and to
the failure of her policy. But if a noble sentiment of generosity had
been mingled with the desire to increase her territory without shedding
a drop of blood, she had had the honour of being in the vanguard of
progress. Were great ideas of peace and human brotherhood about to be
engulfed in a war which would throw Europe into an era of violence and
brutality?
Pasteur, profoundly saddened, could not bear to realize that his ideal
of the peaceful and beneficent destiny of France was about to vanish; he
left Strasburg--never to return to it--a prey to the most sombre
thoughts.
When he returned to Paris, he met Sainte Claire Deville, who had come
back from a scientific mission in Germany, and who had for the first
time lost his brightness and optimism. The war appeared to him
absolutely disastrous. He had seen the Prussian army, redoubtable in its
skilful organization, closing along the frontier; the invasion was
certain, and there was nothing to stay it. Everything was lacking in
France, even in arsenals like Strasburg. At Toul, on the second line of
fortifications, so little attention was paid to defence that the
Government had thought that the place could be used as a dépôt for the
infantry and cavalry reserves, who could await there the order for
crossing the Rhine.
“Ah! my lads, my poor lads!” said Sainte Claire Deville to his Ecole
Normale students, “it is all up with us!” And he was seen, between two
experiments, wiping his eyes with the comer of his laboratory apron.
The students, with the ordinary confidence of youth, could not believe
that an invasion should be so imminent. However, in spite of the
privilege which frees _Normaliens_ from any military service in exchange
for a ten years’ engagement at the University, they put patriotic duty
above any future University appointments, and entered the ranks as
private soldiers. Those who had been favoured by being immediately
incorporated in a battalion of _chasseurs à pied_ the dépôt of which was
at Vincennes, spent their last evening--their vigil as they called
it--in the drawing-room of the sub-director of the Ecole, Bertin. Sainte
Claire Deville and Pasteur were there, also Duruy, whose three sons had
enlisted. Pasteur’s son, aged eighteen, was also on the eve of his
departure.
Every one of the students at the Ecole Normale enlisted, some as
_chasseurs à pied_, some in a line regiment, others with the marines, in
the artillery, even with the _franc tireurs_. Pasteur wished to be
enrolled in the _garde nationale_ with Duruy and Bertin, but he had to
be reminded that a half-paralysed man was unfit for service. After the
departure of all the students, the Ecole Normale fell into the silence
of deserted houses. M. Bouillier, the director, and Bertin decided to
turn it into an ambulance, a sort of home for the _Normaliens_ who were
stationed in various quarters of Paris.
Pasteur, unable to serve his country except by his scientific
researches, had the firm intention of continuing his work; but he was
overwhelmed by the reverses which fell upon France, the idea of the
bloodshed and of his invaded country oppressed him like a monomania.
“Do not stay in Paris,” Bertin said to him, echoed by Dr. Godélier. “You
have no right to stay; you would be a useless mouth during the siege,”
he added, almost cheerfully, earnestly desiring to see his friend out of
harm’s way. Pasteur allowed himself to be persuaded, and started for
Arbois on September 5, his heart aching for the sorrows of France.
Some notes and letters enable us to follow him there, in the daily
detail of his life, amongst his books, his plans of future work, and now
and then his outbursts of passionate grief. He tried to return to the
books he loved, to feel over again the attraction of “all that is great
and beautiful” to quote a favourite phrase. He read at that time
Laplace’s _Exposition du Système du Monde_, and even copied out some
fragments, general ideas, concurring with his own. The vision of a
Galileo or a Newton rising through a series of inductions from
“particular phenomena to others more far-reaching, and from those to the
general laws of Nature,” on this earth, “itself so small a part of the
solar system, and disappearing entirely in the immensity of the heavens,
of which that system is but an unimportant corner,”--that vision
enveloped Pasteur with the twofold feeling with which every man must be
imbued: humility before the Great Mystery, and admiration for those who,
raising a corner of the veil, prove that genius is divinely inspired.
Such reading helped Pasteur through the sad time of anxious waiting, and
he would repeat as in brighter days, “_Laboremus_.”
But sometimes, when he was sitting quietly with his wife and daughter,
the trumpet call would sound, with which the Arbois crier preceded the
proclaiming of news. Then everything was forgotten, the universal order
of things of no account, and Pasteur’s anguished soul would concentrate
itself on that imperceptible comer of the universe, France, his
suffering country. He would go downstairs, mix with groups standing on
the little bridge across the Cuisance, listen breathlessly to the
official communication, and sadly go back to the room where the memories
of his father only emphasized the painful contrast with the present
time. In the most prominent place hung a large medallion of General
Bonaparte, by the Franc-Comtois Huguenin, the habit of authority visible
in the thin energetic face; then a larger effigy in bronzed plaster of
Napoleon in profile, in a very simple uniform; by the mantelpiece a
lithograph of the little King of Rome with his curly head; on the
bookshelves, well within reach, books on the Great Epoch, read over and
over again by the old soldier who had died in the humble room which
still reflected some of the Imperial glory.
That glory, that legend had enveloped the childhood and youth of
Pasteur, who, as he advanced in life, still preserved the same
enthusiasm. His imagination pictured the Emperor, calm in the midst of
battles, or reviewing his troops surrounded by an escort of field
marshals, entering as a sovereign a capital not his own, then
overwhelmed by numbers at Waterloo, and finally condemned to exile and
inactivity, and dying in a long drawn agony. Glorious or lugubrious,
those visions came back to him with poignant insistency in those days of
September, 1870. What was Waterloo compared to Sedan! The departure for
St. Helena had the grandeur of the end of an epic; it seemed almost
enviable by the side of that last episode of the Second Empire, when
Napoleon III, vanquished, spared by the death which he wooed, left Sedan
by the Donchery road to enter the cottage where Bismarck was to inform
him of the rendezvous given by the King of Prussia.
The Emperor had now but a shadow of power, having made the Empress
Regent before he left Paris; it was therefore not the sword of France,
but his own, that he was about to surrender. But he thought he might
hope that the King of Prussia would show clemency to the French army and
people, having many times declared that he made war on the Emperor and
not on France.
“Can it be credited,” said Bismarck, speaking afterwards of that
interview, “that he actually believed in our generosity!” The chancellor
added, speaking of that somewhat protracted _tête-à-tête_, “I felt as I
used to in my youth, when my partner in a cotillon was a girl to whom I
did not quite know what to say, and whom nobody would fetch away for a
turn!”
Napoleon III and the King of Prussia met in the Château of Bellevue, in
the neighbourhood of Sedan, opposite a peninsula henceforth known by the
sad name of “Camp of Misery.” The Emperor looked for the last time upon
his 83,000 soldiers, disarmed, starving, waiting in the mud for the
Prussian escort which was to convey them as prisoners far beyond the
Rhine. Wilhelm did not even pronounce the word peace.
Jules Favre, taking possession on September 6 of the department of
Foreign Affairs, recalled to the diplomatic agents the fall of the
Empire and the words of the King of Prussia; then in an unaccustomed
outburst of eloquence exclaimed: “Does the King of Prussia wish to
continue an impious struggle which will be as fatal to him as to us?
Does he wish to give to the world in the nineteenth century the cruel
spectacle of two nations destroying each other and forgetful of human
feelings, of reason and of science, heaping up ruin and death? Let him
then assume the responsibility before the world and before posterity!”
And then followed the celebrated phrase with which he has been violently
and iniquitously reproached, and which expressed the unanimous sentiment
of France: “We will not concede one inch of our territory nor a stone of
our fortifications.”
Bismarck refused the interview Jules Favre asked of him (September 10),
under the pretext that the new Government was irregular. The enemy was
coming nearer and nearer to Paris. The French city was resolved to
resist; thousands upon thousands of oxen were being corralled in the
Bois de Boulogne; poor people from the suburbs were coming to take
refuge in the city. On the Place de la Concorde, the statue which
represents the city of Strasburg was covered with flowers and flags,
and seemed to incarnate the idea of the _Patrie_ itself.
Articles and letters came to Arbois in that early September, bringing an
echo of the sorrows of Paris. Pasteur was then reading the works of
General Foy, wherein he found thoughts in accordance with his own,
occasionally copying out such passages as the following: “Right and
Might struggle for the world; Right, which constitutes and preserves
Society; Might, which overcomes nations and bleeds them to death.”
General Foy fought for France during twenty-five years, and, writing in
1820, recalled with a patriotic shudder the horrors of foreign
invasions. Long after peace was signed, by a chance meeting in a street
in Paris, General Foy found himself face to face with Wellington. The
sight was so odious to him that he spoke of this meeting in the
_Chambre_ with an accent of sorrowful humiliation which breathed the
sadness of Waterloo over the whole assembly. Pasteur could well
understand the long continued vibration of that suffering chord, he, who
never afterwards could speak without a thrill of sorrow of that war
which Germany, in defiance of humanity, was inexcusably pursuing.
It was the fourth time in less than a hundred years that a Prussian
invasion overflowed into France. But instead of 42,000 Prussians,
scattered in 1792 over the sacred soil of the _Patrie_--Pasteur
pronounced the word with the faith and tenderness of a true son of
France--there were now 518,000 men to fight 285,000 French.
The thought that they had been armed in secret for the conquest of
neighbouring lands, the memory of France’s optimism until that
diplomatic incident, invented so that France might stumble over it, and
the inaction of Europe, inspired Pasteur with reflections which he
confided to his pupil Raulin. “What folly, what blindness,” he wrote
(September 17), “there are in the inertia of Austria, Russia, England!
What ignorance in our army leaders of the respective forces of the two
nations! We _savants_ were indeed right when we deplored the poverty of
the department of Public Instruction! The real cause of our misfortunes
lies there. It is not with impunity--as it will one day be recognized,
too late--that a great nation is allowed to lose its intellectual
standard. But, as you say, if we rise again from those disasters, we
shall again see our statesmen lose themselves in endless discussions on
forms of government and abstract political questions instead of going to
the root of the matter. We are paying the penalty of fifty years’
forgetfulness of science, of its conditions of development, of its
immense influence on the destiny of a great people, and of all that
might have assisted the diffusion of light.... I cannot go on, all this
hurts me. I try to put away all such memories, and also the sight of our
terrible distress, in which it seems that a desperate resistance is the
only hope we have left. I wish that France may fight to her last man, to
her last fortress. I wish that the war may be prolonged until the
winter, when, the elements aiding us, all these Vandals may perish of
cold and distress. Every one of my future works will bear on its title
page the words: ‘Hatred to Prussia. Revenge! revenge!’”
There is a passage in the Psalms where the captives of Israel, led to
Babylonian rivers, weep at the memory of Jerusalem. After swearing never
to forget their country, they wish their enemies every misfortune, and
hurl this last imprecation at Babylon: “Blessed shall he be that taketh
thy children and throweth them against the stones.”[29] One of the most
Christlike souls of our time, Henri Perreyve, speaking of Poland, of
vanquished and oppressed nations, quoted this Psalm and exclaimed: “O
Anger, man’s Anger, how difficult it is to drive thee out of man’s
heart! and how irresistible are the flames kindled by the insolence of
injustice!” Those flames were kindled in the soul of Pasteur, full as it
was of human tenderness, and they burst out in that sobbing cry of
despair.
On that 17th of September, the day before Paris was invested, Jules
Favre made another attempt to obtain peace. He published an account of
that interview which took place at the Château of Ferrières, near Meaux;
this printed account reached every town in France, and was read with
grief and anger.
Jules Favre had deluded himself into thinking that victorious Prussia
would limit its demands to a war indemnity, probably a formidable one.
But Bismarck, besides the indemnity, intended to take a portion of
French soil, and claimed Strasburg first of all. “It is the key of the
house; I must have it.” And with Strasburg he wanted the whole
Department of the _Haut-Rhin_, that of the _Bas-Rhin_, Metz, and a part
of the Department of _Moselle_. Jules Favre, characteristically French,
exhausted his eloquence in putting sentiment into politics, spoke of
European rights, of the right of the people to dispose of themselves,
tried to bring out the fact that a brutal annexation was in direct
opposition to the progress of civilization. “I know very well,” said
Bismarck, “that they (meaning the Alsatians and Lorrainers) do not want
us; they will give us a deal of trouble, but we must annex them.” In the
event of a future war Prussia was to have the advantage. All this was
said with an authoritative courtesy, an insolent tranquillity, through
which contempt for men was visible, evidently the best means of
governing them in Bismarck’s eyes. As Jules Favre was pleading the cause
of heroic Strasburg, whose long resistance was the admiration of Paris,
“Strasburg will now fall into our hands,” said Bismarck coldly; “it is
but a question for engineers; therefore I request that the garrison
should surrender as prisoners of war.”
Jules Favre “leapt in his grief”--the words are his--but King Wilhelm
exacted this condition. Jules Favre, almost breaking down, turning away
to hide the tears that welled into his eyes, ended the interview with
these words: “It is an indefinite struggle between two nations who
should go hand in hand.”
Traces of this patriotic anguish are to be found in one of Pasteur’s
notebooks, as well as a circular addressed by Jules Favre to the
diplomatic representatives in answer to certain points disputed by
Bismarck. Pasteur admiringly took note of the following passage: “I know
not what destinies Fate has in store for us. But I do feel most deeply
that if I had to choose between the present situation of France and that
of Prussia, I should decide for the former. Better far our sufferings,
our perils, our sacrifices, than the cruel and inflexible ambition of
our foe.”
“We must preserve hope until the end,” wrote Pasteur after reading the
above, “say nothing to discourage each other, and wish ardently for a
prolonged struggle. Let us think of hopeful things; Bazaine may save
us.”... How many French hearts were sharing that hope at the very time
when Bazaine was preparing to betray Metz, his troops and his flag!
“Should we not cry: ‘Happy are the dead!’” wrote Pasteur a few days
after the news burst upon France of that army lost without being allowed
to fight, of that city of Metz, the strongest in France, surrendered
without a struggle!
Through all Pasteur’s anxieties about the war, certain observations,
certain projected experiments resounded in his mind like the hours that
a clock strikes, unheeded but not unheard, in a house visited by death.
He could not put them away from him, they were part of his very life.
Any sort of laboratory work was difficult for him in the tanner’s house,
which had remained the joint property of himself and his sister. His
brother-in-law had continued Joseph Pasteur’s trade. Pasteur applied his
spirit of observation to everything around him, and took the opportunity
of studying the fermentation of tan. He would ask endless questions,
trying to discover the scientific reason of every process and every
routine. Whilst his sister was making bread he would study the raising
of the crust, the influence of air in the kneading of the dough, and his
imagination rising as usual from a minor point to the greatest problems,
he began to seek for a means of increasing the nutritive powers of
bread, and consequently of lowering its price.
The _Salut Public_ of December 20 contained a notice on that very
subject, which Pasteur transcribed. The Central Commission of Hygiene
which included among its members Sainte Claire Deville, Wurtz,
Bouchardat and Trélat, had tried, when dealing with this question of
bread (a vital one during the siege), to prove to the Parisians that
bread is the more wholesome for containing a little bran. “With what
emotion,” wrote Pasteur, “I have just read all those names dear to
science, greater now before their fellow-citizens and before posterity.
Why could I not share their sufferings and their dangers!” He would have
added “and their work” if some of the Académie des Sciences reports had
reached him.
The history of the Academy during the war is worthy of brief mention.
Moreover it was too deeply interesting to Pasteur, too constantly in his
thoughts, not to be considered as forming part of his biography.
During the first period, the Academy, imagining, like the rest of
France, that there was no doubt of a favourable issue of the war,
continued its purely scientific task. When the first defeats were
announced, the habitual communications ceased, and the Academy, unable
to think of anything but the war, held sittings of three-quarters of an
hour or even less.
One of the correspondents of the Institute, the surgeon Sédillot, who
was in Alsace at the head of an ambulance corps, and who himself
performed as many as fifteen amputations in one day, addressed two
noteworthy letters to the President of the Academy. Those letters mark a
date in the history of surgery, and show how restricted was then in
France the share of some of Pasteur’s ideas at the very time when in
other countries they were adopted and followed. Lister, the celebrated
English surgeon, having, he said, meditated on Pasteur’s theory of
germs, and proclaimed himself his follower, convinced that complications
and infection of wounds were caused by their giving access to living
organisms and infectious germs, elements of trouble, often of death, had
already in 1867 inaugurated a method of treatment. He attempted the
destruction of germs floating in air by means of a vaporizer filled with
a carbolic solution, then isolated and preserved the wound from the
contact of the air. Sponges, drainage tubes, etc., were subjected to
minute precautions; in one word, he created antisepsis. Four months
before the war he had propounded the principles which should guide
surgeons, but it occurred to no one in France, in the first battles, to
apply the new method. “The horrible mortality amongst the wounded in
battle,” writes Sédillot, “calls for the attention of all the friends of
science and humanity. The surgeon’s art, hesitating and disconcerted,
pursues a doctrine whose rules seem to flee before research.... Places
where there are wounded are recognizable by the fetor of suppuration and
gangrene.”
Hundreds and thousands of wounded, their faces pale, but full of hope
and desire to live, succumbed between the eighth and tenth day to
gangrene and erysipelas. Those failures of the surgery of the past are
plain to us now that the doctrine of germs has explained everything;
but, at that time, such an avowal of impotence before the mysterious
_contagium sui generis_, which, the doctors averred, eluded all
research, and such awful statistics of mortality embittered the anguish
of defeat.
The Academy then attempted to take a share in the national co-operation
by making a special study of any subject which interested the public
health and defence. A sitting on methods of steering balloons was
succeeded by another on various means of preserving meat during the
siege. Then came an anxious inquiry into modes of alimentation of
infants. At the end of October there were but 20,000 litres of milk per
day to be procured in the whole of Paris, and the healthy were implored
to abstain from it. It was a question of life and death for young
children, and already many little coffins were daily to be seen on the
road to the cemetery.
Thus visions of death amongst soldiers in their prime and children in
their infancy hung over the Academy meeting hall. It was at one of those
mournful sittings, on a dark autumn afternoon, that Chevreul, an
octogenarian member of the Institute, who, like Pasteur, had believed in
civilization and in the binding together of nations through science, art
and letters, looking at the sacks of earth piled outside the windows to
save the library from the bursting shells, exclaimed in loud desolate
tones--
“And yet we are in the nineteenth century, and a few months ago the
French did not even think of a war which has put their capital into a
state of siege and traced around its walls a desert zone where he who
sowed does not reap! And there are public universities where they teach
the Beautiful, the True, and the Right.”
“Might goes before Right,” Bismarck said. A German journalist invented
another phrase which went the round of Europe: “the psychological moment
for bombardment.” On January 5, one of the first Prussian shells sank
into the garden of the Ecole Normale; another burst in the very
ambulance of the Ecole. Bertin, the sub-director, rushed through the
suffocating smoke and ascertained that none of the patients was hurt; he
found the breech between two beds. The miserable patients dragged
themselves downstairs to the lecture rooms on the ground floor, not a
much safer refuge.
From the heights of Châtillon the enemy’s batteries were bombarding all
the left bank of the Seine, the Prussians, regardless of the white flags
bearing the red cross of Geneva, were aiming at the Val-de-Grâce and the
Panthéon. “Where is the Germany of our dreams?” wrote Paul de St. Victor
on January 9, “the Germany of the poets? Between her and France an abyss
of hatred has opened, a Rhine of blood and tears that no peace can ever
bridge over.”
On that same date, Chevreul read the following declaration to the
Academy of Science--
The Garden of Medicinal Plants, founded in Paris
by an edict of King Louis XIII,
dated January, 1826,
Converted into the Museum of Natural History
by a decree of the Convention on June 10, 1793,
was Bombarded,
under the reign of Wilhelm I King of
Prussia, Count von Bismarck, Chancellor,
by the Prussian army, during the night
of January 8-9, 1871.
It had until then been respected by all parties
and all powers, national or
foreign.
Pasteur, on reading this protest, regretted more than ever that he had
not been there to sign it. It then occurred to him that he too might
give vent to the proud plaint of the vanquished from his little house at
Arbois. He remembered with a sudden bitterness the diploma he had
received from the University of Bonn. Many years had passed since the
time in the First Empire when one of the 110 French Departments had been
that of Rhine and Moselle, with Coblentz as its _préfecture_ and Bonn
and Zimmern as _sous-préfectures_. When, in 1815, Prussia’s iron hand
seized again those Rhenish provinces which had become so French at
heart, the Prussian king and his ministers hit upon the highly politic
idea of founding a University on the picturesque banks of the Rhine,
thus morally conquering the people after reducing them by force. That
University had been a great success and had become most prosperous. The
Strasburg Faculty under the Second Empire, with its few professors and
its general penury, seemed very poor compared to the Bonn University,
with its fifty-three professors and its vast laboratories of chemistry,
physics and medicine, and even a museum of antiquities. Pasteur and
Duruy had often exchanged remarks on that subject. But that rivalry
between the two Faculties was of a noble nature, animated as it was by
the great feeling that science is superior to national distinctions.
King Wilhelm had once said, “Prussia’s conquests must be of the moral
kind,” and Pasteur had not thought of any other conquests.
When in 1868 the University of Bonn conferred upon him the diploma of
Doctor of Medicine, saying that “by his very penetrating experiments, he
had much contributed to the knowledge of the history of the generation
of micro-organisms, and had happily advanced the progress of the science
of fermentations,” he had been much pleased at this acknowledgment of
the future opened to medical studies by his work, and he was proud to
show the Degree he had received.
“Now,” he wrote (January 18, 1871), to the Head of the Faculty of
Medicine, after recalling his former sentiments, “now the sight of that
parchment is odious to me, and I feel offended at seeing my name, with
the qualification of _Virum clarissimum_ that you have given it, placed
under a name which is henceforth an object of execration to my country,
that of _Rex Gulielmus_.
“While highly asseverating my profound respect for you, Sir, and for the
celebrated professors who have affixed their signatures to the decision
of the members of your Order, I am called upon by my conscience to ask
you to efface my name from the archives of your Faculty, and to take
back that diploma, as a sign of the indignation inspired in a French
scientist by the barbarity and hypocrisy of him who, in order to satisfy
his criminal pride, persists in the massacre of two great nations.”
Pasteur’s protest ended with these words--
“Written at Arbois (Jura) on January 18, 1871, after reading the mark of
infamy inscribed on the forehead of your King by the illustrious
director of the Museum of Natural History M. Chevreul.”
“This letter will not have much weight with a people whose principles
differ so totally from those that inspire us,” said Pasteur, “but it
will at least echo the indignation of French scientists.”
He made a collection of stories, of episodes, and letters, which fell in
his way; amongst other things we find an open letter from General Chanzy
to the commandant of the Prussian troops at Vendôme, denouncing the
insults, outrages, and inexcusable violence of the Prussians towards the
inhabitants of St. Calais, who had shown great kindness to the enemy’s
sick and wounded.
“You respond by insolence, destruction and pillage to the generosity
with which we treat your prisoners and wounded. I indignantly protest,
in the name of humanity and of the rights of men, which you trample
under foot.”
Pasteur also gathered up tales of bravery, of heroism, and of
resignation--that form of heroism so often illustrated by women--during
the terrible siege of Paris. And, from all those things, arose the
psychology of war in its two aspects: in the invading army a spirit of
conquest carried to oppression, and even apart from the thrilling
moments of battle, giving to hatred and cruelty a cold-blooded sanction
of discipline; in the vanquished nation, an irrepressible revolt, an
intoxication of sacrifice. Those who have not seen war do not know what
love of the mother country means.
France was the more loved that she was more oppressed; she inspired her
true sons with an infinite tenderness. Sully-Prudhomme, the poet of
pensive youth, renouncing his love for Humanity in general, promised
himself that he would henceforth devote his life to the exclusive love
of France. A greater poet than he, Victor Hugo, wrote at that time the
first part of his _Année Terrible_, with its mingled devotion and
despair.
The death of Henri Regnault was one of the sad episodes of the war. This
brilliant young painter--he was only twenty-seven years of age--enlisted
as a _garde nationale_, though exempt by law from any military service
through being a laureate of the _prix de Rome_.[30] He did his duty
valiantly, and on January 19, at the last sortie attempted by the
Parisians, at Buzenval, the last Prussian shot struck him in the
forehead. The Académie des Sciences, at its sitting of January 23,
rendered homage to him whose coffin enclosed such dazzling prospects and
some of the glory of France. The very heart of Paris was touched, and a
great sadness was felt at the funeral procession of the great artist who
seemed an ideal type of all the youth and talent so heroically
sacrificed--and all in vain--for the surrender of Paris had just been
officially announced.
Regnault’s father, the celebrated physicist, a member of the Institute,
was at Geneva when he received this terrible blow. Another grief--not
however comparable to the despair of a bereaved parent--befell him--an
instance of the odious side of war, not in its horrors, its pools of
blood and burnt dwellings, but in its premeditated cruelty. Regnault had
left his laboratory utensils in his rooms at the Sèvres porcelain
manufactory, of which he was the manager. Everything was apparently left
in the same place, not a window was broken, no locks forced; but a
Prussian, evidently an expert, had been there. “Nothing seemed changed,”
writes J. B. Dumas, “in that abode of science, and yet everything was
destroyed; the glass tubes of barometers, thermometers, etc., were
broken; scales and other similar instruments had been carefully knocked
out of shape with a hammer.” In a corner was a heap of ashes; they were
the registers, notes, manuscripts, all Regnault’s work of the last ten
years. “Such cruelty,” exclaimed J. B. Dumas, “is unexampled in history.
The Roman soldier who butchered Archimedes in the heat of the onslaught
may be excused--he did not know him; but with what sacrilegious meanness
could such a work of destruction as this be accomplished!!!”
On the very day when the Académie des Sciences was condoling with Henri
Regnault’s sorrowing father, Pasteur, anxious at having had no news of
his son, who had been fighting before Héricourt, determined to go and
look for him in the ranks of the Eastern Army Corps. By Poligny and
Lons-le-Saulnier, the roads were full of stragglers from the various
regiments left several days behind, their route completely lost, who
begged for bread as they marched, barely covered by the tattered
remnants of their uniforms. The main body of the army was on the way to
Besançon, a sad procession of French soldiers, hanging their heads under
the cold grey sky and tramping painfully in the snow.
Bourbaki, the general-in-chief, a hero of African battlefields, was
becoming more and more unnerved by the combinations of this war. Whilst
the Minister, in a dispatch from Bordeaux, had ordered him to move back
towards Dôle, to prevent the taking of Dijon, then to hurry to Nevers or
Joigny, where 20,000 men would be ready to be incorporated, Bourbaki,
overwhelmed by the lamentable spectacle under his eyes, could see no
resource for his corps but a last line of retreat, Pontarlier.
It was among that stream of soldiers that Pasteur attempted to find his
son. His old friend and neighbour, Jules Vercel, saw him start,
accompanied by his wife and daughter, on Tuesday, January 24, in a half
broken down old carriage, the last that was left in the town. After
journeying for some hours in the snow, the sad travellers spent the
night in a little wayside inn near Montrond; the old carriage with its
freight of travelling boxes stood on the roadside like a gipsy’s
caravan. The next morning they went on through a pine forest where the
deep silence was unbroken save by the falling masses of snow from the
spreading branches. They slept at Censeau, the next day at Chaffois, and
it was only on the Friday that they reached Pontarlier, by roads made
almost impracticable by the snow, the carriage now a mere wreck.
The town was full of soldiers, some crouching round fires in the street,
others stepping across their dead horses and begging for a little straw
to lie on. Many had taken refuge in the church and were lying on the
steps of the altar; a few were attempting to bandage their frozen feet,
threatened with gangrene.
Suddenly the news spread that the general-in-chief, Bourbaki, had shot
himself through the brain. This did not excite much surprise. He had
telegraphed two days before to the Minister of War: “You cannot have an
idea of the sufferings that the army has endured since the beginning of
December. It is martyrdom to be in command at such a time,” he added
despairingly.
“The retreat from Moscow cannot have been worse than this,” said Pasteur
to a staff officer, Commandant Bourboulon, a nephew of Sainte Claire
Deville, whom he met in the midst of those horrors and who could give
him no information as to his son’s battalion of _Chasseurs_. “All that I
can tell you,” said a soldier anxiously questioned by Mme. Pasteur, “is
that out of the 1,200 men of that battalion there are but 300 left.” As
she was questioning another, a soldier who was passing stopped:
“Sergeant Pasteur? Yes, he is alive; I slept by him last night at
Chaffois. He has remained behind; he is ill. You might meet him on the
road towards Chaffois.”
The Pasteurs started again on the road followed the day before. They had
barely passed the Pontarlier gate when a rough cart came by. A soldier
muffled in his great coat, his hands resting on the edge of the cart,
started with surprise. He hurried down, and the family embraced without
a word, so great was their emotion.
The capitulation of starving Paris and the proposed armistice are
historical events still present in the memory of men who were then
beginning to learn the meaning of defeat. The armistice, which Jules
Favre thought would be applied without restriction to all the army
corps, was interpreted by Bismarck in a peculiar way. He and Jules Favre
between them had drawn up a protocol in general terms; it had been
understood in those preliminary confabulations that, before drawing up
the limits of the neutral zone applicable to the Eastern Army Corps,
some missing information would be awaited, the respective positions of
the belligerents being unknown. The information did not come, and Jules
Favre in his imprudent trustfulness supposed that the delimitation
would be done on the spot by the officers in command. When he heard that
the Prussian troops were continuing their march eastwards, he complained
to Bismarck, who answered that “the incident cannot have compromised the
Eastern Army Corps, as it already was completely routed when the
armistice was signed.” This calculated reserve on Bismarck’s part was
eminently characteristic of his moral physiognomy, and this encounter
between the two Ministers proved once again the inferiority--when great
interests are at stake--of emotional men to hard-hearted business men;
however it must be acknowledged that Bismarck’s statement was founded on
fact. The Eastern Corps could have fought no more; its way was blocked.
Without food, without clothes, in many cases without arms, nothing
remained to the unfortunate soldiers but the refuge offered by
Switzerland.
Pasteur went to Geneva with his son, who, after recovering from the
illness caused by fatigue and privation, succeeded in getting back to
France to rejoin his regiment in the early days of February. Pasteur
then went on to Lyons and stayed there with his brother-in-law, M. Loir,
Dean of the Lyons Faculty of Science. He intended to go back to Paris,
but a letter from Bertin dated February 18 advised him to wait. “This is
the present state of the Ecole: south wing: pulled down; will be built
up again; workmen expected. Third year dormitory: ambulance occupied by
eight students. Science dormitory and drawing classroom: ambulance
again, forty patients. Ground floor classroom: 120 artillery-men.
Pasteur laboratory: 210 _gardes nationaux_, refugees from Issy. You had
better wait.” Bertin added, with his indomitable good humour, speaking
of the bombardment: “The first day I did not go out, but I took my
bearings and found the formula: in leaving the school, walk close along
the houses on my left; on coming back, keep close to them on my right;
with that I went out as usual. The population of Paris has shown
magnificent resignation and patience.... In order to have our revenge,
everything will have to be rebuilt from the top to the bottom, the top
especially.”
Pasteur also thought that reforms should begin from the top. He prepared
a paper dated from Lyons, and entitled “Why France found no superior men
in the hours of peril.” Amongst the mistakes committed, one in
particular had been before his mind for twenty years, ever since he left
the Ecole Normale: “The forgetfulness, disdain even, that France had
had for great intellectual men, especially in the realm of exact
science.” This seemed the more sad to him that things had been very
different at the end of the eighteenth century. Pasteur enumerated the
services rendered by science to his threatened country. If in 1792
France was able to face danger on all sides, it was because Lavoisier,
Fourcroy, Guyton de Morveau, Chaptal, Berthollet, etc., discovered new
means of extracting saltpetre and manufacturing gunpowder; because Monge
found a method of founding cannon with great rapidity; and because the
chemist Clouet invented a quick system of manufacturing steel. Science,
in the service of patriotism, made a victorious army of a perturbed
nation. If Marat, with his slanderous and injurious insinuations, had
not turned from their course the feelings of the mob, Lavoisier never
would have perished on the scaffold. The day after his execution,
Lagrange said: “One moment was enough for his head to fall, and 200
years may not suffice to produce such another.” Monge and Berthollet,
also denounced by Marat, nearly shared the same fate: “In a week’s time
we shall be arrested, tried, condemned and executed,” said Berthollet
placidly to Monge, who answered with equal composure, thinking only of
the country’s defence, “All I know is that my gun factories are working
admirably.”
Bonaparte, from the first, made of science what he would have made of
everything--a means of reigning. When he started for Egypt, he desired
to have with him a staff of scientists, and Monge and Berthollet
undertook to organize that distinguished company. Later, when Bonaparte
became Napoleon I, he showed, in the intervals between his wars, so much
respect for the place due to science as to proclaim the effacement of
national rivalry when scientific discoveries were in question. Pasteur,
when studying this side of the Imperial character, found in some pages
by Arago on Monge that, after Waterloo, Napoleon, in a conversation he
had with Monge at the Elysée, said, “Condemned now to command armies no
longer, I can see but Science with which to occupy my mind and my
soul....”
Alluding to the scientific supremacy of France during the early part of
the nineteenth century, Pasteur wrote: “All the other nations
acknowledged our superiority, though each could take pride in some great
men: Berzelius in Sweden, Davy in England, Volta in Italy, other eminent
men in Germany and Switzerland; but in no country were they as numerous
as in France....” He added these regretful lines: “A victim of her
political instability, France has done nothing to keep up, to propagate
and to develop the progress of science in our country; she has merely
obeyed a given impulse; she has lived on her past, thinking herself
great by the scientific discoveries to which she owed her material
prosperity, but not perceiving that she was imprudently allowing the
sources of those discoveries to become dry, whilst neighbouring nations,
stimulated by her past example, were diverting for their own benefit the
course of those springs, rendering them fruitful by their works, their
efforts and their sacrifices.
“Whilst Germany was multiplying her universities, establishing between
them the most salutary emulation, bestowing honours and consideration on
the masters and doctors, creating vast laboratories amply supplied with
the most perfect instruments, France, enervated by revolutions, ever
vainly seeking for the best form of government, was giving but careless
attention to her establishments for higher education....
“The cultivation of science in its highest expression is perhaps even
more necessary to the moral condition than to the material prosperity of
a nation.
“Great discoveries--the manifestations of thought in Art, in Science and
in Letters, in a word the disinterested exercise of the mind in every
direction and the centres of instruction from which it radiates,
introduce into the whole of Society that philosophical or scientific
spirit, that spirit of discernment, which submits everything to severe
reasoning, condemns ignorance and scatters errors and prejudices. They
raise the intellectual level and the moral sense, and through them the
Divine idea itself is spread abroad and intensified.”
At the very time when Pasteur was preoccupied with the desire of
directing the public mind towards the principles of truth, justice and
sovereign harmony, Sainte Claire Deville, speaking of the Academy,
expressed similar ideas, proclaiming that France had been vanquished by
science and that it was now time to free scientific bodies from the
tyranny of red tape. Why should not the Academy become the centre of all
measures relating to science, independently of government offices or
officials?
J. B. Dumas took part in the discussion opened by Sainte Claire Deville,
and agreed with his suggestions. He might have said more, however, on a
subject which he often took up in private: the utility of pure science
in daily experience. With his own special gift of generalization, he
could have expounded the progress of all kinds due to the workers who,
by their perseverance in resolving difficult problems, have brought
about so many precious and unexpected results. Few men in France
realized at that time that laboratories could be the vestibule of farms,
factories, etc.; it was indeed a noble task, that of proving that
science was intended to lighten the burden of humanity, not merely to be
applied to devastation, carnage, and hatred.
Pasteur was in the midst of these philosophical reflections when he
received the following answer from the principal of the Faculty of
Medicine of Bonn:
“Sir, the undersigned, now Principal of the Faculty of Medicine of Bonn,
is requested to answer the insult which you have dared to offer to the
German nation in the sacred person of its august Emperor, King Wilhelm
of Prussia, by sending you the expression of its _entire
contempt_.”--DR. MAURICE NAUMANN.
“P.S.--Desiring to keep its papers _free from taint_, the Faculty
herewith returns your screed.”
Pasteur’s reply contained the following: “I have the honour of informing
you, Mr. Principal, that there are times when the expression of contempt
in a Prussian mouth is equivalent for a true Frenchman to that of _Virum
clarissimum_ which you once publicly conferred upon me.”
After invoking in favour of Alsace-Lorraine, Truth, of Justice, and the
laws of humanity, Pasteur added in a postscript--
“And now, Mr. Principal, after reading over both your letter and mine, I
sorrow in my heart to think that men who like yourself and myself have
spent a lifetime in the pursuit of truth and progress, should address
each other in such a fashion, founded on my part on such actions. This
is but one of the results of the character your Emperor has given to
this war. You speak to me of _taint_. Mr. Principal, taint will rest,
you may be assured, until far-distant ages, on the memory of those who
began the bombardment of Paris when capitulation by famine was
inevitable, and who continued this act of savagery after it had become
evident to all men that it would not advance by one hour the surrender
of the heroic city.”
Whilst Pasteur thus felt those simple and strong impressions as a
soldier or the man in the street might do, the creative power of his
nature was urging him to great and useful achievements. He wrote from
Lyons in March to M. Duclaux--
“My head is full of splendid projects; the war sent my brain to grass,
but I now feel ready for further work. Perhaps I am deluding myself;
anyhow I will try.... Oh! why am I not rich, a millionaire? I would say
to you, to Raulin, to Gernez, to Van Tieghem, etc., come, we will
transform the world by our discoveries. How fortunate you are to be
young and strong! Why can I not begin a new life of study and work!
Unhappy France, beloved country, if I could only assist in raising thee
from thy disasters!”
A few days later, in a letter to Raulin, this desire for devoted work
was again expressed almost feverishly. He could foresee, in the dim
distance, secret affinities between apparently dissimilar things. He had
at that time returned to the researches which had absorbed his youth
(because those studies were less materially difficult to organize), and
he could perceive laws and connections between the facts he had observed
and those of the existence of which he felt assured.
“I have begun here some experiments in crystallization which will open a
great prospect if they should lead to positive results. You know that I
believe that there is a cosmic dissymmetric influence which presides
constantly and naturally over the molecular organization of principles
immediately essential to life; and that, in consequence of this, the
species of the three kingdoms, by their structure, by their form, by the
disposition of their tissues, have a definite relation to the movements
of the universe. For many of those species, if not for all, the sun is
the _primum movens_ of nutrition; but I believe in another influence
which would affect the whole organization, for it would be the cause of
the molecular dissymmetry proper to the chemical components of life. I
want to be able by experiment to grasp a few indications as to the
nature of this great cosmic dissymmetrical influence. It must, it may be
electricity, magnetism.... And, as one should always proceed from the
simple to the complex, I am now trying to crystallize double racemate of
soda and ammonia under the influence of a spiral solenoid.
“I have various other forms of experiment to attempt. If one of them
should succeed, we shall have work for the rest of our lives, and in
one of the greatest subjects man could approach, for I should not
despair of arriving by this means at a very deep, unexpected and
extraordinary modification of the animal and vegetable species.
“Good-bye, my dear Raulin. Let us endeavour to distract our thoughts
from human turpitudes by the disinterested search after truth.”
In a little notebook where he jotted down some intended experiments we
find evidence of those glimpses of divination in a few summary lines:
“Show that life is in the germ, that it has been but in a state of
transmission since the origin of creation. That the germ possesses
possibilities of development, either of intelligence and will, or--and
in the same way--of physical organs. Compare these possibilities with
those possessed by the germ of chemical species which is in the chemical
molecule. The possibilities of development in the germ of the chemical
molecule consist in crystallization, in its form, in its physical and
chemical properties. Those properties are in power in the germ of the
molecule in the same way as the organs and tissues of animals and plants
are in their respective germs. Add: nothing is more curious than to
carry the comparison of living species with mineral species into the
study of the wounds of either, and of their healing by means of
nutrition--a nutrition coming from within in living beings, and from
without through the medium of crystallization in the others. Here detail
facts....”
In that same notebook, Pasteur, after writing down the following
heading, “Letter to prepare on the species in connection with molecular
dissymmetry,” added, “I could write that letter to Bernard. I should say
that being deprived of a laboratory by the present state of France, I am
going to give him the preconceived ideas that I shall try to experiment
upon when better times come. There is no peril in expressing ideas _a
priori_, when they are taken as such, and can be gradually modified,
perhaps even completely transformed, according to the result of the
observation of facts.”
He once compared those preconceived ideas with searchlights guiding the
experimentalist, saying that they only became dangerous when they became
fixed ideas.
Civil war had now come, showing, as Renan said, “a sore under the sore,
an abyss below the abyss.” What were the hopes and projects of Pasteur
and of Sainte Claire Deville now that the very existence of the divided
country was jeopardized under the eyes of the Prussians? The world of
letters and of science, helpless amidst such disorders, had dispersed;
Saint Claire Deville was at Gex, Dumas at Geneva. Some were wondering
whether lectures could not be organized in Switzerland and in Belgium as
they had been under the Empire, thus spreading abroad the influence of
French thought. Examples might be quoted of men who had served the glory
of their country in other lands, such as Descartes, who took refuge in
Holland in order to continue his philosophic meditations. Pasteur might
have been tempted to do likewise. Already, before the end of the war, an
Italian professor of chemistry, Signor Chiozza, who had applied
Pasteur’s methods to silkworms in the neighbourhood of Villa Vicentina,
got the Italian Government to offer him a laboratory and the direction
of a silkworm establishment. Pasteur refused, and a deputy of Pisa,
Signor Toscanelli, hearing of this, obtained for Pasteur the offer of
what was better still--a professor’s chair of Chemistry applied to
Agriculture at Pisa; this would give every facility for work and all
laboratory resources. “Pisa,” Signor Chiozza said, “is a quiet town, a
sort of Latin quarter in the middle of the country, where professors and
students form the greater part of the population. I think you would be
received with the greatest cordiality and quite exceptional
consideration ... I fear that black days of prolonged agitation are in
store for France.”
Pasteur’s health and work were indeed valuable to the whole world, and
Signor Chiozza’s proposition seemed simple and rational. Pasteur was
much divided in his mind: his first impulse was to renew his refusal. He
thought but of his vanquished country, and did not wish to forsake it.
But was it to his country’s real interests that he should remain a
helpless spectator of so many disasters? Was it not better to carry
French teaching abroad, to try and provoke in young Italian students
enthusiasm for French scientists, French achievements? He might still
serve his beloved country in that quiet retreat, amidst all those
facilities for continuous work. He thought of writing to Raulin, who had
relations in Italy, and who might follow his master. Finally, he was
offered very great personal advantages, a high salary--and this
determined his refusal, for, as he wrote to Signor Chiozza, “I should
feel that I deserved a deserter’s penalty if I sought, away from my
country in distress, a material situation better than it can offer me.”
“Nevertheless allow me to tell you, Sir (he wrote to Signor Toscanelli,
refusing his offer), in all sincerity, that the memory of your offer
will remain in the annals of my family as a title of nobility, as a
proof of Italy’s sympathy for France, as a token of the esteem accorded
to my work. And as far as you, M. le Député, are concerned it will
remain in my eyes a brilliant proof of the way in which public men in
Italy regard science and its grandeur.”
And now what was Pasteur to do--he who could not live away from a
laboratory? In April, 1871, he could neither go back to Paris and the
Commune nor to Arbois, now transformed into a Prussian dépôt. It seemed,
indeed, from the letters he received that his fellow citizens were now
destined but to feed and serve a victorious foe, whose exactions were
all the more rigorous that the invasion of the town on January 25 had
been preceded by an attempt at resistance on the part of the
inhabitants. On that morning, a few French soldiers who were seeking
their regiments and a handful of _franc tireurs_ had posted themselves
among the vines. About ten o’clock a first shot sounded in the distance;
in a turn of the sinuous Besançon road, when the Prussian vanguard had
appeared, a Zouave--who the day before was begging from door to door,
shaking with ague, and who had taken refuge in the village of Montigny,
two kilometres from Arbois--had in despair fired his last cartridge. A
squad of Prussians left the road and rushed towards the smoke of the
gun. The soldier was seized, shot down on the spot, and mutilated with
bayonets. Whilst the main column continued their advance towards the
town, detachments explored the vines on either side of the road,
shooting here and there. An old man who, with a courageous indifference,
was working in his vineyard was shot down at his work. A little
pastrycook’s boy, nicknamed Biscuit by the Arboisians, who, led by
curiosity; had come down from the upper town to the big poplar trees at
the entrance of Arbois, suddenly staggered, struck by a Prussian bullet.
He was just able to creep back to the first house, his eyes already
dimmed by death.
Those were but the chances of war, but other crueller episodes thrilled
Pasteur to the very depths of his soul. Such things are lost in history,
just as a little blood spilt disappears in a river, but, for the
witnesses and contemporaries of the facts, the trace of blood remains.
An incident will help the reader to understand the lasting indignation
the war excited in Pasteur.
One of the Prussian sergeants, who, after the shot fired at Montigny,
were leading small detachments of soldiers, thought that a house on the
outskirts of Arbois, in the faubourg of Verreux, looked as if it might
shelter _franc tireurs_. He directed his men towards it and the house
was soon reached.
It was now twelve o’clock, all fighting had ceased, and the first
Prussians who had arrived were masters of the town. Others were arriving
from various directions; a heavy silence reigned over the town. The
mayor, M. Lefort, led by a Prussian officer who covered him with a
revolver whenever he addressed him, was treated as a hostage responsible
for absolute submission. Every door in the small Town Hall was opened in
succession in order to see that there were no arms hidden. The mayor was
each time made to pass first, so that he should receive the shot in case
of a surprise. In the library, three flags, which General Delort had
brought back from the Rhine campaign when he was a captain in the
cavalry and given to his native town, were torn down and the general’s
bust overturned.
The sergeant, violently entering the suspected house with his men, found
a whole family peacefully sitting down to their dinner--the husband,
wife, a son of nineteen, and two young daughters. The invaders made no
search nor asked any questions of those poor people, who had probably
done nothing worse than to offer a few glasses of wine to French
soldiers as they passed. The sergeant did not even ask the name of the
master of the house (Antoine Ducret, aged fifty-nine), but seized him by
his coat and ordered his men to seize the son too. The woman, who rushed
to the door in her endeavour to prevent her husband and her son from
being thus taken from her, was violently flung to the end of the room,
her trembling daughters crouching around her as they listened to the
heavy Prussian boots going down the wooden stairs. There is a public
drinking fountain not far from the house; Ducret was taken there and
placed against a wall. He understood, and cried out, “Spare my son!!”
“What do you say?” said the sergeant to the boy. “I will stay with my
father,” he answered simply. The father, struck by two bullets at close
range, fell at the feet of his son, who was shot down immediately
afterwards. The two corpses, afterwards mutilated with bayonets,
remained lying by the water side; the neighbours succeeded in preventing
the mother and her two daughters from leaving their house until the
bodies had been placed in a coffin. On the tombs of Antoine and Charles
Ducret the equivocal inscription was placed “Fell at Arbois, January 25,
1871, under Prussian fire.” For the honour of humanity, a German
officer, having heard these details, offered the life of the sergeant to
Ducret’s widow; but she entertained no thoughts of revenge. “His death
would not give them back to me,” she said.
Pasteur could not become resigned to the humiliation of France, and,
tearing his thoughts from the nightmare of the war and the Commune, he
dwelt continually on the efforts that would be necessary to carry out
the great task of raising the country once again to its proper rank. In
his mind it was the duty of every one to say, “In what way can I be
useful?” Each man should strive not so much to play a great part as to
give the best of his ability. He had no patience with those who doubt
everything in order to have an excuse for doing nothing.
He had indeed known dark moments of doubt and misgivings, as even the
greatest minds must do, but notwithstanding these periods of
discouragement he was convinced that science and peace will ultimately
triumph over ignorance and war. In spite of recent events, the bitter
conditions of peace which tore unwilling Alsace and part of Lorraine
away from France, the heavy tax of gold and of blood weighing down
future generations, the sad visions of young men in their prime cut down
on the battlefield or breathing their last in hospitals all to no
apparent purpose; in spite of all these sad memories he was persuaded
that thinkers would gradually awaken in the nations ideas of justice and
of concord.
He had now for nine years been following with a passionate interest some
work begun in his own laboratory by Raulin, his first curator. Some of
the letters he wrote to Raulin during those nine years give us a faint
idea of the master that Pasteur was. It had been with great regret that
Raulin had left the laboratory in obedience to the then laws of the
University in order to take up active work at the Brest college, and
Pasteur’s letters (December, 1862) brought him joy and encouragement:
“Keep up your courage, do not allow the idleness of provincial life to
disturb you. Teach your pupils to the very best of your ability and give
up your leisure to experiments; this was M. Biot’s advice to myself.”
When in July, 1863, he began to fear that Raulin might allow imagination
to lead him astray in his work, he repeatedly advised him to state
nothing that could not be proved: “Be very strict in your deductions”;
then, apparently, loth to damp the young man’s ardour: “I have the
greatest confidence in your judgment; do not take too much heed of my
observations.”
In 1863 Pasteur asked Raulin to come with him, Gernez and Duclaux, to
Arbois for some studies on wines, etc., but Raulin, absorbed in the
investigations he had undertaken, refused; in 1865 he refused to come to
Alais, still being completely wrapt up in the same work. Pasteur
sympathized heartily with his pupil’s perseverance, and, when Raulin was
at last able to announce to his master the results so long sought after,
Pasteur hurried to Caen, where Raulin was now professor of Physics, and
returned full of enthusiasm. His modesty in all that concerned himself
now giving way to delighted pride, he spoke of Raulin’s discoveries to
every one. Yet they concerned an apparently unimportant subject--a
microscopical fungus, a simple mucor, whose spores, mingled with
atmospheric germs, develop on bread moistened with vinegar or on a slice
of lemon; yet no precious plant ever inspired more care or solicitude
than that _aspergillus niger_, as it is called. Raulin, inspired by
Pasteur’s studies on cultures in an artificial medium, that is, a medium
exclusively composed of defined chemical substances, resolved to find
for this plant a typical medium capable of giving its maximum
development to the aspergillus niger. Some of his comrades looked upon
this as upon a sort of laboratory amusement; but Raulin, ever a man of
one idea, looked upon the culture of microscopic vegetation as a step
towards a greater knowledge of vegetable physiology, leading to the
development of artificial manure production, and from that to the
rational nutrition of the human organisms. He started from the
conditions indicated by Pasteur for the development of mucedinæ in
general and in particular for a mucor which has some points of
resemblance with the aspergillus niger, the _penicillium glaucum_, which
spreads a bluish tint over mouldy bread, jam, and soft cheeses. Raulin
began by placing pure spores of aspergillus niger on the surface of a
saucer containing everything that seemed necessary to their perfect
growth, in a stove heated to a temperature of 20°C.; but in spite of
every care, after forty days had passed, the tiny fungus was languishing
and unhealthy. A temperature of 30° did not seem more successful; and
when the stove was heated to above 38° the result was the same. At 35°,
with a moist and changing atmosphere, the result was favourable--very
fortunately for Raulin, for the principal of the college, an
economically minded man, did not approve of burning so much gas for such
a tiny fungus and with such poor results. This want of sympathy excited
Raulin’s solemn wrath and caused him to meditate dark projects of
revenge, such as ignoring his enemy in the street on some future
occasion. In the meanwhile he continued his slow and careful
experiments. He succeeded at last in composing a liquid, technically
called Raulin’s liquid, in which the aspergillus niger grew and
flourished within six or even three days. Eleven substances were
necessary: water, candied sugar, tartaric acid, nitrate of ammonia,
phosphate of ammonia, carbonate of potash, carbonate of magnesia,
sulphate of ammonia, sulphate of zinc, sulphate of iron, and silicate of
potash. He now studied the part played by each of those elements,
varying his quantities, taking away one substance and adding another,
and obtained some very curious results. For instance, the aspergillus
was extraordinarily sensitive to the action of zinc; if the quantity of
zinc was reduced by a few milligrams the vegetation decreased by
one-tenth. Other elements were pernicious; if Raulin added to his liquid
1/1600000 of nitrate of silver, the growth of the fungus ceased.
Moreover, if he placed the liquid in a silver goblet instead of a china
saucer, the vegetation did not even begin, “though,” writes M. Duclaux,
analysing this fine work of his fellow student, “it is almost impossible
to chemically detect any dissolution of the silver into the liquid. But
the fungus proves it by dying.”
In this thesis, now a classic, which only appeared in 1870, Raulin
enumerated with joyful gratitude all that he owed to his illustrious
master--general views, principles and methods, suggestive ideas, advice
and encouragement--saying that Pasteur had shown him the road on which
he had travelled so far. Pasteur, touched by his pupil’s affection,
wrote to thank him, saying: “You credit me with too much; it is enough
for me that your work should be known as having been begun in my
laboratory, and in a direction the fruitfulness of which I was perhaps
the first to point out. I had only conceived hopes, and you bring us
solid realities.”
In April, 1871, Pasteur, preoccupied with the future, and ambitious for
those who might come after him, wrote to Claude Bernard: “Allow me to
submit to you an idea which has occurred to me, that of conferring on my
dear pupil and friend Raulin the Experimental Physiology prize, for his
splendid work on the nutriment of mucors, or rather of a mucor, the
excellence of which work has not escaped you. I doubt if you can find
anything better. I must tell you that this idea occurred to me whilst
reading your admirable report on the progress of General Physiology in
France. If therefore my suggestion seems to you acceptable, you will
have sown the germ of it in my mind; if you disapprove of it I shall
make you partly responsible.”
Claude Bernard hastened to reply: “You may depend upon my support for
your pupil M. Raulin. It will be for me both a pleasure and a duty to
support such excellent work and to glorify the method of the master who
inspired it.”
In his letter to Claude Bernard, Pasteur had added these words: “I have
made up my mind to go and spend a few months at Royat with my family, so
as to be near my dear Duclaux. We shall raise a few grammes of silkworm
seed.”
M. Duclaux was then professor of chemistry at the Faculty of Clermont
Ferrand, a short distance from Royat, and Pasteur intended to walk every
day to the laboratory of his former pupil. But M. Duclaux did not
countenance this plan; he meant to entertain his master and his master’s
family in his own house, 25, Rue Montlosier, where he could even have
one room arranged as a silkworm nursery. He succeeded in persuading
Pasteur, and they organized a delightful home life which recalled the
days at Pont Gisquet before the war.
Pasteur was seeking the means of making his seed-selecting process
applicable to small private nurseries as well as to large industrial
establishments. The only difficulty was the cost of the indispensable
microscope; but Pasteur thought that each village might possess its
microscope, and that the village schoolmaster might be entrusted with
the examination of the moths.
In a letter written in April, 1871, to M. Bellotti, of the Milan Civic
Museum, Pasteur, after describing in a few lines the simple process he
had taken five years to study, added--
“If I dared to quote myself, I would recall those words from my book--
“‘If I were a silkworm cultivator I never would raise seed from worms I
had not observed during the last days of their life, so as to satisfy
myself as to their vigour and agility just before spinning. The seed
chosen should be that which comes from worms who climbed the twigs with
agility, who showed no mortality from flachery between the fourth
moulting and climbing time, and whose freedom from corpuscles will have
been demonstrated by the microscope. If that is done, any one with the
slightest knowledge of silkworm culture will succeed in every case.’”
Italy and Austria vied with each other in adopting the seed selected by
the Pasteur system. But it was only when Pasteur was on the eve of
receiving from the Austrian Government the great prize offered in 1868
to “whoever should discover a preventive and curative remedy against
pébrine” that French sericicultors began to be convinced. The French
character offers this strange contrast, that France is often willing to
risk her fortune and her blood for causes which may be unworthy, whilst
at another moment, in everyday life, she shrinks at the least innovation
before accepting a benefit originated on her own soil. The French often
wait until other nations have adopted and approved a French discovery
before venturing to adopt it in their turn.
Pasteur did not stop to look back and delight in his success, but
hastened to turn his mind to another kind of study. His choice of a
subject was influenced by patriotic motives. Germany was incontestably
superior to France in the manufacture of beer, and he conceived the
thought of making France a successful rival in that respect; in order to
enable himself to do so, he undertook to study the scientific mechanism
of beer manufacture.
There was a brewery at Chamalières, between Clermont and Royat. Pasteur
began by visiting it with eager curiosity, inquiring into the minutest
details, endeavouring to find out the why and the wherefore of every
process, and receiving vague answers with much astonishment. M. Kuhn,
the Chamalières brewer, did not know much more about beer than did his
fellow brewers in general. Very little was known at that time about the
way it was produced; when brewers received complaints from their
customers, they procured yeast from a fresh source. In a book of
reference which was then much in use, entitled _Alimentary Substances:
the Means of Improving and Preserving them, and of Recognizing their
Alterations_, six pages were given up to beer by the author, M. Payen, a
member of the Institute. He merely showed that germinated barley, called
malt, was diluted, then heated and mixed with hops, thus forming
beer-wort, which was submitted, when cold, to alcoholic fermentation
through the yeast added to the above liquid. M. Payen conceded to beer
some nutritive properties, but added, a little disdainfully, “Beer,
perhaps on account of the pungent smell of hops, does not seem endowed
with stimulating properties as agreeable, or as likely to inspire such
bright and cheerful ideas, as the sweet and varied aroma of the good
wines of France.”
In a paragraph on the alterations of beer--“_spontaneous_
alterations”--M. Payen said that it was chiefly during the summer that
beer became altered. “It becomes acid, and even noticeably putrid, and
ceases to be fit to drink.”
Pasteur’s hopes of making French beer capable of competing with German
beer were much strengthened by faith in his own method. He had, by
experimental proof, destroyed the theory of spontaneous generation; he
had shown that chance has no share in fermentations; the animated nature
and the specific characteristics of those ferments, the methods of
culture in appropriate media, were so many scientific points gained. The
difficulties which remained to be solved were the question of pure yeast
and the search for the causes of alteration which make beer thick, acid,
sour, slimy or putrid. Pasteur thought that these alterations were
probably due to the development of germs in the air, in the water, or on
the surface of the numerous utensils used in a brewery.
As he advanced further and further into that domain of the infinitely
small which he had discovered, whether the subject was wine, vinegar, or
silkworms--this last study already opening before him glimpses of light
on human pathology--new and unexpected visions rose before his sight.
Pasteur had formerly demonstrated that if a putrescible liquid, such as
beef broth for instance, after being previously boiled, is kept in a
vessel with a long curved neck, the air only reaching it after having
deposited its germs in the curves of the neck, does not alter it in any
way. He now desired to invent an apparatus which would protect the wort
against external dusts, against the microscopic germs ever ready to
interfere with the course of proper fermentation by the introduction of
other noxious ferments. It was necessary to prove that beer remains
unalterable whenever it does not contain the organisms which cause its
diseases. Many technical difficulties were in the way, but the brewers
of Chamalières tried in the most obliging manner to facilitate things
for him.
This exchange of services between science and industry was in accordance
with Pasteur’s plan; though he had been prophesying for fourteen years
the great progress which would result from an alliance between
laboratories and factories, the idea was hardly understood at that time.
Yet the manufacturers of Lille and Orleans, the wine merchants and the
silkworm cultivators of the South of France, and of Austria and Italy,
might well have been called as enthusiastic witnesses to the advantages
of such a collaboration.
Pasteur, happy to make the fortune of others, intended to organize,
against the danger of alterations in beer, some experiments which would
give to that industry solid notions resting on a scientific basis. “Dear
master,” wrote he to J. B. Dumas on August 4, 1871, from Clermont, “I
have asked the brewer to send you twelve bottles of my beer.... I hope
you will find it compares favourably even with the excellent beer of
Paris cafés.” There was a postscript to this letter, proving once more
Pasteur’s solicitude for his pupils. “A thousand thanks for your kind
welcome of Raulin’s work; Bernard’s support has also been promised him.
The Academy could not find a better recipient for the prize. It is quite
exceptional work.”
Pasteur, ever full of praises for his pupil, also found excuses for him.
In spite of M. Duclaux’s pressing request, Raulin had again found
reasons to refuse an invitation to come to Auvergne for a few days. “I
regret very much that you did not come to see us,” wrote Pasteur to
Raulin, “especially on account of the beer.... Tell me what you think of
doing. When are you coming to Paris for good? I shall want you to help
me to arrange my laboratory, where everything, as you know, has still to
be done; it must be put into working order as soon as possible.”
Pasteur would have liked Raulin to come with him to London in September,
1871, before settling down in Paris.
The Chamalières brewery was no longer sufficient for Pasteur; he wished
to see one of those great English breweries which produce in one year
more than 100,000 hectolitres of beer. The great French _savant_ was
most courteously received by the managers of one of the most important
breweries in London, who offered to show him round the works where 250
men were employed. But Pasteur asked for a little of the barm of the
porter which was flowing into a trough from the cask. He examined that
yeast with a microscope, and soon recognized a noxious ferment which he
drew on a piece of paper and showed to the bystanders, saying, “This
porter must leave much to be desired,” to the astonished managers, who
had not expected this sudden criticism. Pasteur added that surely the
defect must have been betrayed by a bad taste, perhaps already
complained of by some customers. Thereupon the managers owned that that
very morning some fresh yeast had had to be procured from another
brewery. Pasteur asked to see the new yeast, and found it incomparably
purer, but such was not the case with the barm of the other products
then in fermentation--_ale_ and _pale ale_.
By degrees, samples of every kind of beer on the premises were brought
to Pasteur and put under the microscope. He detected marked beginnings
of disease in some, in others merely a trace, but a threatening one. The
various foremen were sent for; this scientific visit seemed like a
police inquiry. The owner of the brewery, who had been fetched, was
obliged to register, one after another, these experimental
demonstrations. It was only human to show a little surprise, perhaps a
little impatience of wounded feeling. But it was impossible to mistake
the authority of the French scientist’s words: “Every marked alteration
in the quality of the beer coincides with the development of
micro-organisms foreign to the nature of true beer yeast.” It would have
been interesting to a psychologist to study in the expression of
Pasteur’s hearers those shades of curiosity, doubt, and approbation,
which ended in the thoroughly English conclusion that there was profit
to be made out of this object lesson.
Pasteur afterwards remembered with a smile the answers he received,
rather vague at first, then clearer, and, finally--interest and
confidence now obtained--the confession that there was in a corner of
the brewery a quantity of spoilt beer, which had gone wrong only a
fortnight after it was made, and was not drinkable. “I examined it with
a microscope,” said Pasteur, “and could not at first detect any ferments
of disease; but guessing that it might have become clear through a long
rest, the ferments now inert having dropped to the bottom of the
reservoirs, I examined the deposit at the bottom of the reservoirs. It
was entirely composed of filaments of disease unmixed with the least
globule of alcoholic yeast. The complementary fermentation of that beer
had therefore been exclusively a morbid fermentation.”
When he visited the same brewery again, a week later, he found that not
only had a microscope been procured immediately, but the yeast of all
the beer then being brewed had been changed.
Pasteur was happy to offer to the English, who like to call themselves
practical men, a proof of the usefulness of disinterested science,
persuaded as he was that the moral debt incurred to a French scientist
would in some measure revert to France herself. “We must make some
friends for our beloved France,” he would say. And if in the course of
conversation an Englishman gave expression to any doubt concerning the
future of the country, Pasteur, his grave and powerful face full of
energy, would answer that every Frenchman, after the horrible storm
which had raged for so many months, was valiantly returning to his daily
task, whether great or humble, each one thinking of retrieving the
national fall.
Every morning, as he left his hotel to go to the various breweries which
he was now privileged to visit in their smallest details, he observed
this English people, knowing the value of time, seeing its own interests
in all things, consistent in its ideas and in its efforts, respectful of
established institutions and hierarchy; and he thought with regret how
his own countrymen lacked these qualities. But if the French are rightly
taxed with a feverish love of change, should not justice be rendered to
that generous side of the French character, so gifted, capable of so
much, and which finds in self-sacrifice the secret of energy, for whom
hatred is a real suffering? “Let us work!” Pasteur’s favourite phrase
ever ended those philosophical discussions.
He wanted to do two years’ work in one, regardless of health and
strength. Beyond the diseases of beer, avoidable since they come from
outside, he foresaw the application of the doctrine of exterior germs to
other diseases. But he did not allow his imagination to run away with
him, and resolutely fixed his mind on his present object, which was the
application of science to the brewing industry.
“The interest of those visits to English breweries,” wrote Pasteur to
Raulin, “and of the information I am able to collect (I hear that I
ought to consider this as a great favour) causes me to regret very much
that you should be in want of rest, for I am sure you would have been
charmed to acquire so much instruction _de visu_. Why should you not
come for a day or two if your health permits? Do as you like about that,
but in any case prepare for immediate work on my return. We need not
wait for the new laboratory; we can settle down in the old one and in a
Paris brewery.”
When Pasteur returned to Paris, Bertin, who had not seen him since the
recent historic events, welcomed him with a radiant delight. School
friendships are like those favourite books which always open at the page
we prefer; time has no hold on certain affections; ever new, ever young,
they never show signs of age. Bertin’s love was very precious to
Pasteur, though the two friends were as different from each other as
possible. Pasteur, ever preoccupied, seemed to justify the Englishman
who said that genius consists in an infinite capacity for taking pains;
whilst Bertin, with his merry eyes, was the very image of a smiling
philosopher. In spite of his position as sub-director, which he most
conscientiously filled, he was not afraid to whistle or to sing popular
songs as he went along the passages of the Ecole Normale. He came round
to Pasteur’s rooms almost every evening, bringing with him joy,
lightness of heart, and a rest and relaxation for the mind, brightening
up his friend by his amusing way of looking at things in general,
and--at that time--beer in particular.
Whilst Pasteur saw but pure yeast, and thought but of spores of disease,
ferments, and parasitic invasions, Bertin would dilate on certain cafés
in the Latin quarter, where, without regard to great scientific
principles, experts could be asked to pronounce between the beer on the
premises and laboratory beer, harmless and almost agreeable, but lacking
in the refinement of taste of which Bertin, who had spent many years in
Strasburg, was a competent judge. Pasteur, accustomed to an absolutely
infallible method, like that which he had invented for the seeding of
silkworms, heard Bertin say to him, “First of all, give me a good
_bock_, you can talk learnedly afterwards.” Pasteur acknowledged,
however, the improvements obtained by certain brewers, who, thanks to
the experience of years, knew how to choose yeast which gave a
particular taste, and also how to employ preventive measures against
accidental and pernicious ferments (such as the use of ice, or of hops
in a larger quantity). But, though laughing at Bertin’s jokes, Pasteur
was convinced that great progress in the brewer’s art would date from
his studies.
He was now going through a series of experiments, buying at Bertin’s
much praised cafés samples of various famous beers--Strasburg, Nancy,
Vienna, Burton’s, etc. After letting the samples rest for twenty-four
hours he decanted them and sowed one drop of the deposit in vessels full
of pure wort, which he placed in a temperature of 20° C. After fifteen
or eighteen days he studied and tasted the yeasts formed in the wort,
and found them all to contain ferments of diseases. He sowed some pure
yeast in some other vessels, with the same precautions, and all the
beers of this series remained pure from strange ferments and free from
bad taste; they had merely become _flat_.
He was eagerly seeking the means of judging how his laboratory tests
would work in practice. He spent some time at Tantonville, in Lorraine,
visiting an immense brewery, of which the owners were the brothers
Tourtel. Though very carefully kept, the brewery was yet not quite clean
enough to satisfy him. It is true that he was more than difficult to
please in that respect; a small detail of his everyday life revealed
this constant preoccupation. He never used a plate or a glass without
examining them minutely and wiping them carefully; no microscopic speck
of dust escaped his short-sighted eyes. Whether at home or with
strangers he invariably went through this preliminary exercise, in spite
of the anxious astonishment of his hostess, who usually feared that some
negligence had occurred, until Pasteur, noticing her slight dismay,
assured her that this was but an inveterate scientist’s habit. If he
carried such minute care into daily life, we can imagine how strict was
his examination of scientific things and of brewery tanks.
After those studies at Tantonville with his curator, M. Grenet, Pasteur
laid down three great principles--
1. Every alteration either of the wort or of the beer itself depends on
the development of micro-organisms which are ferments of diseases.
2. These germs of ferments are brought by the air, by the ingredients,
or by the apparatus used in breweries.
3. Whenever beer contains no living germs it is unalterable.
When once those principles were formulated and proved they were to
triumph over all professional uncertainties. And in the same way that
wines could be preserved from various causes of alteration by heating,
bottled beer could escape the development of disease ferments by being
brought to a temperature of 50° to 55°. The application of this process
gave rise to the new word “_pasteurized_” beer, a neologism which soon
became current in technical language.
Pasteur foresaw the distant consequences of these studies, and wrote in
his book on beer--
“When we see beer and wine subjected to deep alterations because they
have given refuge to micro-organisms invisibly introduced and now
swarming within them, it is impossible not to be pursued by the thought
that similar facts may, _must_, take place in animals and in man. But if
we are inclined to believe that it is so because we think it likely and
possible, let us endeavour to remember, before we affirm it, that the
greatest disorder of the mind is to allow the will to direct the
belief.”
This shows us once more the strange duality of this inspired man, who
associated in his person the faith of an apostle with the inquiring
patience of a scientist.
He was often disturbed by tiresome discussions from the researches to
which he would gladly have given his whole time. The heterogenists had
not surrendered; they would not admit that alterable organic liquids
could be indefinitely preserved from putrefaction and fermentation when
in contact with air freed from dusts.
Pouchet, the most celebrated of them, who considered that part of a
scientist’s duty consists in vulgarizing his discoveries, was preparing
for the New Year, 1872, a book called _The Universe: the Infinitely
Great and the Infinitely Small_. He enthusiastically recalled the
spectacle revealed at the end of the seventeenth century by the
microscope, which he compared to a sixth sense. He praised the
discoveries made in 1838 by Ehrenberg on the prodigious activity of
infusories, but he never mentioned Pasteur’s name, leaving entirely on
one side the immense work accomplished by the infinitely small and ever
active agents of putrefaction and fermentation. He owned that “a few
microzoa did fly about here and there,” but he called the theory of
germs a “ridiculous fiction.”
At the same time Liebig, who, since the interview in July, 1870, had had
time to recover his health, published a long treatise disputing certain
facts put forward by Pasteur.
Pasteur had declared that, in the process of vinegar-making known as the
German process, the chips of beech-wood placed in the barrels were but
supports for the _mycoderma aceti_. Liebig, after having, he said,
consulted at Munich the chief of one of the largest vinegar factories,
who did not believe in the presence of the mycoderma, affirmed that he
himself had not seen a trace of the fungus on chips which had been used
in that factory for twenty-five years.
In order to bring this debate to a conclusion Pasteur suggested a very
simple experiment, which was to dry some of those chips rapidly in a
stove and to send them to Paris, where a commission, selected from the
members of the Académie des Sciences, would decide on this conflict.
Pasteur undertook to demonstrate to the Commission the presence of the
mycoderma on the surface of the chips. Or another means might be used:
the Munich vinegar maker would be asked to scald one of his barrels with
boiling water and then to make use of it again. “According to Liebig’s
theory,” said Pasteur, “that barrel should work as before, but I affirm
that no vinegar will form in it for a long time, not until new mycoderma
have grown on the surface of the chips.” In effect, the boiling water
would destroy the little fungus. With the usual clear directness which
increased the interest of the public in this scientific discussion,
Pasteur formulated once more his complete theory of acetification: “The
principle is very simple: whenever wine is transformed into vinegar, it
is by the action of the layer of _mycoderma aceti_ developed on its
surface.” Liebig, however, refused the suggested test.
Immediately after that episode a fresh adversary, M. Frémy, a member of
the Académie des Sciences, began with Pasteur a discussion, which was
destined to be a long one, on the question of the origin of ferments. M.
Frémy alluded to the fact that he had given many years to that subject,
having published a notice on lactic fermentation as far back as 1841,
“at a time,” he said, “when our learned colleague--M. Pasteur--was
barely entering into science.”... “In the production of wine,” said M.
Frémy, “it is the juice of the fruit itself, which, put in contact with
air, gives birth to grains of yeast by the transformation of albuminous
matter, whilst M. Pasteur declares that the grains of yeast are produced
by germs.” According to M. Frémy, ferments did not come from atmospheric
dusts, but were created by organic bodies. And, inventing for his own
use the new word _hemiorganism_, M. Frémy explained the word and the
action by saying that there are some _hemiorganized_ bodies which, by
reason of the vital force with which they are endowed, go through
successive decompositions and give birth to new derivatives; thus are
ferments engendered.
Another colleague, M. Trécul, a botanist and a genuine truth-seeking
_savant_, arose in his turn. He said he had witnessed a whole
transformation of microscopic species each into the other, and in
support of this theory he invoked the names of the three
inseparables--Pouchet, Musset and Joly. Himself a heterogenist, he had
in 1867 given a definition to which he willingly alluded: “Heterogenesis
is a natural operation by which life, on the point of abandoning an
organized body, concentrates its action on some particles of that body
and forms thereof beings quite different from that of the substance
which has been borrowed.”
Old arguments and renewed negations were brought forward, and Pasteur
knew well that this was but a reappearance of the old quarrel; he
therefore answered by going straight to the point. At the Académie des
Sciences, on December 26, 1871, he addressed M. Trécul in these words:
“I can assure our learned colleague that he might have found in the
treatises I have published decisive answers to most of the questions he
has raised. I am really surprised to see him tackle the question of
so-called spontaneous generation, without having more at his disposal
than doubtful facts and incomplete observations. My astonishment was not
less than at our last sitting, when M. Frémy entered upon the same
debate with nothing to produce but superannuated opinions and not one
new positive fact.”
In his passion for truth and his desire to be convincing Pasteur threw
out this challenge: “Would M. Frémy confess his error if I were to
demonstrate to him that the natural juice of the grape, exposed to the
contact of air, deprived of its germs, can neither ferment nor give
birth to organized yeasts?” This interpellation was perhaps more violent
than was usual in the meetings of the solemn Academy, but scientific
truth was in question. And Pasteur, recognizing the old arguments under
M. Frémy’s hemiorganism and M. Trécul’s transformations, referred his
two contradictors to the experiments by which he had proved that
alterable liquids, such as blood or urine, could be exposed to the
contact of air deprived of its germs without undergoing the least
fermentation or putrefaction. Had not this fact been the basis on which
Lister had founded “his marvellous surgical method”? And in the
bitterness given to his speech by his irritation against error, the
epithet “marvellous” burst out with a visible delight in rendering
homage to Lister.
Pasteur, then in full possession of all the qualities of his genius, was
feeling the sort of fever known to great scientists, great artists,
great writers: the ardent desire of finding, of discovering something he
could leave to posterity. Interrupted by these belated contradictors
when he wanted to be going forward, he only restrained his impatience
with difficulty.
His old master, Balard, appealed to him in the Académie itself (January
22, 1872), in the name of their old friendship, to disregard the attacks
of his adversaries, instead of wasting his time and his strength in
trying to convince them. He reminded him of all he had achieved, of the
benefits he had brought to the industries of wine, beer, vinegar,
silkworms, etc., and alluded to the possibility foreseen by Pasteur
himself of preserving mankind from some of the mysterious diseases which
were perhaps due to germs in atmospheric air. He ended by urging him to
continue his studies peacefully in the laboratory built for him, and to
continue the scientific education of young pupils who might one day
become worthy successors of Van Tieghem, Duclaux, Gernez, Raulin,
etc.... thus forming a whole generation of young scientists instructed
in Pasteur’s school.
M. Duclaux wrote to him in the same sense: “I see very well what you may
lose in that fruitless struggle--your rest, your time and your health; I
try in vain to see any possible advantage.”
But nothing stopped him; neither Balard’s public advice, his pupils’
letters, even J. B. Dumas’ imploring looks. He could not keep himself
from replying. Sometimes he regretted his somewhat sharp language,
though--in his own words--he never associated it with feelings of
hostility towards his contradictors as long as he believed in their
good faith; what he wanted was that truth should have the last word.
“What _you_ lack, M. Frémy, is familiarity with a microscope, and you,
M. Trécul, are not accustomed to laboratories!” “M. Frémy is always
trying to displace the question,” said Pasteur, ten months after M.
Balard’s appeal.
Whilst M. Frémy disputed, discussed, and filled the Académie with his
objections, M. Trécul, whose life was somewhat misanthropical and whose
usually sad and distrustful face was seen nowhere but at the Institute,
insisted slowly, in a mournful voice, on certain transformations of
divers cells or spores from one into the other. Pasteur declared that
those ideas of transformation were erroneous; but--and there lay the
interest of the debate--there was one of those transformations that
Pasteur himself had once believed possible: that of the _mycoderma
vini_, or wine flower, into an alcoholic ferment under certain
conditions of existence.
A modification in the life of the mycoderma when submerged had led him
to believe in a transformation of the mycoderma cells into yeast cells.
It was on this question, which had been left in suspense, that the
debate with Trécul came to an end, leaving to the witnesses of it a most
vivid memory of Pasteur’s personality--inflexible when he held his
proofs, full of scruples and reserve when seeking those proofs, and
accepting no personal praise if scientific truth was not recognized and
honoured before everything else.
On November 11 Pasteur said: “Four months ago doubts suddenly appeared
in my mind as to the truth of the fact in question, and which M. Trécul
still looks upon as indisputable.... In order to disperse those doubts I
have instituted the most numerous and varied experiments and I have not
succeeded through those four months in satisfying myself by irrefragable
proofs; I still have my doubts. Let this example show to M. Trécul how
difficult it is to conclude definitely in such delicate studies.”
Pasteur studied the scientific point for a long time, for he never
abandoned a subject, but was ever ready to begin again after a failure.
He modified the disposition of his first tests, and by the use of
special vessels and slightly complicated apparatus succeeded in
eliminating the only imaginable cause of error--the possible fall,
during the manipulations, of exterior germs, that is, the fortuitous
sowing of yeast cells. After that he saw no more yeast and no more
active alcoholic fermentation; he had therefore formerly been the dupe
of a delusion. In his _Studies on Beer_ Pasteur tells of his error and
its rectification: “At a time when ideas on the transformations of
species are so readily adopted, perhaps because they dispense with
rigorous experimentation, it is somewhat interesting to consider that in
the course of my researches on microscopic plants in a state of purity I
once had occasion to believe in the transformation of one organism into
another, the transformation of the _mycoderma vini_ or _cerevisiae_ into
yeast, and that this time I was in error; I had not avoided the cause of
illusion which my confirmed confidence in the theory of germs had so
often led me to discover in the observations of others.”
“The notion of species,” writes M. Duclaux, who was narrowly associated
with those experiments, “was saved for the present from the attacks
directed against it, and it has not been seriously contested since, at
least not on that ground.”
Some failures are blessings in disguise. When discovering his mistake,
Pasteur directed his attention to a strange phenomenon. We find in his
book on beer--a sort of laboratory diary--the following details on his
observation of the growth of some mycoderma seed which he had just
scattered over some sweetened wine or beer-wort in small china saucers.
“When the cells or articles of the mycoderma vini are in full
germinating and propagating activity in contact with air on a sweetened
substratum, they live at the expense of that sugar and other subjacent
materials absolutely like the animals who also utilize the oxygen in the
air while freeing carbonic acid gas, consuming this and that, and
correlatively increasing, regenerating themselves and creating new
materials.
“Under those conditions not only does the mycoderma vini form no alcohol
appreciable by analysis, but if alcohol exists in the subjacent liquid
the mycoderma reduces it to water and carbonic acid gas by the fixation
of the oxygen in the air.” Pasteur, having submerged the mycoderma and
studied it to see how it would accommodate itself to the new conditions
offered to it, and whether it would die like an animal asphyxiated by
the sudden deprivation of oxygen, saw that life was continued in the
submerged cells, slow, difficult, of a short duration, but undoubtedly
life, and that this life was accompanied by alcoholic fermentation. This
time fermentation was due to the fungus itself. The mycoderma,
originally an aërobia--that is, a being to the life and development of
which air was necessary--became, after being submerged, an anaërobia,
that is, a creature living without air in the depths of the liquid, and
behaving after the manner of ferments.
This extended the notions on aërobiæ and anaërobiæ which Pasteur had
formerly discovered whilst making researches concerning the vibrio which
is the butyric ferment, and those vibriones which are entrusted with the
special fermentation known as putrefaction. Between the aërobiæ who
require air to live and the anaërobiæ which perish when exposed to air,
there was a class of organisms capable of living for a time outside the
influence of air. No one had thought of studying the mouldiness which
develops so easily when in contact with air; Pasteur was curious to see
what became of it when submitted like the mycoderma to that unexpected
_régime_. He saw the penicillium, the aspergillus, the mucor-mucedo take
the character of ferments when living without air, or with a quantity of
air too small to surround their organs as completely as was necessary to
their aërobia-plant life. The mucor, when submerged and thus forced to
become an anaërobia, offers budding cells, and there again it seemed as
if they were yeast globules. “But,” said Pasteur, “this change of form
merely corresponds to a change of function, it is but a self-adaptation
to the new life of an anaërobia.” And then, generalizing again and
seeking for laws under the accumulation of isolated facts, he thought it
probable that ferments had, “but in a higher degree, a character common
to most mucors if not to all, and probably possessed more or less by all
living cells, viz., to be alternately aërobic or anaërobic, according to
conditions of environment.”
Fermentation, therefore, no longer appeared as an isolated and
mysterious act; it was a general phenomenon, subordinate however to the
small number of substances capable of a decomposition accompanied by a
production of heat and of being used for the alimentation of inferior
beings outside the presence and action of air. Pasteur put the whole
theory into this concise formula, “Fermentation is life without air.”
“It will be seen,” wrote M. Duclaux, “to what heights he had raised the
debate; by changing the mode of interpretation of known facts he brought
out a new theory.”
But this new theory raised a chorus of controversy. Pasteur held to his
proofs; he recalled what he had published concerning the typical
ferment, the yeast of beer, an article inserted in the reports of the
Académie des Sciences for 1861, and entitled, _The Influence of Oxygen
on the Development of Yeast and on Alcoholic Fermentation_. In this
article Pasteur, à propos of the chemical action connected with
vegetable life, explained in the most interesting manner the two modes
of life of the yeast of beer.
1. The yeast, placed in some sweet liquid in contact with air,
assimilates oxygen gas and develops abundantly; under those conditions,
it practically works for itself only, the production of alcohol is
insignificant, and the proportion between the weight of sugar absorbed
and that of the yeast is infinitesimal. 2. But, in its second mode of
life, if yeast is made to act upon sugar without the action of
atmospheric air, it can no longer freely assimilate oxygen gas, and is
reduced to abstracting oxygen from the fermentescible matter.
“It seems therefore natural,” wrote Pasteur, “to admit that when yeast
is a ferment, acting out of the reach of atmospheric air, it takes
oxygen from sugar, that being the origin of its fermentative character.”
It is possible to put the fermentative power of yeast through divers
degrees of intensity by introducing free oxygen in variable quantities.
After comparing the yeast of beer to an ordinary plant, Pasteur added
that “the analogy would be complete if ordinary plants had an affinity
for oxygen so strong as to breathe, by withdrawing that element from
unstable components, in which case they would act as ferments on those
substances.” He suggested that it might be possible to meet with
conditions which would allow certain inferior plants to live away from
atmospheric air in the presence of sugar, and to provoke fermentation of
that substance after the manner of beer yeast.
He was already at that time scattering germs of ideas, with the
intention of taking them up later on and experimenting on them, or, if
time should fail him, willingly offering them to any attentive
scientist. These studies on beer had brought him back to his former
studies, to his great delight.
“What a sacrifice I made for you,” he could not help saying to Dumas,
with a mixture of affection and deference, and some modesty, for he
apparently forgot the immense service rendered to sericiculture, “when I
gave up my studies on ferments for five whole years in order to study
silkworms!!!”
No doubt a great deal of time was also wasted by the endless
discussions entered into by his scientific adversaries; but those
discussions certainly brought out and evidenced many guiding facts which
are now undisputed, as for instance the following--1. Ferments are
living beings. 2. There is a special ferment corresponding to each kind
of fermentation. 3. Ferments are not born spontaneously.
Liebig and his partisans had looked upon fermentation as a phenomenon of
death; they had thought that beer yeast, and in general all animal and
vegetable matter in a state of putrefaction, extended to other bodies
its own state of decomposition.
Pasteur, on the contrary, had seen in fermentation a phenomenon
correlative with life; he had provoked the complete fermentation of a
sweet liquid which contained mineral substances only, by introducing
into it a trace of yeast, which, instead of dying, lived, flourished and
developed.
To those who, believing in spontaneous generation, saw in fermentations
but a question of chance, Pasteur by a series of experimental proofs had
shown the origin of their delusion by indicating the door open to germs
coming from outside. He had moreover taught the method of pure cultures.
Finally, in those recent renewals of old quarrels on the transformations
into each other of microscopic species, Pasteur, obliged by the
mycoderma vini to study closely its alleged transformation, which he had
himself believed possible, had thrown ample light on the only dark spot
of his luminous domain.
“It is enough to think,” writes M. Duclaux concerning that long
discussion, “we have but to remember that those who denied the specific
nature of the germ would now deny the specific nature of disease, in
order to understand the darkness in which such opinions would have
confined microbian pathology; it was therefore important that they
should be uprooted from every mind.”
CHAPTER VIII
1873--1877
Pasteur had glimpses of another world beyond the phenomena of
fermentation--the world of virus ferments. Two centuries earlier, an
English physicist, Robert Boyle, had said that he who could probe to the
bottom the nature of ferments and fermentation would probably be more
capable than any one of explaining certain morbid phenomena. These words
often recurred to the mind of Pasteur, who had, concerning the problem
of contagious diseases, those sudden flashes of light wherein genius is
revealed. But, ever insisting on experimental proofs, he constrained his
exalted imagination so as to follow calmly and patiently the road of
experimental method. He could not bear the slightest error, or even
hasty interpretation, in the praises addressed to him. One day, during
the period of the most ardent polemics, in the midst of the struggle on
spontaneous generation, a medical man named Déclat, who declared that
Pasteur’s experiments were “the glory of our century and the salvation
of future generations,” gave a lecture on “The Infinitesimally Small and
their Rôle in the World.” “After the lecture,” relates Dr. Déclat
himself, “M. Pasteur, whom I only knew by name, came to me, and, after
the usual compliments, condemned the inductions I had drawn from his
experiments. ‘The arguments,’ he said, ‘by which you support my
theories, are most ingenious, but not founded on demonstrated facts;
analogy is no proof.’”
Pasteur used to speak very modestly of his work. He said, in a speech to
some Arbois students, that it was “through assiduous work, with no
special gift but that of perseverance joined to an attraction towards
all that is great and good,” that he had met with success in his
researches. He did not add that an ardent kindness of heart was ever
urging him forward. After the services rendered within the last ten
years to vinegar makers, silkworm cultivators, vine growers, and
brewers, he now wished to tackle what he had had in his mind since
1861--the study of contagious diseases. Thus, with the consistent logic
of his mind, showing him as it did the possibility of realizing in the
future Robert Boyle’s prophecy, he associated the secret power of his
feelings; not to give those feelings their share would be to leave one
side of his nature entirely in the shade. He had himself revealed this
great factor in his character when he had said, “It would indeed be a
grand thing to give the heart its share in the progress of science.” He
was ever giving it a greater share in his work.
His sorrows had only made him incline the more towards the griefs of
others. The memory of the children he had lost, the mournings he had
witnessed, caused him to passionately desire that there might be fewer
empty places in desolate homes, and that this might be due to the
application of methods derived from his discoveries, of which he foresaw
the immense bearings on pathology. Beyond this, patriotism being for him
a ruling motive, he thought of the thousands of young men lost to France
every year, victims of the tiny germs of murderous diseases. And, at the
thought of epidemics and the heavy tax they levy on the whole world, his
compassion extended itself to all human suffering.
He regretted that he was not a medical man, fancying that it might have
facilitated his task. It was true that, at every incursion on the domain
of Medicine, he was looked upon as a chemist--a _chymiaster_, some
said--who was poaching on the preserves of others. The distrust felt by
the physicians in the chemists was of a long standing. In the _Traité de
Thérapeutique_, published in 1855 by Trousseau and Pidoux, we find this
passage: “When a chemist has seen the chemical conditions of
respiration, of digestion, or of the action of some drug, he thinks he
has given the theory of those functions and phenomena. It is ever the
same delusion which chemists will never get over. We must make up our
minds to that, but let us beware of trying to profit by the precious
researches which they would probably never undertake if they were not
stimulated by the ambition of explaining what is outside their range.”
Pidoux never retrenched anything from two other phrases, also to be
found in that same treatise: “Between a physiological fact and a
pathological fact there is the same difference as between a mineral and
a vegetable”; and: “It is not within the power of physiology to explain
the simplest pathological affection.” Trousseau, on the other hand, was
endowed with the far-seeing intelligence of a great physician attentive
to the progress of science. He was greatly interested in Pasteur’s work,
and fully appreciated the possibilities opened by each of his
discoveries.
Pasteur, with the simplicity which contrasted with his extraordinary
powers, supposed that, if he were armed with diplomas, he would have
greater authority to direct Medicine towards the study of the conditions
of existence of phenomena, and--correlatively to the traditional method
of observation, which consists in knowing and describing exactly the
course of the disease--to inspire practitioners with the desire to
prevent and to determine its cause. An unexpected offer went some way
towards filling what he considered as a blank. At the beginning of the
year 1873, a place was vacant in the section of the Free Associates of
the Academy of Medicine. He was asked to stand for it, and hastened to
accept. He was elected with a majority of only one vote, though he had
been first on the section’s list. The other suffrages were divided
between Messrs. Le Roy de Méricourt, Brochin, Lhéritier, and Bertillon.
Pasteur, as soon as he was elected, promised himself that he would be a
most punctual academician. It was on a Tuesday in April that he attended
his first meeting. As he walked towards the desk allotted to him, his
paralyzed left leg dragging a little, no one among his colleagues
suspected that this quiet and unassuming new member would become the
greatest revolutionary ever known in Medicine.
One thing added to Pasteur’s pleasure in being elected--the fact that he
would join Claude Bernard. The latter had often felt somewhat forlorn in
that centre, where some hostility was so often to be seen towards all
that was outside the Clinic. This was the time when the “princes of
science,” or those who were considered as such, were all physicians.
Every great physician was conscious of being a ruling power. The almost
daily habit of advising and counselling was added to that idea of
haughty or benevolent superiority to the rest of the world; and,
accustomed to dictate his wishes, the physician frequently adopted an
authoritative tone and became a sort of personage. “Have you noticed,”
said Claude Bernard to Pasteur with a smile under which many feelings
were hidden, “that, when a doctor enters a room, he always looks as if
he was going to say, ‘I have just been saving a fellow-man’?”
Pasteur knew not those harmless shafts which are a revenge for prolonged
pomposity. Why need Claude Bernard trouble to wonder what So-and-so
might think? He had the consciousness of the work accomplished and the
esteem and admiration of men whose suffrage more than satisfied him.
Whilst Pasteur was already desirous of spreading in the Académie
Médecine the faith which inspired him, Claude Bernard remembered the
refractory state of mind of those who, at the time of his first lectures
on experimental physiology applied to medicine, affirmed that
“physiology can be of no practical use in medicine; it is but a _science
de luxe_ which could well be dispensed with.” He energetically defended
this _science de luxe_ as the very science of life. In his opening
lecture at the Museum in 1870, he said that “descriptive anatomy is to
physiology as geography to history; and, as it is not sufficient to
understand the topography of a country to know its history, so is it not
enough to know the anatomy of an organ to understand its functions.”
Méry, an old surgeon, familiarly compared anatomists to those errand
boys in large towns, who know the names of the streets and the numbers
of the houses, but do not know what goes on inside. There are indeed in
tissues and organs physico-chemical phenomena for which anatomy cannot
account.
Claude Bernard was convinced that Medicine would gradually emerge from
quackery, and this by means of the experimental method, like all other
science. “No doubt,” he said, “we shall not live to see the blossoming
out of scientific medicine, but such is the fate of humanity; those that
sow on the field of science are not destined to reap the fruit of their
labours.” And so saying, Claude Bernard continued to sow.
It is true that here and there flashes of light had preceded Pasteur;
but, instead of being guided by them, most doctors continued to advance
majestically in the midst of darkness. Whenever murderous diseases,
scourges of humanity, were in question, long French or Latin words were
put forward, such as “Epidemic genius,” _fatum, quid ignotum quid
divinum_, etc. _Medical constitution_ was also a useful word, elastic
and applicable to anything.
When the Vale de Grâce physician, Villemin--a modest, gentle-voiced man,
who, under his quiet exterior, hid a veritable thirst for scientific
truth--after experimental researches carried on from 1865 to 1869,
brought the proof that tuberculosis is a disease which reproduces
itself, and cannot be reproduced but by itself; in a word, specific,
inoculable, and contagious, he was treated almost as a perturber of
medical order.
Dr. Pidoux, an ideal representative of traditional medicine, with his
gold-buttoned blue coat and his reputation equally great in Paris and at
the Eaux-Bonnes, declared that the idea of specificity was a fatal
thought. Himself a pillar of the doctrine of diathesis and of the morbid
spontaneity of the organism, he exclaimed in some much applauded
speeches: “Tuberculosis! but that is the common result of a quantity of
divers external and internal causes, not the product of a specific agent
ever the same!” Was not this disease to be looked upon as “one and
multiple at the same time, bringing the same final conclusion, the
necrobiotic and infecting destruction of the plasmatic tissue of an
organ by a number of roads which the hygienist and physician must
endeavour to close?” Where would these specificity doctrines lead to?
“Applied to chronic diseases, these doctrines condemn us to the research
of specific remedies or vaccines, and all progress is arrested....
Specificity immobilizes medicine.” These phrases were reproduced by the
medical press.
The bacillus of tuberculosis had not been discovered by Villemin; it was
only found and isolated much later, in 1882, by Dr. Koch; but Villemin
suspected the existence of a virus. In order to demonstrate the
infectious nature of tuberculosis, he experimented on animals,
multiplying inoculations; he took the sputum of tuberculous patients,
spread it on cotton wool, dried it, and then made the cotton wool into a
bed for little guinea-pigs, who became tuberculous. Pidoux answered
these precise facts by declaring that Villemin was fascinated by
inoculation, adding ironically, “Then all we doctors have to do is to
set out nets to catch the sporules of tuberculosis, and find a vaccine.”
That sudden theory of phthisis, falling from the clouds, resembled
Pasteur’s theory of germs floating in air. Was it not better, urged
Pidoux the heterogenist, to remain in the truer and more philosophical
doctrine of spontaneous generation? “Let us believe, until the contrary
is proved, that we are right, we partisans of the common etiology of
phthisis, partisans of the spontaneous tuberculous degeneration of the
organism under the influence of accessible causes, which we seek
everywhere in order to cut down the evil in its roots.”
A reception somewhat similar to that given to Villemin was reserved for
Davaine, who, having meditated on Pasteur’s works on butyric ferment and
the part played by that ferment, compared it and its action with certain
parasites visible with a microscope and observed by him in the blood of
animals which had died of charbon disease. By its action and its rapid
multiplication in the blood, this agent endowed with life probably
acted, said Davaine, after the manner of ferments. The blood was
modified to that extent that it speedily brought about the death of the
infected animal. Davaine called those filaments found in anthrax
“bacteria,” and added, “They have a place in the classification of
living beings.” But what was that animated virus to many doctors? They
answered experimental proofs by oratorical arguments.
At the very time when Pasteur took his seat at the Academy of Medicine,
Davaine was being violently attacked; his experiments on septicæmia were
the cause, or the pretext. But the mere tone of the discussions prepared
Pasteur for future battles. The theory of germs, the doctrine of virus
ferments, all this was considered as a complete reversal of acquired
notions, a heresy which had to be suppressed. A well-known surgeon, Dr.
Chassaignac, spoke before the Académie de Médecine of what he called
“laboratory surgery, which has destroyed very many animals and saved
very few human beings.” In order to remind experimentalists of the
distance between them and practitioners, he added: “Laboratory results
should be brought out in a circumspect, modest and reserved manner, as
long as they have not been sanctioned by long clinical researches, a
sanction without which there is no real and practical medical science.”
Everything, he said, could not be resolved into a question of bacteria!
And, ironically, far from realizing the truth of his sarcastic prophecy,
he exclaimed, “Typhoid fever, bacterization! Hospital miasma,
bacterization!”
Every one had a word to say. Dr. Piorry, an octogenarian, somewhat
weighed down with the burden of his years and reputation, rose to speak
with his accustomed solemnity. He had found for Villemin’s experiments
the simple explanation that “the tuberculous matter seems to be no other
than pus, which, in consequence of its sojourn in the organs, has
undergone varied and numerous modifications”; and he now imagined that
one of the principal causes of fatal accidents due to septicæmia after
surgical operations was the imperfect ventilation of hospital wards. It
was enough, he thought, that putrid odours should not be perceptible,
for the rate of mortality to be decreased.
It was then affirmed that putrid infection was not an organized ferment,
that inferior organisms had in themselves no toxic action, in fact, that
they were the result and not the cause of putrid alteration; whereupon
Dr. Bouillaud, a contemporary of Dr. Piorry, called upon their new
colleague to give his opinion on the subject.
It would have been an act of graceful welcome to Pasteur, and a fitting
homage to the memory of the celebrated Trousseau, who had died five
years before, in 1867, if any member present had then quoted one of the
great practitioner’s last lectures at the Hôtel Dieu, wherein he
predicted a future for Pasteur’s works:
“The great theory of ferments is therefore now connected with an organic
function; every ferment is a germ, the life of which is manifested by a
special secretion. It may be that it is so for morbid viruses; they may
be ferments, which, deposited within the organism at a given moment and
under determined circumstances, manifest themselves by divers products.
So will the variolous ferment produce variolic fermentation, giving
birth to thousands of pustules, and likewise the virus of glanders, that
of sheep pox, etc....
“Other viruses appear to act locally, but, nevertheless, they ultimately
modify the whole organism, as do gangrene, malignant pustula, contagious
erysipelas, etc. May it not be supposed, under such circumstances, that
the ferment or organized matter of those viruses can be carried about by
the lancet, the atmosphere or the linen bandages?”
But it occurred to no one in the Academy to quote those forgotten words.
Pasteur, answering Bouillaud, recalled his own researches on lactic and
butyric fermentations and spoke of his studies on beer. He stated that
the alteration of beer was due to the presence of filiform organisms; if
beer becomes altered, it is because it contains germs of organized
ferments. “The correlation is certain, indisputable, between the disease
and the presence of organisms.” He spoke those last words with so much
emphasis that the stenographer who was taking down the extempore
speeches underlined them.
A few months later, on November 17, 1873, he read to the Academy a paper
containing further developments of his principles. “In order that beer
should become altered and become sour, putrid, slimy, ‘ropy,’ acid or
lactic, it is necessary that foreign organisms should develop within it,
and those organisms only appear and multiply when those germs are
already extant in the liquid mass.” It is possible to oppose the
introduction of those germs; Pasteur drew on the blackboard the diagram
of an apparatus which only communicated with the outer air by means of
tubes fulfilling the office of the sinuous necks of the glass vessels he
had used for his experiments on so-called spontaneous generation. He
entered into every detail, demonstrating that as long as pure yeast
alone had been sown, the security was absolute. “That which has been put
forward on the subject of a possible transformation of yeast into
bacteria, vibriones, _mycoderma aceti_ and vulgar mucors, or vice versa,
is mistaken.”
He wrote in a private letter on the subject: “These simple and clear
results have cost me many sleepless nights before presenting themselves
before me in the precise form I have now given them.”
But his own conviction had not yet penetrated the minds of his
adversaries, and M. Trécul was still supporting his hypothesis of
transformations, the so-called proofs of which, according to Pasteur,
rested on a basis of confused facts tainted with involuntary errors due
to imperfect experiments.
In December, 1873, at a sitting of the Academy, he presented M. Trécul
with a few little flagons, in which he had sown some pure seed of
_penicillium glaucum_, begging him to accept them and to observe them at
his leisure, assuring him that it would be impossible to find a trace of
any transformation of the spores into yeast cells.
“When M. Trécul has finished the little task which I am soliciting of
his devotion to the knowledge of truth,” continued Pasteur, “I shall
give him the elements of a similar work on the _mycoderma vini_; in
other words, I shall bring to M. Trécul some absolutely pure _mycoderma
vini_ with which he can reproduce his former experiments and recognize
the exactness of the facts which I have lately announced.”
Pasteur concluded thus: “The Academy will allow me to make one last
remark. It must be owned that my contradictors have been peculiarly
unlucky in taking the occasion of my paper on the diseases of beer to
renew this discussion. How is it they did not understand that my process
for the fabrication of inalterable beer could not exist if beer wort in
contact with air could present all the transformations of which they
speak? And that work on beer, entirely founded as it is on the discovery
and knowledge of some microscopic beings, has it not followed my studies
on vinegar, on the mycoderma aceti and on the new process of
acetification which I have invented? Has not that work been followed by
my studies on the causes of wine diseases and the means of preventing
them, still founded on the discovery and knowledge of non-spontaneous
microscopic beings? Have not these last researches been followed by the
discovery of means to prevent the silkworm disease, equally deducted
from the study of non-spontaneous microscopic beings?
“Are not all the researches I have pursued for seventeen years, at the
cost of many efforts, the product of the same ideas, the same
principles, pushed by incessant toil into consequences ever new? The
best proof that an observer is in the right track lies in the
uninterrupted fruitfulness of his work.”
This fruitfulness was evidenced, not only by Pasteur’s personal labours,
but by those he inspired and encouraged. Thus, in that same period, M.
Gayon, a former student of the Ecole Normale, whom he had chosen as
curator, started on some researches on the alteration of eggs. He stated
that when an egg is stale, rotten, this is due to the presence and
multiplication of infinitesimally small beings; the germs of those
organisms and the organisms themselves come from the oviduct of the hen
and penetrate even into the points where the shell membrane and the
albumen are formed. “The result is,” concluded M. Gayon, “that, during
the formation of those various elements, the egg may or may not,
according to circumstances, gather up organisms or germs of organisms,
and consequently bear within itself, as soon as it is laid, the cause of
ulterior alterations. It will be seen at the same time that the number
of eggs susceptible of alteration may vary from one hen to another, as
well as between the eggs of one hen, for the organisms to be observed on
the oviduct rise to variable heights.”
If the organisms which alter the eggs and cause them to rot “were
formed,” said Pasteur, “by the spontaneous self-organization of the
matter within the egg into those small beings, all eggs should putrefy
equally, whereas they do not.” At the end of M. Gayon’s thesis--which
had not taken so long as Raulin’s to prepare, only three years--we find
the following conclusion: “Putrefaction in eggs is correlative with the
development and multiplication of beings which are bacteria when in
contact with air and vibriones when away from the contact of air. Eggs,
from that point of view, do not depart from the general law discovered
by M. Pasteur.”
Pasteur’s influence was now spreading beyond the Laboratory of
Physiological Chemistry, as the small laboratory at the Ecole Normale
was called.
In the treatise he had published in 1862, criticizing the doctrine of
spontaneous generation, he had mentioned, among the organisms produced
by urine in putrefaction, the existence of a torulacea in very
small-grained chaplets. A physician, Dr. Traube, in 1864, had
demonstrated that Pasteur was right in thinking that ammoniacal
fermentation was due to this torulacea, whose properties were afterwards
studied with infinite care by M. Van Tieghem, a former student of the
Ecole Normale, who had inspired Pasteur with a deep affection. Pasteur,
in his turn, completed his own observations and assured himself that
this little organized ferment was to be found in every case of
ammoniacal urine. Finally, after proving that boracic acid impeded the
development of that ammoniacal ferment, he suggested to M. Guyon, the
celebrated surgeon, the use of boracic acid for washing out the bladder;
M. Guyon put the advice into practice with success, and attributed the
credit of it to Pasteur.
In a letter written at the end of 1873, Pasteur wrote: “How I wish I had
enough health and sufficient knowledge to throw myself body and soul
into the experimental study of one of our infectious diseases!” He
considered that his studies on fermentations would lead him in that
direction; he thought that when it should be made evident that every
serious alteration in beer was due to the micro-organisms which find in
that liquid a medium favourable to their development, when it should be
seen that--in contradiction to the old ideas by which those alterations
are looked upon as spontaneous, inherent in those liquids, and depending
on their nature and composition--the cause of those diseases is not
interior but exterior, then would indeed be defeated the doctrine of
men like Pidoux, who à propos of diseases, said: “Disease is in us, of
us, by us,” and who, à propos of small-pox, even said that he was not
certain that it could only proceed from inoculation and contagion.
Though the majority of physicians and surgeons considered that it was
waste of time to listen to “a mere chemist,” there was a small group of
young men, undergraduates, who, in their thirst for knowledge, assembled
at the Académie de Médecine every Tuesday, hoping that Pasteur might
bring out one of his communications concerning a scientific method
“which resolves each difficulty by an easily interpreted experiment,
delightful to the mind, and at the same time so decisive that it is as
satisfying as a geometrical demonstration, and gives an impression of
security.”
Those words were written by one of those who came to the Académie
sittings, feeling that they were on the eve of some great revelations.
He was a clinical assistant of Dr. Béhier’s, and, busy as he was with
medical analysis, he was going over Pasteur’s experiments on
fermentations for his own edification. He was delighted with the
sureness of the Pastorian methods, and was impatient to continue the
struggle now begun. Enthusiasm was evinced in his brilliant eyes, in the
timbre of his voice, clear, incisive, slightly imperious perhaps, and in
his implacable desire for logic. Of solitary habits, with no ambition
for distinction or degrees, he worked unceasingly for sheer love of
science. The greatest desire of that young man of twenty-one, quite
unknown to Pasteur, was to be one day admitted, in the very humblest
rank, to the Ecole Normale laboratory. His name was Roux.
Was not that medical student, that disciple lost in the crowd, an image
of the new generation hungering for new ideas, more convinced than the
preceding one had been of the necessity of proofs? Struck by the
unstable basis of medical theories, those young men divined that the
secret of progress in hospitals was to be found in the laboratories.
Medicine and surgery in those days were such a contrast to what they are
now that it seems as if centuries divided them. No doubt one day some
professor, some medical historian, will give us a full account of that
vast and immense progress. But, whilst awaiting a fully competent work
of that kind, it is possible, even in a book such as this (which is,
from many causes, but a hasty epitome of many very different things
spread over a very simple biography), to give to a reader unfamiliar
with such studies a certain idea of one of the most interesting chapters
in the history of civilization, affecting the preservation of
innumerable human lives.
“A pin-prick is a door open to Death,” said the surgeon Velpeau. That
open door widened before the smallest operation; the lancing of an
abscess or a whitlow sometimes had such serious consequences that
surgeons hesitated before the slightest use of the bistoury. It was much
worse when a great surgical intervention was necessary, though, through
the irony of things, the immediate success of the most difficult
operations was now guaranteed by the progress of skill and the precious
discovery of anæsthesia. The patient, his will and consciousness
suspended, awoke from the most terrible operation as from a dream. But
at that very moment when the surgeon’s art was emboldened by being able
to disregard pain, it was arrested, disconcerted, and terrified by the
fatal failures which supervened after almost every operation. The words
pyæmia, gangrene, erysipelas, septicæmia, purulent infection, were
bywords in those days.
In the face of those terrible consequences, it had been thought better,
about forty years ago, to discourage and even to prohibit a certain
operation, then recently invented and practised in England and America,
ovariotomy, “even,” said Velpeau, “if the reported cures be true.” In
order to express the terror inspired by ovariotomy, a physician went so
far as to say that it should be “classed among the attributes of the
executioner.”
As it was supposed that the infected air of the hospitals might be the
cause of the invariably fatal results of that operation, the Assistance
Publique[31] hired an isolated house in the Avenue de Meudon, near
Paris, a salubrious spot. In 1863, ten women in succession were sent to
that house; the neighbouring inhabitants watched those ten patients
entering the house, and a short time afterwards their ten coffins being
taken away. In their terrified ignorance they called that house the
House of Crime.
Surgeons were asking themselves whether they did not carry death with
them, unconsciously scattering virus and subtle poisons.
Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, surgery had positively
retrograded; the mortality after operations was infinitely less in the
preceding centuries, because antisepsis was practised unknowingly,
though cauterizations by fire, boiling liquids and disinfecting
substances. In a popular handbook published in 1749, and entitled
_Medicine and Surgery for the Poor_, we read that wounds should be kept
from the contact of air; it was also recommended not to touch the wound
with fingers or instruments. “It is very salutary, when uncovering the
wound in order to dress it, to begin by applying over its whole surface
a piece of cloth dipped into hot wine or brandy.” Good results had been
obtained by the great surgeon Larrey, under the first Empire, by hot
oil, hot brandy, and unfrequent dressings. But, under the influence of
Broussais, the theory of inflammation caused a retrogression in surgery.
Then came forth basins for making poultices, packets of charpie (usually
made of old hospital sheets merely washed), and rows of pots of
ointment. It is true that, during the second half of the last century, a
few attempts were made to renew the use of alcoholized water for
dressings. In 1868, at the time when the mortality after amputation in
hospitals was over sixty per cent., Surgeon Léon Le Fort banished
sponges, exacted from his students scrupulous cleanliness and constant
washing of hands and instruments before every operation, and employed
alcoholized water for dressings. But though he obtained such
satisfactory results as to lower, in his wards at the Hôpital Cochin,
the average of mortality after amputations to twenty-four per cent., his
colleagues were very far from suspecting that the first secret for
preventing fatal results after operations consisted in a reform of the
dressings.
Those who visited an ambulance ward during the war of 1870, especially
those who were medical students, have preserved such a recollection of
the sight that they do not, even now, care to speak about it. It was
perpetual agony, the wounds of all the patients were suppurating, a
horrible fetor pervaded the place, and infectious septicæmia was
everywhere. “Pus seemed to germinate everywhere,” said a student of that
time (M. Landouzy, who became a professor at the Faculty of Medicine),
“as if it had been sown by the surgeon.” M. Landouzy also recalled the
words of M. Denonvilliers, a surgeon of the Charité Hospital, whom he
calls “a splendid operator ... a virtuoso, and a dilettante in the art
of operating,” who said to his pupils: “When an amputation seems
necessary, think ten times about it, for too often, when we decide upon
an operation, we sign the patient’s death-warrant.” Another surgeon, who
must have been profoundly discouraged in spite of his youthful energy,
M. Verneuil, exclaimed: “There were no longer any precise indications,
any rational provisions; nothing was successful, neither abstention,
conservation, restricted or radical mutilation, early or postponed
extraction of the bullets, dressings rare or frequent, emollient or
excitant, dry or moist, with or without drainage; we tried everything in
vain!” During the siege of Paris, in the Grand Hôtel, which had been
turned into an ambulance, Nélaton, in despair at the sight of the death
of almost every patient who had been operated on, declared that he who
should conquer purulent infection would deserve a golden statue.
It was only at the end of the war that it occurred to Alphonse
Guérin--(who to his intense irritation was so often confounded with
another surgeon, his namesake and opponent, Jules Guérin)--that “the
cause of purulent infection may perhaps be due to the germs or ferments
discovered by Pasteur to exist in the air.” Alphonse Guérin saw, in
malarial fever, emanations of putrefied vegetable matter, and, in
purulent infection, animal emanations, septic, and capable of causing
death.
“I thought more firmly than over,” he declared, “that the miasms
emanating from the pus of the wounded were the real cause of this
frightful disease, to which I had the sorrow of seeing the wounded
succumb--whether their wounds were dressed with charpie and cerate or
with alcoholized and carbolic lotions, either renewed several times a
day or impregnating linen bandages which remained applied to the wounds.
In my despair--ever seeking some means of preventing these terrible
complications--I bethought me that the miasms, whose existence I
admitted, because I could not otherwise explain the production of
purulent infection--and which were only known to me by their deleterious
influence--might well be living corpuscles, of the kind which Pasteur
had seen in atmospheric air, and, from that moment, the history of
miasmatic poisoning became clearer to me. If,” I said, “miasms are
ferments, I might protect the wounded from their fatal influence by
filtering the air, as Pasteur did. I then conceived the idea of
cotton-wool dressings, and I had the satisfaction of seeing my
anticipations realized.”
After arresting the bleeding, ligaturing the blood vessels and carefully
washing the wound with carbolic solution or camphorated alcohol,
Alphonse Guérin applied thin layers of cotton wool, over which he placed
thicker masses of the same, binding the whole with strong bandages of
new linen. This dressing looked like a voluminous parcel and did not
require to be removed for about twenty days. This was done at the St.
Louis Hospital to the wounded of the Commune from March till June, 1871.
Other surgeons learnt with amazement that, out of thirty-four patients
treated in that way, nineteen had survived operation. Dr. Reclus, who
could not bring himself to believe it, said: “We had grown to look upon
purulent infection as upon an inevitable and necessary disease, an
almost Divinely instituted consequence of any important operation.”
There is a much greater danger than that of atmospheric germs, that of
the contagium germ, of which the surgeon’s hands; sponges and tools are
the receptacle, if minute and infinite precautions are not taken against
it. Such precautions were not even thought of in those days; charpie,
odious charpie, was left lying about on hospital and ambulance tables,
in contact with dirty vessels. It had, therefore, been sufficient to
institute careful washing of the wounds, and especially to reduce the
frequency of dressings, and so diminish the chances of infection to
obtain--thanks to a reform inspired by Pasteur’s labours--this precious
and unexpected remedy to fatalities subsequent to operations. In 1873,
Alphonse Guérin, now a surgeon at the Hôtel Dieu, submitted to Pasteur
all the facts which had taken place at the hospital St. Louis where
surgery was more “active,” he said, than at the Hôtel Dieu; he asked him
to come and see his cotton-wool dressings, and Pasteur gladly hastened
to accept the invitation. It was with much pleasure that Pasteur entered
upon this new period of visits to hospitals and practical discussions
with his colleagues of the Académie de Médecine. His joy at the thought
that he had been the means of awakening in other minds ideas likely to
lead to the good of humanity was increased by the following letter from
Lister, dated from Edinburgh, February 13, 1874, which is here
reproduced in the original--
“My dear Sir--allow me to beg your acceptance of a pamphlet, which
I send by the same post, containing an account of some
investigations into the subject which you have done so much to
elucidate, the germ theory of fermentative changes. I flatter
myself that you may read with some interest what I have written on
the organism which you were the first to describe in your _Mémoire
sur la fermentation appelée lactique_.
“I do not know whether the records of British _Surgery_ ever meet
your eye. If so, you will have seen from time to time notices of
the antiseptic system of treatment, which I have been labouring for
the last nine years to bring to perfection.
“Allow me to take this opportunity to tender you my most cordial
thanks for having, by your brilliant researches, demonstrated to me
the truth of the germ theory of putrefaction, and thus furnished me
with the principle upon which alone the antiseptic system can be
carried out. Should you at any time visit Edinburgh, it would, I
believe, give you sincere gratification to see at our hospital how
largely mankind is being benefited by your labours.
“I need hardly add that it would afford me the highest
gratification to show you how greatly surgery is indebted to you.
“Forgive the freedom with which a common love of science inspires
me, and
“Believe me, with profound respect,
“Yours very sincerely,
“JOSEPH LISTER.”
In Lister’s wards, the instruments, sponges and other articles used for
dressings were first of all purified in a strong solution of carbolic
acid. The same precautions were taken for the hands of the surgeon and
of his assistants. During the whole course of each operation, a
vaporizer of carbolic solution created around the wound an antiseptic
atmosphere; after it was over, the wound was again washed with the
carbolic solution. Special articles were used for dressing: a sort of
gauze, similar to tarlatan and impregnated with a mixture of resin,
paraffin and carbolic, maintained an antiseptic atmosphere around the
wound. Such was--in its main lines--Lister’s method.
A medical student, M. Just Lucas-Championnière--who later on became an
exponent in France of this method, and who described it in a valuable
treatise published in 1876--had already in 1869, after a journey to
Glasgow, stated in the _Journal de médecine et de chirurgie pratique_
what were those first principles of defence against gangrene--“extreme
and minute care in the dressing of wounds.” But his isolated voice was
not heard; neither was any notice taken of a celebrated lecture given by
Lister at the beginning of 1870 on the penetrating of germs into a
purulent centre and on the utility of antisepsis applied to clinical
practice. A few months before the war, Tyndall, the great English
physicist, alluded to this lecture in an article entitled “Dusts and
Diseases,” which was published by the _Revue des cours scientifiques_.
But the heads of the profession in France had at that time absolute
confidence in themselves, and nobody took any interest in the rumour of
success attained by the antiseptic method. Yet, between 1867 and 1869,
thirty-four of Lister’s patients out of forty had survived after
amputation. It is impossible on reading of this not to feel an immense
sadness at the thought of the hundreds and thousands of young men who
perished in ambulances and hospitals during the fatal year, and who
might have been saved by Lister’s method. In his own country, Lister had
also been violently criticized. “People turned into ridicule Lister’s
minute precautions in the dressing of wounds,” writes a competent judge,
Dr. Auguste Reaudin, a professor at the Geneva Faculty of Medicine, “and
those who lost nearly all their patients by poulticing them had nothing
but sarcasms for the man who was so infinitely superior to them.”
Lister, with his calm courage and smiling kindliness, let people talk,
and endeavoured year by year to perfect his method, testing it
constantly and improving it in detail. No one, however sceptical, whom
he invited to look at his results, could preserve his scepticism in the
face of such marked success.
Some of his opponents thought to attack him on another point by denying
him the priority of the use of carbolic acid. Lister never claimed that
priority, but his enemies took pleasure in recalling that Jules Lemaire,
in 1860, had proposed the use of weak carbolic solution for the
treatment of open wounds, and that the same had been prescribed by Dr.
Déclat in 1861, and also by Maisonneuve, Demarquay and others. The fact
that should have been proclaimed was that Lister had created a surgical
method which was in itself an immense and beneficial progress; and
Lister took pleasure in declaring that he owed to Pasteur the principles
which had guided him.
At the time when Pasteur received the letter above quoted, which gave
him deep gratification, people in France were so far from all that
concerned antisepsis and asepsis, that, when he advised surgeons at the
Académie de Médecine to put their instruments through a flame before
using them, they did not understand what he meant, and he had to
explain--
“I mean that surgical instruments should merely be put through a flame,
not really heated, and for this reason: if a sound were examined with a
microscope, it would be seen that its surface presents grooves where
dusts are harboured, which cannot be completely removed even by the most
careful cleansing. Fire entirely destroys those organic dusts; in my
laboratory, where I am surrounded by dust of all kinds, I never make use
of an instrument without previously putting it through a flame.”
Pasteur was ever ready to help others, giving them willing advice or
information. In November, 1874, when visiting the Hôtel Dieu with
Messrs. Larrey and Gosselin, he had occasion to notice that a certain
cotton-wool dressing had been very badly done by a student in one of
Guérin’s wards. A wound on the dirty hand of a labouring man had been
bandaged with cotton wool without having been washed in any way. When
the bandaging was removed in the presence of Guérin, the pus exhaled a
repugnant odour, and was found to swarm with vibriones. Pasteur in a
sitting of the Académie des Sciences, entered into details as to the
precautions which are necessary to get rid of the germs originally
present on the surface of the wound or of the cotton wool; he declared
that the layers of cotton wool should be heated to a very high
temperature. He also suggested the following experiment: “In order to
demonstrate the evil influence of ferments and proto-organisms in the
suppuration of wounds, I would make two identical wounds on the two
symmetrical limbs of an animal under chloroform; on one of those wounds
I would apply a cotton-wool dressing with every possible precaution; on
the other, on the contrary, I would cultivate, so to speak,
micro-organisms abstracted from a strange sore, and offering, more or
less, a septic character.
“Finally, I should like to cut open a wound on an animal under
chloroform in a very carefully selected part of the body--for the
experiment would be a very delicate one--and in absolutely pure air,
that is, air absolutely devoid of any kind of germs, afterwards
maintaining a pure atmosphere around the wound, and having recourse to
no dressing whatever. I am inclined to think that perfect healing would
ensue under such conditions, for there would be nothing to hinder the
work of repair and reorganization which must be accomplished on the
surface of a wound if it is to heal.”
He explained in that way the advantage accruing to hygiene, in hospitals
and elsewhere, from infinite precautions of cleanliness and the
destroying of infectious germs. Himself a great investigator of new
ideas, he intended to compel his colleagues at the Académie de Médecine
to include the pathogenic share of the infinitesimally small among
matters demanding the attention of medicine and surgery. The struggle
was a long, unceasing and painful one. In February, 1875, his presence
gave rise to a discussion on ferments, which lasted until the end of
March. In the course of this discussion he recalled the experiments he
had made fifteen years before, describing how--in a liquid composed of
mineral elements, apart from the contact of atmospheric air and
previously raised to ebullition--vibriones could be sown and
subsequently seen to flourish and multiply, offering the sight of those
two important phenomena: life without air, and fermentation.
“They are far behind us now,” he said; “they are now relegated to the
rank of chimeras, those theories of fermentation imagined by Berzelius,
Mitscherlich, and Liebig, and re-edited with an accompaniment of new
hypotheses by Messrs. Pouchet, Frémy, Trécul, and Béchamp. Who would now
dare to affirm that fermentations are contact phenomena, phenomena of
motion, communicated by an altering albuminoid matter, or phenomena
produced by semi-organized materia, transforming themselves into this or
into that? All those creations of fancy fall to pieces before this
simple and decisive experiment.”
Pasteur ended up his speech by an unexpected attack on the pompous
etiquette of the Academy’s usual proceedings, urging his colleagues to
remain within the bounds of a scientific discussion instead of making
flowery speeches. He was much applauded, and his exhortation taken in
good part. His colleagues also probably sympathized with his irritation
in hearing a member of the assembly, M. Poggiale, formerly apothecary in
chief to the Val de Grâce, give a somewhat sceptical dissertation on
such a subject as spontaneous generation, saying disdainfully--
“M. Pasteur has told us that he had looked for spontaneous generation
for twenty years without finding it; he will long continue to look for
it, and, in spite of his courage, perseverance and sagacity, I doubt
whether he ever will find it. It is almost an unsolvable question.
However those who, like me, have no fixed opinion on the question of
spontaneous generation reserve the right of verifying, of sifting and of
disputing new facts, as they appear, one by one and wherever they are
produced.”
“What!” cried Pasteur, wrathful whenever those great questions were
thoughtlessly tackled, “what! I have been for twenty years engaged in
one subject and I am not to have an opinion! and the right of verifying,
sifting, and disputing the facts is to belong to him who does nothing to
become enlightened but merely to read our works more or less
attentively, his feet on his study fender!!!
“You have no opinion on spontaneous generation, my dear colleague; I can
well believe that, while regretting it. I am not speaking, of course, of
those sentimental opinions that everybody has, more or less, in
questions of this nature, for in this assembly we do not go in for
sentiment. You say that, in the present state of science, it is wiser to
have no opinion: well, I have an opinion, not a sentimental one, but a
rational one, having acquired a right to it by twenty years of assiduous
labour, and it would be wise in every impartial mind to share it. My
opinion--nay, more, my conviction--is that, in the present state of
science, as you rightly say, spontaneous generation is a chimera; and it
would be impossible for you to contradict me, for my experiments all
stand forth to prove that spontaneous generation is a chimera. What is
then your judgment on my experiments? Have I not a hundred times placed
organic matter in contact with pure air in the best conditions for it to
produce life spontaneously? Have I not practised on those organic
materia which are most favourable, according to all accounts, to the
genesis of spontaneity, such as blood, urine, and grape juice? How is it
that you do not see the essential difference between my opponents and
myself? Not only have I contradicted, proof in hand, every one of their
assertions, while they have never dared to seriously contradict one of
mine, but, for them, every cause of error benefits their opinion. For
me, affirming as I do that there are no spontaneous fermentations, I am
bound to eliminate every cause of error, every perturbing influence, I
can maintain my results only by means of most irreproachable
experiments; their opinions, on the contrary, profit by every
insufficient experiment and that is where they find their support.”
Pasteur having been abruptly addressed by a colleague, who remarked that
there were yet many unexplained facts in connection with fermentation,
he answered by thus apostrophizing his adversaries--
“What is then your idea of the progress of Science? Science advances one
step, then another, and then draws back and meditates before taking a
third. Does the impossibility of taking that last step suppress the
success acquired by the two others? Would you say to an infant who
hesitated before a third step, having ventured on two previous ones;
‘Thy former efforts are of no avail; never shalt thou walk’?
“You wish to upset what you call my theory, apparently in order to
defend another; allow me to tell you by what signs these theories are
recognized: the characteristic of erroneous theories is the
impossibility of ever foreseeing new facts; whenever such a fact is
discovered, those theories have to be grafted with further hypotheses in
order to account for them. True theories, on the contrary, are the
expression of actual facts and are characterized by being able to
predict new facts, a natural consequence of those already known. In a
word, the characteristic of a true theory is its fruitfulness.”
“Science,” said he again at the following sitting of the Academy,
“should not concern itself in any way with the philosophical
consequences of its discoveries. If through the development of my
experimental studies I come to demonstrate that matter can organize
itself of its own accord into a cell or into a living being, I would
come here to proclaim it with the legitimate pride of an inventor
conscious of having made a great discovery, and I would add, if provoked
to do so, ‘All the worse for those whose doctrines or systems do not fit
in with the truth of the natural facts.’
“It was with similar pride that I defied my opponents to contradict me
when I said, ‘In the present state of science the doctrine of
spontaneous generation is a chimera.’ And I add, with similar
independence, ‘All the worse for those whose philosophical or political
ideas are hindered by my studies.’
“This is not to be taken to mean that, in my beliefs and in the conduct
of my life, I only take account of acquired science: if I would, I could
not do so, for I should then have to strip myself of a part of myself.
There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a
clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through
observation, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment,
the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot,
alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will,
and lives in that hope, the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who
feels that the force that is within him cannot die. The two domains are
distinct, and woe to him who tries to let them trespass on each other in
the so imperfect state of human knowledge.”
And that separation, as he understood it, caused in him none of those
conflicts which often determine a crisis in a human soul. As a
scientist, he claimed absolute liberty of research; he considered, with
Claude Bernard and Littré, that it was a mistaken waste of time to
endeavour to penetrate primary causes; “we can only note correlations,”
he said. But, with the spiritual sentiment which caused him to claim for
the inner moral life the same liberty os for scientific research, he
could not understand certain givers of easy explanations who affirm that
matter has organized itself, and who, considering as perfectly simple
the spectacle of the Universe of which Earth is but an infinitesimal
part, are in no wise moved by the Infinite Power who created the worlds.
With his whole heart he proclaimed the immortality of the soul.
His mode of looking upon human life, in spite of sorrows, of struggles,
of heavy burdens, had in it a strong element of consolation: “No effort
is wasted,” he said, giving thus a most virile lesson of philosophy to
those inferior minds who only see immediate results in the work they
undertake and are discouraged by the first disappointment. In his
respect for the great phenomenon of Conscience, by which almost all men,
enveloped as they are in the mystery of the Universe, have the
prescience of an Ideal, of a God, he considered that “the greatness of
human actions can be measured by the inspirations which give them
birth.” He was convinced that there are no vain prayers. If all is
simple to the simple, all is great to the great; it was through “the
Divine regions of Knowledge and of Light” that he had visions of those
who are no more.
It was very seldom that he spoke of such things, though he was sometimes
induced to do so in the course of a discussion so as to manifest his
repugnance for vainglorious negations and barren irony; sometimes too he
would enter into such feelings when speaking to an assembly of young
men.
Those discussions at the Academy of Medicine had the advantage of
inciting medical men to the research of the infinitesimally small,
described by the Annual Secretary Roger as “those subtle artisans of
many disorders in the living economy.”
M. Roger, at the end of a brief account of his colleague’s work, wrote,
“To the signal services rendered by M. Pasteur to science and to our
country, it was but fair that a signal recompense should be given: the
National Assembly has undertaken that care.”
That recompense, voted a few months previously, was the third national
recompense accorded to French scientists since the beginning of the
century. In 1837, Arago, before the Chamber of Deputies, and Gay Lussac,
before the Chamber of Peers, had obtained a glorious recognition of the
services rendered by Daguerre and Niepce. In 1845 another national
recompense was accorded, to M. Vicat, the engineer. In 1874, Paul Bert,
a member of the National Assembly, gladly reporting on the projected law
tending to offer a national recompense to Pasteur, wrote quoting those
precedents:
“Such an assurance of gratitude, given by a nation to men who have made
it richer and more illustrious, honours it at least as much as it does
them....” Paul Bert continued by enumerating Pasteur’s discoveries, and
spoke of the millions Pasteur had assured to France, “without retaining
the least share of them for himself.” In sericiculture alone, the losses
in twenty years, before Pasteur’s interference, rose to 1,500 millions
of francs.
“M. Pasteur’s discoveries, gentlemen,” concluded Paul Bert, “after
throwing a new light on the obscure question of fermentations and of the
mode of appearance of microscopic beings, have revolutionized certain
branches of industry, of agriculture, and of pathology. One is struck
with admiration when seeing that so many, and such divers results,
proceed--through an unbroken chain of facts, nothing being left to
hypothesis--from theoretical studies on the manner in which tartaric
acid deviates polarized light. Never was the famous saying, ‘Genius
consists in sufficient patience,’ more amply justified. The Government
now proposes that you should honour this admirable combination of
theoretical and practical study by a national recompense; your
Commission unanimously approves of this proposition.
“The suggested recompense consists in a life annuity of 12,000 francs,
which is the approximate amount of the salary of the Sorbonne
professorship, which M. Pasteur’s ill health has compelled him to give
up. It is indeed small when compared with the value of the services
rendered, and your Commission much regrets that the state of our
finances does not allow us to increase that amount. But the Commission
agrees with its learned chairman (M. Marès) ‘that the economic and
hygienic results of M. Pasteur’s discoveries will presently become so
considerable that the French nation will desire to increase later on its
testimony of gratitude towards him and towards Science, of which he is
one of the most glorious representatives.’”
Half the amount of the annuity was to revert to Pasteur’s widow. The
Bill was passed by 532 votes against 24.
“Where is the government which has secured such a majority?” wrote
Pasteur’s old friend Chappuis, now Rector of the Grenoble Academy. The
value of the recompense was certainly much enhanced by the fact that the
Assembly, divided upon so many subjects, had been almost unanimous in
its feeling of gratitude towards him who had laboured so hard for
Science, for the country and for Humanity.
“Bravo, my dear Pasteur: I am glad for you and for myself, and proud for
us all. Your devoted friend, Sainte Claire Deville.”
“You are going to be a happy scientist,” wrote M. Duclaux, “for you can
already see, and you will see more and more, the triumph of your
doctrines and of your discoveries.”
Those who imagined that this national recompense was the close of a
great chapter, perhaps even the last chapter of the book of his life,
gave him, in their well-meaning ignorance, some advice which highly
irritated him: they advised him to rest. It is true that his cerebral
hæmorrhage had left him with a certain degree of lameness and a slight
stiffness of the left hand, those external signs reminding him only too
well of the threatening possibility of another stroke; but his mighty
soul was more than ever powerful to master his infirm body. It was
therefore evident that Nisard, usually very subtle in his insight into
character, did not thoroughly understand Pasteur when he wrote to him,
“Now, dear friend, you must give up your energies to living for your
family, for all those who love you, and a little too for yourself.”
In spite of his deep, even passionate tenderness for his family, Pasteur
had other desires than to limit his life to such a narrow circle. Every
man who knows he has a mission to fulfil feels that there are rays of a
light purer and more exalted than that proceeding from the hearth. As to
the suggestion that Pasteur should take care of his own health, it was
as useless as it would be to advise certain men to take care of that of
others.
Dr. Andral had vainly said and written that he should forbid Pasteur any
assiduous labour. Pasteur considered that not to work was to lose the
object of living at all. If, however, a certain equilibrium was
established between the anxious solicitude of friends, the prohibitions
of medical advisers and the great amount of work which Pasteur insisted
on doing, it was owing to her who with a discreet activity watched in
silence to see that nothing outside his work should complicate Pasteur’s
life, herself his most precious collaborator, the confidante of every
experiment.
Everything was subordinate to the laboratory; Pasteur never accepted an
invitation to those large social gatherings which are a tax laid by
those who have nothing to do on the time of those who are busy,
especially if they be celebrated. Pasteur’s name, known throughout the
world, was never mentioned in fashionable journals; he did not even go
to theatres. In the evening, after dinner, he usually perambulated the
hall and corridor of his rooms at the Ecole Normale, cogitating over
various details of his work. At ten o’clock, he went to bed, and at
eight the next morning, whether he had had a good night or a bad one, he
resumed his work in the laboratory.
That regular life, preserving its even tenor through so many polemics
and discussions, was momentarily perturbed by politics in January,
1876. Pasteur, who, in his extraordinary, almost disconcerting modesty,
believed that a medical diploma would have facilitated his scientific
revolution, imagined--after the pressing overtures made to him by some
of his proud compatriots--that he would be able to serve more usefully
the cause of higher education if he were to obtain a seat at the Senate.
He addressed from Paris a letter to the senatorial electors of the
department of Jura. “I am not a political man,” he said, “I am bound to
no party; not having studied politics I am ignorant of many things, but
I do know this, that I love my country and have served her with all my
strength.” Like many good citizens, he thought that a renewal of the
national grandeur and prosperity might be sought in a serious
experimental trial of the Republic. If honoured with the suffrages of
his countrymen, he would “represent in the Senate, Science in all its
purity, dignity and independence.” Two Jura newspapers, of different
opinions, agreed in regretting that Pasteur should leave “the peaceful
altitudes of science,” and come down into the Jura to solicit the
electors’ suffrages.
In his answers to such articles, letters dictated to his son--who acted
as his secretary during that electoral campaign and accompanied him to
Lons-le-Saulnier, where they spent a week, published addresses, posters,
etc.--Pasteur invoked the following motto, “_Science et Patrie_.” Why
had France been victorious in 1792? “Because Science had given to our
fathers the material means of fighting.” And he recalled the names of
Monge, of Carnot, of Fourcroy, of Guyton de Morveau, of Berthollet, that
concourse of men of science, thanks to whom it had been possible--during
that grandiose epoch--to hasten the working of steel and the preparation
of leather for soldiers’ boots, and to find means of extracting
saltpetre for gunpowder from plaster rubbish, of making use of
reconnoitring balloons and of perfecting telegraphy.
The senatorial electors numbered 650. Jules Grévy came to
Lons-le-Saulnier to support the candidature of MM. Tamisier and Thurel.
In a meeting which took place the day before the election he said, “You
will give them your suffrage to-morrow, and in so doing you will have
deserved well of the Republic and of France.” He mentioned,
incidentally, that “M. Pasteur’s character and scientific work entitle
him to universal respect and esteem; but Science has its natural place
at the Institute,” he added, insisting on the Senate’s political
attributes. Grévy’s intervention in favour of his two candidates was
decisive. M. Tamisier obtained 446 votes, M. Thurel 445, General Picard
113, M. Besson, a monarchist, 153, Pasteur 62 only.
He had received on that very morning a letter from his daughter, wishing
him a failure--a bright, girlish letter, frankly expressing the opinion
that her father could be most useful to his country by confining himself
to laboratory work, and that politics would necessarily hinder such
work.
It was easy to be absolutely frank with Pasteur, who willingly accepted
every truthful statement. No man was ever more beloved, more admired and
less flattered in his own home than he was.
“What a wise judge you are, my dearest girl!” answered Pasteur the same
evening; “you are perfectly right. But I am not sorry to have seen all
this, and that your brother should have seen it; all knowledge is
useful.”
That little incursion into the domain of politics was rendered
insignificant in Pasteur’s life by the fact that his long-desired object
was almost reached. Three months later, at the distribution of prizes of
the _Concours Général_, the Minister of Public Instruction pronounced a
speech, of which Pasteur preserved the text, underlining with his own
hand the following passages: “Soon, I hope, we shall see the Schools of
Medicine and of Pharmacy reconstructed; the Collège de France provided
with new laboratories; the Faculty of Medicine transferred and enlarged,
and the ancient Sorbonne itself restored and extended.”
And while the Minister spoke of “those higher studies of Philosophy, of
History, of disinterested Science which are the glory of a nation and an
honour to the human mind ... which must retain the first rank to shed
their serene light over inferior studies, and to remind men of the true
goal and the true grandeur of human intelligence....” Pasteur could say
to himself that the great cause which he had pleaded since he was made
Dean of Faculty at Lille in 1854, which he had supported in 1868 and
again on the morrow of the war, was at last about to be won in 1876.
He had a patriotic treat during the summer holidays of that same year. A
great international congress of sericiculture was gathered at Milan;
there were delegates from Russia, Austria, Italy and France, and
Pasteur represented France. He was accompanied by his former pupils, his
associates in his silkworm studies, Duclaux and Raulin, both of whom had
become professors at the Lyons Faculty of Sciences, and Maillot, who was
then manager of the silkworm establishment of Montpellier. The members
of the Congress had been previously informed of the programme of
questions, and each intending speaker was armed with facts and
observations. The open discussions allowed Duclaux, Raulin and Maillot
to demonstrate the strictness and perfection of the experimental method
which they had learned from their master and which they were teaching in
their turn.
Excursions formed a delightful interlude; one on the lake of Como was an
enchantment. Then the French delegates were offered the pleasant
surprise of a visit to an immense seeding establishment in the
neighbourhood of Milan, which had been named after Pasteur. We have an
account of this visit in a letter to J. B. Dumas (September 17).
“My dear Master ... I very much regret that you are not here: you would
have shared my satisfaction. I am dating my letter from Milan, but in
reality, the congress being ended, we are staying at Signor Susani’s
country house for a few days. Here, from July 4, sixty or seventy women
are busy for ten hours every day with microscopic examinations of
absolute accuracy. I never saw a better arranged establishment. 400,000
moth cells are put under the microscope every day. The order and
cleanliness are admirable; any error is made impossible by the
organization of a second test following the first.
“I felt, in seeing my name in large letters on the façade of that
splendid establishment, a joy which compensates for much of the
frivolous opposition I have encountered from some of my countrymen these
last few years; it is a spontaneous homage from the proprietor to my
studies. Many sericicultors do their seeding themselves, by selection,
or have it done by competent workers accustomed to the operation. The
harvest from that excellent seed depends on the climate only; in a
moderately favourable season the production often reaches fifty or
seventy kilogrammes per ounce of twenty-five grammes.”
Signor Susani was looking forward to producing for that one year 30,000
ounces of seed. In the presence of the prodigious activity of this
veritable factory--where, besides the microscope women, more than one
hundred persons were occupied in various ways, washing the mortars with
which the moths are pounded before being put under the microscopes,
cleansing the slides, etc.; in fact, doing those various delicate but
simple operations which had formerly been pronounced to be
impracticable--Pasteur’s thoughts went back to his experiments in the
Pont-Gisquet greenhouse, to the modest beginnings of his process, now so
magnificently applied in Italy. A month before this, J. B. Dumas,
presiding at a scientific meeting at Clermont Ferrand, had said--
“The future belongs to Science; woe to the nations who close their eyes
to this fact.... Let us call to our aid on this neutral and pacific
ground of Natural Philosophy, where defeats cost neither blood nor
tears, those hearts which are moved by their country’s grandeur; it is
by the exaltation of science that France will recover her prestige.”
Those same ideas were expressed in a toast given by Pasteur in the name
of France at a farewell banquet, when the 300 members of the
Sericiculture Congress were present.
“Gentlemen, I propose a toast--To the peaceful strife of Science. It is
the first time that I have the honour of being present on foreign soil
at an international congress; I ask myself what are the impressions
produced in me, besides these courteous discussions, by the brilliant
hospitality of the noble Milanese city, and I find myself deeply
impressed by two propositions. First, that Science is of no nationality;
and secondly, in apparent, but only in apparent, contradiction, that
Science is the highest personification of nationality. Science has no
nationality because knowledge is the patrimony of humanity, the torch
which gives light to the world. Science should be the highest
personification of nationality because, of all the nations, that one
will always be foremost which shall be first to progress by the labours
of thought and of intelligence.
“Let us therefore strive in the pacific field of Science for the
pre-eminence of our several countries. Let us strive, for strife is
effort, strife is life when progress is the goal.
“You Italians, try to multiply on the soil of your beautiful and
glorious country the Tecchi, the Brioschi, the Tacchini, the Sella, the
Cornalia.... You, proud children of Austria-Hungary, follow even more
firmly than in the past the fruitful impulse which an eminent statesman,
now your representative at the Court of England, has given to Science
and Agriculture. We, who are here present, do not forget that the first
sericiculture establishment was founded in Austria. As to you, Japanese,
may the cultivation of Science be numbered among the chief objects of
your care in the amazing social and political transformation of which
you are giving the marvellous spectacle to the world. We Frenchmen,
bending under the sorrow of our mutilated country, should show once
again that great trials may give rise to great thoughts and great
actions.
“I drink to the peaceful strife of Science.”
“You will find,” wrote Pasteur to Dumas, telling him of this toast,
which had been received with enthusiastic applause, “an echo of the
feelings with which you have inspired your pupils on the grandeur and
the destiny of Science in modern society.”
The tender and delicate side of this powerful spirit was thus once again
apparent in this deference to his master in the midst of acclamations,
and in those deep and noble ideas expressed in the middle of a noisy
banquet. But it was chiefly in his private life that his
open-heartedness, his desire to love and to be loved, became apparent.
That great genius had a childlike heart, and the charm of this was
incomparable.
He once said: “The recompense and the ambition of a scientist is to
conquer the approbation of his peers and of the masters whom he
venerates.” He had already known that recompense and could satisfy that
ambition. Dumas had known and appreciated him for thirty years; Lister
had proclaimed his gratitude; Tyndall--an indefatigable excursionist,
who loved to survey wide horizons, and who in his celebrated classes was
wont to make use of comparisons with altitudes and heights and
everything which opens a clear and vast outlook--had a great admiration
for the wide development of Pasteur’s work. Now, Pasteur’s experiments
had been strongly attacked by a young English physician, Dr. Bastian,
who had excited in the English and American public a bitter prejudice
against the results announced by Pasteur on the subject of spontaneous
generation.
“The confusion and uncertainty,” wrote Tyndall to Pasteur, “have finally
become such that, six months ago, I thought that it would be rendering a
service to Science, at the same time as justice to yourself, if the
question were subjected to a fresh investigation.
“Putting into practice an idea which I had entertained six years
ago--the details of which are set out in the article in the _British
Medical Journal_ which I had the pleasure to send you--I went over a
large portion of the ground on which Dr. Bastian had taken up his stand,
and refuted, I think, many of the fallacies which had misled the public.
“The change which has taken place since then in the tone of the English
medical journals is quite remarkable, and I am disposed to think that
the general confidence of the public in the accuracy of Dr. Bastian’s
experiments has been considerably shaken.
“In taking up these investigations, I have had the opportunity of
refreshing my memory about your labours; they have reawakened in me all
the admiration which I felt for them when I first read of them. I intend
to continue these investigations until I have dispersed all the doubts
which may have arisen as to the indisputable accuracy of your
conclusions.”
And Tyndall added a paragraph for which Pasteur modestly substituted
asterisks in communicating this letter to the Academy.
“For the first time in the history of Science we have the right to
cherish the sure and certain hope that, as regards epidemic diseases,
medicine will soon be delivered from quackery and placed on a real
scientific basis. When that day arrives, Humanity, in my opinion, will
know how to recognize that it is to you that will be due the largest
share of her gratitude.”
Tyndall was indeed qualified to sign this passport to immortality. But
in the meanwhile a struggle was necessary, and Pasteur did not wish to
leave the burden of the discussion even on such shoulders as Tyndall’s!
Moreover he was interested in his opponent.
“Dr. Bastian,” writes M. Duclaux, “had some tenacity, a fertile mind,
and the love, if not the gift, of the experimental method.” The
discussion was destined to last for months. In general (according to J.
B. Dumas’ calculation) “at the end of ten years, judgment on a great
thing is usually formed; it is by then an accomplished fact, an idea
adopted by Science or irrevocably repudiated.” Pasteur, on the morrow of
the Milan Congress, might feel that it had been so for the adoption of
his system of cellular seeding, but such was not the case in this
question of spontaneous generation. The quarrel had started again at the
Academy of Sciences and at the Academy of Medicine; it was now being
revived in England, and Bastian proposed to come himself and experiment
in the laboratory of the Ecole Normale.
“For nearly twenty years,” said Pasteur, “I have pursued, without
finding it, a proof of life existing without an anterior and similar
life. The consequences of such a discovery would be incalculable;
natural science in general, and medicine and philosophy in particular,
would receive therefrom an impulse which cannot be foreseen. Therefore,
whenever I hear that this discovery has been made, I hasten to verify
the assertions of my fortunate rival. It is true that I hasten towards
him with some degree of mistrust, so many times have I experienced that,
in the difficult art of experimenting, the very cleverest stagger at
every step, and that the interpretation of facts is no less perilous.”
Dr. Bastian operated on acid urine, boiled and neutralized by a solution
of potash heated to a temperature of 120° C. If, after the flask of
urine had cooled down, it was heated to a temperature of 50° C. in order
to facilitate the development of germs, the liquid in ten hours’ time
swarmed with bacteria. “Those facts prove spontaneous generation,” said
Dr. Bastian.
Pasteur invited him to replace his boiled solution of potash by a
fragment of solid potash, after heating it to 110° C., in order to avoid
the bacteria germs which might be contained in the aqueous solution.
This question of the germs of inferior organisms possibly contained in
water was--during the course of that protracted discussion--studied by
Pasteur with the assistance of M. Joubert, Professor of Physics at the
Collège Rollin. Such germs were to be found even in the distilled water
of laboratories; it was sufficient that the water should be poured in a
thin stream through the air to become contaminated. Spring water, if
slowly filtered through a solid mass of ground, alone contained no
germs.
There was also the question of the urine and that of the recipient. The
urine, collected by Dr. Bastian in a vase and placed into a retort,
neither of which had been put through a flame, might contain spores of a
bacillus called _bacillus subtilis_, which offer a great resistance to
the action of heat. Those spores do not develop in notably acid liquids,
but the liquid having been neutralized or rendered slightly alkaline by
the potash, the development of germs took place. The thing therefore to
be done was to collect the urine in a vase and introduce it into a
retort both of which had been put through a flame. After that, no
organisms were produced, as was stated in the thesis of M. Chamberland,
then a curator at the laboratory, and who took an active part in these
experiments.
A chapter might well have been written by a moralist “On the use of
certain opponents”; for it was through that discussion with Bastian that
it was discovered how it was that--at the time of the celebrated
discussions on spontaneous generation--the heterogenists, Pouchet, Joly,
and Musset, operating as Pasteur did, but in a different medium,
obtained results apparently contradictory to Pasteur’s. If their flasks,
filled with a decoction of hay, almost constantly showed germs, whilst
Pasteur’s, full of yeast water, were always sterile, it was because the
hay water contained spores of the bacillus subtilis. The spores remained
inactive as long as the liquid was preserved from the contact of air,
but as soon as oxygen re-entered the flask they were able to develop.
The custom of raising liquids to a temperature of 120° C. in order to
sterilize them dates from that conflict with Bastian. “But,” writes M.
Duclaux, “the heating to 120° of a flask half filled with liquid can
sterilize the liquid part only, allowing life to persist in those
regions which are not in contact with the liquid. In order to destroy
everything, the dry walls must be heated to 180° C.”
A former pupil of the Ecole Normale, who had been a curator in Pasteur’s
laboratory since October, 1876, Boutroux by name, who witnessed all
these researches, wrote in his thesis: “The knowledge of these facts
makes it possible to obtain absolutely pure neutral culture mediums,
and, in consequence, to study as many generations as are required of one
unmixed micro-organism, whenever pure seed has been procured.”
Pasteur has defined what he meant by putting tubes, cotton, vases, etc.,
through a flame. “In order to get rid of the microscopic germs which the
dusts of air and of the water used for the washing of vessels deposit on
every object, the best means is to place the vessels (their openings
closed with pads of cotton wool) during half an hour in a gas stove,
heating the air in which the articles stand to a temperature of about
150° C. to 200° C. The vessels, tubes, etc., are then ready for use. The
cotton wool is enclosed in tubes or in blotting-paper.”
What Pasteur had recommended to surgeons, when he advised them to pass
through a flame all the instruments they used, had become a current
practice in the laboratory; the least pad of cotton wool used as a
stopper was previously sterilized. Thus was an entirely new technique
rising fully armed and ready to repel new attacks and ensure new
victories.
If Pasteur was so anxious to drive Dr. Bastian to the wall, it was
because he saw behind that so-called experiment on spontaneous
generation a cause of perpetual conflict with physicians and surgeons.
Some of them desired to repel purely and simply the whole theory of
germs. Others, disposed to admit the results of Pasteur’s researches, as
laboratory work, did not admit his experimental incursions on clinical
ground. Pasteur therefore wrote to Dr. Bastian in the early part of
July, 1877--
“Do you know why I desire so much to fight and conquer you? it is
because you are one of the principal adepts of a medical doctrine which
I believe to be fatal to progress in the art of healing--the doctrine of
the spontaneity of all diseases.... That is an error which, I repeat it,
is harmful to medical progress. From the prophylactic as well as from
the therapeutic point of view, the fate of the physician and surgeon
depends upon the adoption of the one or the other of these two
doctrines.”
CHAPTER IX
1877--1879
The confusion of ideas on the origin of contagious and epidemic diseases
was about to be suddenly enlightened; Pasteur had now taken up the study
of the disease known as charbon or splenic fever. This disease was
ruining agriculture; the French provinces of Beauce, Brie, Burgundy,
Nivernais, Berry, Champagne, Dauphiné and Auvergne, paid a formidable
yearly tribute to this mysterious scourge. In the Beauce, for instance,
twenty sheep out of every hundred died in one flock; in some parts of
Auvergne the proportion was ten or fifteen per cent., sometimes even
twenty-five, thirty-five, or fifty per cent. At Provins, at Meaux, at
Fontainebleau, some farms were called _charbon farms_; elsewhere,
certain fields or hills were looked upon as accursed and an evil spell
seemed to be thrown over flocks bold enough to enter those fields or
ascend those hills. Animals stricken with this disease almost always
died in a few hours; sheep were seen to lag behind the flock, with
drooping head, shaking limbs and gasping breath; after a rigor and some
sanguinolent evacuations, occurring also through the mouth and nostrils,
death supervened, often before the shepherd had had time to notice the
attack. The carcase rapidly became distended, and the least rent in the
skin gave issue to a flow of black, thick and viscid blood, hence the
name of _anthrax_ given to the disease. It was also called splenic
fever, because necropsy showed that the spleen had assumed enormous
dimensions; if that were opened, it presented a black and liquid pulp.
In some places the disease assumed a character of extreme virulence; in
the one district of Novgorod, in Russia, 56,000 head of cattle died of
splenic infection between 1867 and 1870. Horses, oxen, cows, sheep,
everything succumbed, as did also 528 persons, attacked by the contagion
under divers forms; a pin prick or a scratch is sufficient to inoculate
shepherds, butchers, knackers or farmers with the malignant pustule.
Though a professor at the Alfort Veterinary School, M. Delafond, did
point out to his pupils as far back as 1838 that charbon blood contained
“little rods,” as he called them; it was only looked upon by himself and
them as a curiosity with no scientific importance. Davaine, when he--and
Rayer as well--recognized in 1850 those little filiform bodies in the
blood of animals dying of splenic fever, he too merely mentioned the
fact, which seemed to him of so little moment that he did not even
report it in the first notice of his works edited by himself.
It was only eleven years later that Davaine--struck, as he himself
gladly acknowledged, by reading Pasteur’s paper on the butyric ferment,
the little cylindrical rods of which offer all the characteristics of
vibriones or bacteria--asked himself whether the filiform corpuscles
seen in the blood of the charbon victims might not act after the manner
of ferments and be the cause of the disease. In 1863, a medical man at
Dourdan, whose neighbour, a farmer, had lost twelve sheep of charbon in
a week, sent blood from one of these sheep to Davaine, who hastened to
inoculate some rabbits with this blood. He recognized the presence of
those little transparent and motionless rods which he called bacteridia
(a diminutive of bacterium, or rod-shaped vibriones). It might be
thought that the cause of the evil was found, in other words that the
relation between those bacteridia and the disease which had caused death
could not be doubted. But two professors of the Val de Grâce, Jaillard
and Leplat; refuted these experiments.
They had procured, in the middle of the summer, from a knacker’s yard
near Chartres, a little blood from a cow which had died of anthrax, and
they inoculated some rabbits with it. The rabbits died, but without
presenting any bacteridia. Jaillard and Leplat therefore affirmed that
splenic fever was not an affection caused by parasites, that the
bacteridium was an epiphenomenon of the disease and could not be looked
upon as the cause of it.
Davaine, on repeating Jaillard and Leplat’s experiments, found a new
interpretation; he alleged that the disease they had inoculated was not
anthrax. Then Jaillard and Leplat obtained a little diseased sheep’s
blood from M. Boutet, a veterinary surgeon at Chartres, and tried that
instead of cow’s blood. The result was identical: death ensued, but no
bacteridia. Were there then two diseases?
Others made observations in their turn. It occurred to a young German
physician, Dr. Koch, who in 1876 was beginning his career in a small
village in Germany, to seek a culture medium for the bacteridium. A few
drops of aqueous humour, collected in the eyes of oxen or of rabbits,
seemed to him favourable. After a few hours of this nutrition the rods
seen under the microscope were ten or twenty times larger than at first;
they lengthened immoderately, so as to cover the whole slide of the
microscope, and might have been compared to a ball of tangled thread.
Dr. Koch examined those lengths, and after a certain time noticed little
spots here and there looking like a punctuation of spores. Tyndall, who
knew how to secure continuous attention by a variety of comparisons,
said at a scientific conference in Glasgow a few months later that those
little ovoid bodies were contained within the envelope of the filament
like peas in their pods. It is interesting to note that Pasteur, when he
studied, in connection with silkworm diseases, the mode of reproduction
of the vibriones of flachery, had seen them divide into spores similar
to shining corpuscles; he had demonstrated that those spores, like seeds
of plants, could revive after a lapse of years and continue their
disastrous work. The bacterium of charbon, or _bacillus anthracis_ as it
now began to be called, reproduced itself in the same way, and, when
inoculated by Dr. Koch into guinea-pigs, rabbits and mice, provoked
splenic fever as easily and inevitably as blood from the veins of an
animal that had died of the disease. Bacilli and spores therefore
yielded the secret of the contagion, and it seemed that the fact was
established, when Paul Bert, in January, 1877, announced to the _Société
de Biologie_ that it was “possible to destroy the bacillus anthracis in
a drop of blood by compressed oxygen, to inoculate what remained, and to
reproduce the disease and death without any trace of the bacteridium ...
Bacteridia,” he added, “are therefore neither the cause nor the
necessary effect of splenic fever, which must be due to a virus.”
Pasteur tackled the subject. A little drop of the blood of an animal
which had died of anthrax--a microscopic drop--was laid, sown, after the
usual precautions to ensure purity, in a sterilized balloon which
contained neutral or slightly alkaline urine. The culture medium might
equally be common household broth, or beer-yeast water, either of them
neutralized by potash. After a few hours, a sort of flake was floating
in the liquid; the bacteridia could be seen, not under the shape of
short broken rods, but with the appearance of filaments, tangled like a
skein; the culture medium being highly favourable, they were rapidly
growing longer. A drop of that liquid, abstracted from the first vessel,
was sown into a second vessel, of which one drop was again placed into a
third, and so on, until the fortieth flask; the seed of each successive
culture came from a tiny drop of the preceding one. If a drop from one
of those flasks was introduced under the skin of a rabbit or guinea-pig,
splenic fever and death immediately ensued, with the same symptoms and
characteristics as if the original drop of blood had been inoculated. In
the presence of the results from those successive cultures, what became
of the hypothesis of an inanimate substance contained in the first drop
of blood? It was now diluted in a proportion impossible to imagine. It
would therefore be absurd, thought Pasteur, to imagine that the last
virulence owed its power to a virulent agent existing in the original
drop of blood; it was to the bacteridium, multiplied in each culture,
and to the bacteridium alone, that this power was due; the life of the
bacteridium had made the virulence. “Anthrax is therefore” Pasteur
declared, “the disease of the bacteridium, as trichinosis is the disease
of the trichina, as itch is the disease of its special acarus, with this
circumstance, however, that, in anthrax, the parasite can only be seen
through a microscope, and very much enlarged.” After the bacteridium had
presented those long filaments, within a few hours, two days at the
most, another spectacle followed; amidst those filaments, appeared the
oval shapes, the germs, spores or seeds, pointed out by Dr. Koch. Those
spores, sown in broth, reproduced in their turn the little packets of
tangled filaments, the bacteridia. Pasteur reported that “one single
germ of bacteridium in the drop which is sown multiplies during the
following hours and ends by filling the whole liquid with such a
thickness of bacteridia that, to the naked eye, it seems that carded
cotton has been mixed with the broth.”
M. Chamberland, a pupil who became intimately associated with this work
on anthrax, has defined as follows what Pasteur had now achieved: “By
his admirable process of culture outside organism, Pasteur shows that
the rods which exist in the blood, and for which he has preserved the
name of bacteridia given them by Davaine, are living beings capable of
being indefinitely reproduced in appropriate liquids, after the manner
of a plant multiplied by successive cuttings. The bacterium does not
reproduce itself only under the filamentous form, but also through
spores or germs, after the manner of many plants which present two modes
of reproduction, by cuttings and by seeds.” The first point was
therefore settled. The ground suspected and indicated by Davaine was now
part of the domain of science, and preserved from any new attacks.
Yet Jaillard and Leplat’s experiments remained to be explained: how had
they provoked death through the blood of a splenic fever victim and
found no bacteridia afterwards? It was then that Pasteur, guided, as
Tyndall expressed it, by “his extraordinary faculty of combining facts
with the reasons of those facts,” placed himself, to begin with, in the
conditions of Jaillard and Leplat, who had received, during the height
of the summer, some blood from a cow and a sheep which had died of
anthrax, that blood having evidently been abstracted more than
twenty-four hours before the experiment. Pasteur, who had arranged to go
to the very spot, the knacker’s yard near Chartres, and himself collect
diseased blood, wrote to ask that the carcases of animals which had died
of splenic fever should be kept for him for two or three days.
He arrived on June 13, 1877, accompanied by the veterinary surgeon, M.
Boutet. Three carcases were awaiting him: that of a sheep which had been
dead sixteen hours, that of a horse whose death dated from the preceding
day, and that of a cow which must have been dead for two or three days,
for it had been brought from a distant village. The blood of the
recently diseased sheep contained bacteridia of anthrax only. In the
blood of the horse, putrefaction vibriones were to be found, besides the
bacteridia, and those vibriones existed in a still greater proportion in
the blood of the cow. The sheep’s blood, inoculated into guinea-pigs,
provoked anthrax with pure bacteridia; that of the cow and of the horse
brought a rapid death with no bacteridia.
Henceforth what had happened in Jaillard and Leplat’s experiments, and
in the incomplete and uncertain experiments of Davaine, became simple
and perfectly clear to Pasteur, as well as the confusion caused by
another experimentalist who had said his say ten years after the
discussions of Jaillard, Leplat and Davaine.
This was a Paris veterinary surgeon, M. Signol. He had written to the
Academy of Sciences that it was enough that a healthy animal should be
felled, or rather asphyxiated, for its blood, taken from the deeper
veins, to become violently virulent within sixteen hours. M. Signol
thought he had seen motionless bacteridia similar to the bacillus
anthracis; but those bacteridia, he said, were incapable of multiplying
in the inoculated animals. Yet the blood was so very virulent that
animals rapidly succumbed in a manner analogous to death by splenic
fever. A Commission was nominated to ascertain the facts; Pasteur was
made a member of it, as was also his colleague Bouillaud--still so quick
and alert, in spite of his eighty years, that he looked less like an old
man than like a wrinkled young man--and another colleague, twenty years
younger, Bouley, the first veterinary surgeon in France who had a seat
at the Institute. The latter was a tall, handsome man, with a somewhat
military appearance, and an expression of energetic good humour which
his disposition fully justified. He was eager to help in the propagation
of new ideas and discoveries, and soon, with eager enthusiasm, placed
his marked talents as a writer and orator at Pasteur’s disposal.
On the day when the Commission met, M. Signol showed the carcase of a
horse, which he had sacrificed for this experiment, having asphyxiated
it when in excellent health. Pasteur uncovered the deep veins of the
horse and showed to Bouley, and also to Messrs. Joubert and Chamberland,
a long vibrio, so translucid as to be almost invisible, creeping,
flexible, and which, according to Pasteur’s comparison, slipped between
the globules of the blood as a serpent slips between high grasses; it
was the septic vibrio. From the peritoneum, where it swarms, that vibrio
passes into the blood a few hours after death; it represents the
vanguard of the vibriones of putrefaction. When Jaillard and Leplat had
asked for blood infected with anthrax, they had received blood which was
at the same time septic. It was septicæmia (so prompt in its action that
inoculated rabbits or sheep perish in twenty-four or thirty-six hours)
that had killed Jaillard and Leplat’s rabbits. It was also septicæmia,
provoked by this vibrio (or its germs, for it too has germs), that M.
Signol had unknowingly inoculated into the animals upon which he
experimented. Successive cultures of that septic vibrio enabled Pasteur
to show, as he had done for the bacillus anthracis, that one drop of
those cultures caused septicæmia in an animal. But, while the bacillus
anthracis is aërobic, the septic vibrio, being anaërobic, must be
cultivated in a vacuum, or in carbonic acid gas. And, cultivating those
bacteridia and those vibriones with at least as much care as a Dutchman
might give to rare tulips, Pasteur succeeded in parting the bacillus
anthracis and the septic vibrio when they were temporarily associated.
In a culture in contact with air, only bacteridia developed, in a
culture preserved from air, only the septic vibrio.
What Pasteur called “the Paul Bert fact” now alone remained to be
explained; this also was simple. The blood Paul Bert had received from
Chartres was of the same quality as that which Jaillard and Leplat had
had; that is to say already septic. If filaments of bacillus anthracis
and of septic vibriones perish under compressed oxygen, such is not the
case with the germs, which are extremely tenacious; they can be kept for
several hours at a temperature of 70° C., and even of 95° C. Nothing
injures them, neither lack of air, carbonic acid gas nor compressed
oxygen. Paul Bert, therefore, killed filamentous bacteridia under the
influence of high pressure; but, as the germs were none the worse, those
germs revived the splenic fever. Paul Bert came to Pasteur’s laboratory,
ascertained facts and watched experiments. On June 23, 1877, he hastened
to the Société de Biologie and proclaimed his mistake, acting in this as
a loyal Frenchman, Pasteur said.
In spite of this testimony, and notwithstanding the admiration conceived
for Pasteur by certain medical men--notably H. Gueneau de Mussy, who
published in that very year (1877) a paper on the theory of the
contagium germ and the application of that theory to the etiology of
typhoid fever--the struggle was being continued between Pasteur and the
current medical doctrines. In the long discussion which began at that
time in the Académie de Médecine on typhoid fever, some masters of
medical oratory violently attacked the germ theory, proclaiming the
spontaneity of living organism. Typhoid fever, they said, is engendered
by ourselves within ourselves. Whilst Pasteur was convinced that the day
would come--and that was indeed the supreme goal of his life work--when
contagious and virulent diseases would be effaced from the
preoccupations, mournings and anxieties of humanity, and when the
infinitesimally small, known, isolated and studied, would at last be
vanquished, his ideas were called Utopian dreams.
The old professors, whose career had been built on a combination of
theories which they were pleased to call medical truth, dazed by such
startling novelties, endeavoured, as did Piorry, to attract attention to
their former writings. “It is not the disease, an abstract being,” said
Piorry, “which we have to treat, but the patient, whom we must study
with the greatest care by all the physical, chemical and clinical means
which Science offers.”
The contagion which Pasteur showed, appearing clearly in the disorders
visible in the carcases of inoculated guinea-pigs, was counted as
nothing. As to the assimilation of a laboratory experiment on rabbits
and guinea-pigs to what occurred in human pathology, it may be guessed
that it was quite out of the question for men who did not even admit the
possibility of a comparison between veterinary medicine and the other.
It would be interesting to reconstitute these hostile surroundings in
order to appreciate the efforts of will required of Pasteur to enable
him to triumph over all the obstacles raised before him in the medical
and the veterinary world.
The Professor of Alfort School, Colin, who had, he said, made 500
experiments on anthrax within the last twelve years, stated, in a paper
of seventeen pages, read at the Academy of Medicine on July 31, that the
results of Pasteur’s experiments had not the importance which Pasteur
attributed to them. Among many other objections, one was considered by
Colin as a fatal one--the existence of a virulent agent situated in the
blood, besides the bacteridia.
Bouley, who had just communicated to the Academy of Sciences some notes
by M. Toussaint, professor at the Toulouse veterinary school, whose
experiments agreed with those of Pasteur, was nevertheless a little
moved by Colin’s reading. He wrote in that sense to Pasteur, who was
then spending his holidays in the Jura. Pasteur addressed to him an
answer as vigorous as any of his replies at the Academy.
“Arbois, August 18, 1877.--My dear colleague ... I hasten to answer your
letter. I should like to accept literally the honour which you confer
upon me by calling me ‘your master,’ and to give you a severe reprimand,
you faithless man, who would seem to have been shaken by M. Colin’s
reading at the Académie des Sciences, since you are still holding forth
on the possibility of a virulent agent, and since your uncertainties
seem to be appeased by a new notice, read by yourself, last Monday, at
the Académie des Sciences.
“Let me tell you frankly that you have not sufficiently imbibed the
teaching contained in the papers I have read, in my own name and in that
of M. Joubert, at the Académie des Sciences and at the Academy of
Medicine. Can you believe that I should have read those papers if they
had wanted the confirmation you mention, or if M. Colin’s contradictions
could have touched them? You know what my situation is, in these grave
controversies; you know that, ignorant as I am of medical and veterinary
knowledge, I should immediately be taxed with presumption if I had the
boldness to speak without being armed for struggle and for victory! All
of you, physicians and veterinary surgeons, would quite reasonably fall
upon me if I brought into your debates a mere semblance of proof.
“How is it that you have not noticed that M. Colin has travestied--I
should even say suppressed--because it hindered his theory, the
important experiment of the successive cultures of the bacteridium in
urine?
“If a drop of blood, infected with anthrax, is mixed with water, with
pure blood or with humour from the eye, as was done by Davaine, Koch and
M. Colin himself, and some of that mixture is inoculated and death
ensues, doubt may remain in the mind as to the cause of virulence,
especially since Davaine’s well-known experiments on septicæmia. Our
experiment is very different....”
And Pasteur showed how, from one artificial culture to another, he
reached the fiftieth, the hundredth, and how a drop of this hundredth
culture, identical with the first, could bring about death as certainly
as a drop of infected blood.
Months passed, and--as Pasteur used to wish in his youth that it might
be--few passed without showing one step forward. In a private letter to
his old Arbois school-fellow, Jules Vercel, he wrote (February 11,
1878): “I am extremely busy; at no epoch of my scientific life have I
worked so hard or been so much interested in the results of my
researches, which will, I hope, throw a new and a great light on certain
very important branches of medicine and of surgery.”
* * * * *
In the face of those successive discoveries, every one had a word to
say. This accumulation of facts was looked down upon by that category of
people who borrow assurance from a mixture of ignorance and prejudice.
Others, on the other hand, amongst whom the greatest were to be found,
proclaimed that Pasteur’s work was immortal and that the word “theory”
used by him should be changed into that of “doctrine.” One of those who
thus spoke, with the right given by full knowledge, was Dr. Sédillot,
whose open and critical mind had kept him from becoming like the old men
described by Sainte Beuve as stopping their watch at a given time and
refusing to recognize further progress. He was formerly Director of the
Army Medical School at Strasburg, and had already retired in 1870, but
had joined the army again as volunteer surgeon. It will be remembered
that he had written from the Hagueneau ambulance to the Académie des
Sciences--of which he was a corresponding member--to call the attention
of his colleagues to the horrors of purulent infection, which defied his
zeal and devotion.
No one followed Pasteur’s work with greater attention than this tall,
sad-looking old man of seventy-four; he was one of those who had been
torn away from his native Alsace, and he could not get over it. In
March, 1878, he read a paper to the Academy, entitled “On the Influence
of M. Pasteur’s Work on Medicine and Surgery.”
Those discoveries, he said, which had deeply modified the state of
surgery, and particularly the treatment of wounds, could be traced back
to one principle. This principle was applicable to various facts, and
explained Lister’s success, and the fact that certain operations had
become possible, and that certain cases, formerly considered hopeless,
were now being recorded on all sides. Real progress lay there.
Sédillot’s concluding paragraph deserves to be handed down as a comment
precious from a contemporary: “We shall have seen the conception and
birth of a new surgery, a daughter of Science and of Art, which will be
one of the greatest wonders of our century, and with which the names of
Pasteur and Lister will remain gloriously connected.”
In that treatise, Sédillot invented a new word to characterize all that
body of organisms and infinitely small vibriones, bacteria, bacteridia,
etc.; he proposed to designate them all under the generic term of
_microbe_. This word had, in Sédillot’s eyes, the advantage of being
short and of having a general signification. He however felt some
scruple before using it, and consulted Littré, who replied on February
26, 1878: “Dear colleague and friend, _microbe_ and _microbia_ are very
good words. To designate the animalculæe I should give the preference to
_microbe_, because, as you say, it is short, and because it leaves
microbia, a feminine noun, for the designation of the state of a
microbe.”
Certain philologists criticized the formation of the word in the name of
the Greek language. Microbe, they said, means an animal with a short
life, rather than an infinitesimally small animal. Littré gave a second
testimonial to the word microbe--
“It is true,” he wrote to Sédillot, “that μιχρόβιος and μαχρόβιος
probably mean in Greek _short-lived_ and _long-lived_. But, as you
justly remark, the question is not what is most purely Greek, but what
is the use made in our language of the Greek roots. Now the Greek has
βίος, life, βιοῦν, to live, βιούς, living, the root of which may very
well figure under the form of _bi_, _bia_ with the sense _living_, in
_aërobia_, _anaërobia_ and _microbe_. I should advise you not to trouble
to answer criticisms, but let the word stand for itself, which it will
no doubt do.” Pasteur, by adopting it, made the whole world familiar
with it.
Though during that month of March, 1878, Pasteur had had the pleasure of
hearing Sédillot’s prophetic words at the Académie des Sciences, he had
heard very different language at the Académie de Médecine. Colin of
Alfort, from the isolated corner where he indulged in this misanthropy,
had renewed his criticisms of Pasteur. As he spoke unceasingly of a
state of virulent anthrax devoid of bacteridia, Pasteur, losing
patience, begged of the Académie to nominate a Commission of
Arbitration.
“I desire expressly that M. Colin should be urged to demonstrate what he
states to be the fact, for his assertion implies another, which is that
an organic matter, containing neither bacteridia nor germs of
bacteridia, produces within the body of a living animal the bacteridia
of anthrax. This would be the spontaneous generation of the bacillus
anthracis!”
Colin’s antagonism to Pasteur was such that he contradicted him in every
point and on every subject. Pasteur having stated that birds, and
notably hens, did not take the charbon disease, Colin had hastened to
say that nothing was easier than to give anthrax to hens; this was in
July, 1877. Pasteur, who was at that moment sending Colin some samples
of bacteridia culture which he had promised him, begged that he would
kindly bring him in exchange a hen suffering from that disease, since it
could contract it so easily.
Pasteur told the story of this episode in March, 1878; it was an amusing
interlude in the midst of those technical discussions. “At the end of
the week, I saw M. Colin coming into my laboratory, and, even before I
shook hands with him, I said to him: ‘Why, you have not brought me that
diseased hen?’--‘Trust me,’ answered M. Colin, ‘you shall have it next
week.’--I left for the vacation; on my return, and at the first meeting
of the Academy which I attended, I went to M. Colin and said, ‘Well,
where is my dying hen?’ ‘I have only just begun experimenting again,’
said M. Colin; ‘in a few days I will bring you a hen suffering from
charbon.’--Days and weeks went by, with fresh insistence on my part and
new promises from M. Colin. One day, about two months ago, M. Colin
owned to me that he had been mistaken, and that it was impossible to
give anthrax to a hen. ‘Well, my dear colleague,’ I said to him, ‘I will
show you that it is possible to give anthrax to hens; in fact, I will
one day myself bring you at Alfort a hen which shall die of charbon.’
“I have told the Academy this story of the hen M. Colin had promised in
order to show that our colleague’s contradiction of our observations on
charbon had never been very serious.”
Colin, after speaking about several other things, ended by saying: “I
regret that I have not until now been able to hand to M. Pasteur a hen
dying or dead of anthrax. The two that I had bought for that purpose
were inoculated several times with very active blood, but neither of
them has fallen ill. Perhaps the experiment might have succeeded
afterwards, but, one fine day, a greedy dog prevented that by eating up
the two birds, whose cage had probably been badly closed.” On the
Tuesday which followed this incident, the passers-by were somewhat
surprised to see Pasteur emerging from the Ecole Normale, carrying a
cage, within which were three hens, one of them dead. Thus laden, he
took a fiacre, and drove to the Académie de Médecine, where, on
arriving, he deposited this unexpected object on the desk. He explained
that the dead hen had been inoculated with charbon two days before, at
twelve o’clock on the Sunday, with five drops of yeast water employed as
a nutritive liquid for pure bacteridium germs, and that it had died on
the Monday at five o’clock, twenty-nine hours after the inoculation. He
also explained, in his own name, and in the names of Messrs. Joubert and
Chamberland, how in the presence of the curious fact that hens were
refractory to charbon, it had occurred to them to see whether that
singular and hitherto mysterious preservation did not have its cause in
the temperature of a hen’s body, “higher by several degrees than the
temperature of the body of all the animal species which can be decimated
by charbon.”
This preconceived idea was followed by an ingenious experiment. In order
to lower the temperature of an inoculated hen’s body, it was kept for
some time in a bath, the water covering one-third of its body. When
treated in that way, said Pasteur, the hen dies the next day. “All its
blood, spleen, lungs, and liver are filled with bacilli anthracis
susceptible of ulterior cultures either in inert liquids or in the
bodies of animals. We have not met with a single exception.”
As a proof of the success of the experiment, the white hen lay on the
floor of the cage. As people might be forthcoming, even at the Academy,
who would accuse the prolonged bath of having caused death, one of the
two living hens, a gray one, who was extremely lively, had been placed
in the same bath, at the same temperature and during the same time. The
third one, a black hen, also in perfect health, had been inoculated at
the same time as the white hen, with the same liquid, but with ten drops
instead of five, to make the comparative result more convincing; it had
not been subjected to the bath treatment. “You can see how healthy it
is,” said Pasteur; “it is therefore impossible to doubt that the white
hen died of charbon; besides, the fact is proved by the bacteridia which
fill its body.”
A fourth experiment remained to be tried on a fourth hen, but the
Academy of Medicine did not care to hold an all-night sitting. Time
lacking, it was only done later, in the laboratory. Could a hen,
inoculated of charbon and placed in a bath, recover and be cured merely
by being taken out of its bath? A hen was taken, inoculated and held
down a prisoner in a bath, its feet fastened to the bottom of the tub,
until it was obvious that the disease was in full progress. The hen was
then taken out of the water, dried, and wrapped up in cotton wool and
placed in a temperature of 35° C. The bacteridia were reabsorbed by the
blood, and the hen recovered completely.
This was, indeed, a most suggestive experiment, proving that the mere
fall of temperature from 42° C. (the temperature of hens) to 38° C. was
sufficient to cause a receptive condition; the hen, brought down by
immersion to the temperature of rabbits or guinea-pigs, became a victim
like them.
Between Sédillot’s enthusiasm and Colin’s perpetual contradiction, many
attentive surgeons and physicians were taking a middle course, watching
for Pasteur’s results and ultimately accepting them with admiration.
Such was the state of mind of M. Lereboullet, an editor of the _Weekly
Gazette of Medicine and Surgery_, who wrote in an account of the
Académie de Médecine meeting that “those facts throw a new light on the
theory of the genesis and development of the bacillus anthracis. They
will be ascertained and verified by other experimentalists, and it seems
very probable that M. Pasteur, who never brings any premature or
conjectural assertion to the academic tribune, will deduce from them
conclusions of the greatest interest concerning the etiology of virulent
diseases.”
But even to those who admired Pasteur as much as did M. Lereboullet, it
did not seem that such an important part should immediately be
attributed to microbes. Towards the end of his report (dated March 22,
1878) he reminded his readers that a discussion was open at the Académie
de Médecine, and that the surgeon, Léon Le Fort, did not admit the germ
theory in its entirety. M. Le Fort recognized “all the services rendered
to surgery by laboratory studies, chiefly by calling attention to
certain accidents of wounds and sores, and by provoking new researches
with a view to improving methods of dressing and bandaging.” “Like all
his colleagues at the Academy, and like our eminent master, M.
Sédillot,” added M. Lereboullet, “M. Le Fort renders homage to the work
of M. Pasteur; but he remains within his rights as a practitioner and
reserves his opinion as to its general application to surgery.”
This was a mild way of putting it; M. Le Fort’s words were, “That
theory, in its applications to clinical surgery, is absolutely
inacceptable.” For him, the original purulent infection, though coming
from the wound, was born under the influence of general and local
phenomena _within_ the patient, and not _outside_ him. He believed that
the economy had the power, under various influences, to produce purulent
infection. A septic poison was created, born spontaneously, which was
afterwards carried to other patients by such medicines as the tools and
bandages and the hands of the surgeon. But, originally, before the
propagation of the contagium germ, a purulent infection was
spontaneously produced and developed. And, in order to put his teaching
into forcible words, M. Le Fort declared to the Académie de Médecine: “I
believe in the _interiority_ of the principle of purulent infection in
certain patients; that is why I oppose the extension to surgery of the
germ theory which proclaims the constant _exteriority_ of that
principle.”
Pasteur rose, and with his firm, powerful voice, exclaimed: “Before the
Academy accepts the conclusion of the paper we have just heard, before
the application of the germ theory to pathology is condemned, I beg that
I may be allowed to make a statement of the researches I am engaged in
with the collaboration of Messrs. Joubert and Chamberland.”
His impatience was so great that he formulated then and there some
headings for the lecture he was preparing, propositions on septicæmia or
putrid infection, on the septic vibrio itself, on the germs of that
vibrio carried by wind in the shape of dust, or suspended in water, on
the vitality of those germs, etc. He called attention to the mistakes
which might be made if, in that new acquaintance with microbes, their
morphologic aspect alone was taken account of. “The septic vibrio, for
instance, varies so much in its shape, length and thickness, according
to the media wherein it is cultivated, that one would think one was
dealing with beings specifically distinct from each other.”
It was on April 30, 1878, that Pasteur read that celebrated lecture on
the germ theory, in his own name and in that of Messrs. Joubert and
Chamberland. It began by a proud exordium: “All Sciences gain by mutual
support. When, subsequently to my early communications on fermentations,
in 1857--1858, it was admitted that ferments, properly so called, are
living beings; that germs of microscopical organisms abound on the
surface of all objects in the atmosphere and in water; that the
hypothesis of spontaneous generation is a chimera; that wines, beer,
vinegar, blood, urine and all the liquids of the economy are preserved
from their common changes when in contact with pure air--Medicine and
Surgery cast their eyes towards these new lights. A French physician, M.
Davaine, made a first successful application of those principles to
medicine in 1863.”
Pasteur himself, elected to the Académie des Sciences as a mineralogist,
proved by the concatenation of his studies within the last thirty years
that Science was indeed one and all embracing. Having thus called his
audience’s attention to the bonds which connect one scientific subject
with another, Pasteur proceeded to show the connection between his
yesterday’s researches on the etiology of Charbon to those he now
pursued on septicæmia. He hastily glanced back on his successful
cultures of the bacillus anthracis, and on the certain, indisputable
proof that the last culture acted equally with the first in producing
charbon within the body of animals. He then owned to the failure, at
first, of a similar method of cultivating the septic vibrio: “All our
first experiments failed in spite of the variety of culture media that
we used; beer-yeast water, meat broth, etc., etc....”
He then expounded, in the most masterly manner: (1) the idea which had
occurred to him that this vibrio might be an exclusively anaërobic
organism, and that the sterility of the liquids might proceed from the
fact that the vibrio was killed by the oxygen held in a state of
solution by those liquids; (2) the similarity offered by analogous facts
in connection with the vibrio of butyric fermentation, which not only
lives without air, but is killed by air; (3) the attempts made to
cultivate the septic vibrio in a vacuum or in the presence of carbonic
acid gas, and the success of both those attempts; and, finally, as the
result of the foregoing, the proof obtained that the action of the air
kills the septic vibriones, which are then seen to perish, under the
shape of moving threads, and ultimately to disappear, as if burnt away
by oxygen.
“If it is terrifying,” said Pasteur, “to think that life may be at the
mercy of the multiplication of those infinitesimally small creatures, it
is also consoling to hope that Science will not always remain powerless
before such enemies, since it is already now able to inform us that the
simple contact of air is sometimes sufficient to destroy them. But,” he
continued, meeting his hearers’ possible arguments, “if oxygen destroys
vibriones, how can septicæmia exist, as it does, in the constant
presence of atmospheric air? How can those facts be reconciled with the
germ theory? How can blood exposed to air become septic through the
dusts contained in air? All is dark, obscure and open to dispute when
the cause of the phenomena is not known; all is light when it is
grasped.”
In a septic liquid exposed to the contact of air, vibriones die and
disappear; but, below the surface, in the depths of the liquid (one
centimetre of septic liquid may in this case be called depths), “the
vibriones are protected against the action of oxygen by their brothers,
who are dying above them, and they continue for a time to multiply by
division; they afterwards produce germs or spores, the filiform
vibriones themselves being gradually reabsorbed. Instead of a quantity
of moving threads, the length of which often extends beyond the field of
the microscope, nothing is seen but a dust of isolated, shiny specks,
sometimes surrounded by a sort of amorphous gangue hardly visible. Here
then is the septic dust, living the latent life of germs, no longer
fearing the destructive action of oxygen, and we are now prepared to
understand what seemed at first so obscure: the sowing of septic dust
into putrescible liquids by the surrounding atmosphere, and the
permanence of putrid diseases on the surface of the earth.”
Pasteur continued from this to open a parenthesis on diseases
“transmissible, contagious, infectious, of which the cause resides
essentially and solely in the presence of microscopic organisms. It is
the proof that, for a certain number of diseases, we must for ever
abandon the ideas of spontaneous virulence, of contagious and infectious
elements suddenly produced within the bodies of men or of animals and
originating diseases afterwards propagated under identical shapes; all
those opinions fatal to medical progress and which are engendered
by the gratuitous hypotheses of the spontaneous generation of
albuminoid-ferment materia, of hemiorganism, of archebiosis, and many
other conceptions not founded on observation.”
Pasteur recommended the following experiment to surgeons. After cutting
a fissure into a leg of mutton, by means of a bistoury, he introduced a
drop of septic vibrio culture; the vibrio immediately did its work. “The
meat under those conditions becomes quite gangrened, green on its
surface, swollen with gases, and is easily crushed into a disgusting,
sanious pulp.” And addressing the surgeons present at the meeting: “The
water, the sponge, the charpie with which you wash or dress a wound, lay
on its surface germs which, as you see, have an extreme facility of
propagating within the tissues, and which would infallibly bring about
the death of the patients within a very short time if life in their
limbs did not oppose the multiplication of germs. But how often, alas,
is that vital resistance powerless! how often do the patient’s
constitution, his weakness, his moral condition, the unhealthy
dressings, oppose but an insufficient barrier to the invasion of the
Infinitesimally Small with which you have covered the injured part! If I
had the honour of being a surgeon, convinced as I am of the dangers
caused by the germs of microbes scattered on the surface of every
object, particularly in the hospitals, not only would I use absolutely
clean instruments, but, after cleansing my hands with the greatest care
and putting them quickly through a frame (an easy thing to do with a
little practice), I would only make use of charpie, bandages, and
sponges which had previously been raised to a heat of 130° C. to 150°
C.; I would only employ water which had been heated to a temperature of
110° C. to 120° C. All that is easy in practice, and, in that way, I
should still have to fear the germs suspended in the atmosphere
surrounding the bed of the patient; but observation shows us every day
that the number of those germs is almost insignificant compared to that
of those which lie scattered on the surface of objects, or in the
clearest ordinary water.”
He came down to the smallest details, seeing in each one an application
of the rigorous principles which were to transform Surgery, Medicine and
Hygiene. How many human lives have since then been saved by the dual
development of that one method! The defence against microbes afforded by
the substances which kill them or arrest their development, such as
carbolic acid, sublimate, iodoform, salol, etc., etc., constitutes
_antisepsis_; then the other progress, born of the first, the obstacle
opposed to the arrival of the microbes and germs by complete
disinfection, absolute cleanliness of the instruments and hands, of all
which is to come into contact with the patient; in one word, _asepsis_.
It might have been prophesied at that date that Pasteur’s surprised
delight at seeing his name gratefully inscribed on the great Italian
establishment of sericiculture would one day be surpassed by his
happiness in living to see realized some of the progress and benefits
due to him, his name invoked in all operating theatres, engraved over
the doors of medical and surgical wards, and a new era inaugurated.
A presentiment of the future deliverance of Humanity from those
redoubtable microscopic foes gave Pasteur a fever for work, a thirst for
new research, and an immense hope. But once again he constrained
himself, refrained from throwing himself into varied studies, and,
continuing what he had begun, reverted to his studies on splenic fever.
The neighbourhood of Chartres being most afflicted, the Minister of
Agriculture, anticipating the wish of the Conseil Général of the
department of Eure et Loir, had entrusted Pasteur with the mission of
studying the causes of so-called spontaneous charbon, that which bursts
out unexpectedly in a flock, and of seeking for curative and preventive
means of opposing the evil. Thirty-six years earlier, the learned
veterinary surgeon, Delafond, had been sent to seek, particularly in the
Beauce country, the causes of the charbon disease. Bouley, a great
reader, said that there was no contrast more instructive than that which
could be seen between the reasoning method followed by Delafond and the
experimental method practised by Pasteur. It was in 1842 that Delafond
received from M. Cunin Gridaine, then Minister of Agriculture, the
mission of “going to study that malady on the spot, to seek for its
causes, and to examine particularly whether those causes did not reside
in the mode of culture in use in that part of the country.” Delafond
arrived in the Beauce, and, having seen that the disease struck the
strongest sheep, it occurred to him that it came from “an excess of
blood circulating in the vessels.” He concluded from that that there
might be a correlation between the rich blood of the Beauce sheep and
the rich nitrogenous pasture of their food.
He therefore advised the cultivators to diminish the daily ration; and
he was encouraged in his views by noting that the frequency of the
disease diminished in poor, damp, or sandy soils.
Bouley, in order to show up Delafond’s efforts to make facts accord with
his reasoning, added that to explain “a disease, of which the essence is
general plethora, becoming contagious and expressing itself by charbon
symptoms in man,” Delafond had imagined that the atmosphere of the pens,
into which the animals were crowded, was laden with evil gases and
putrefying emanations which produced an alteration of the blood “due at
the same time to a slow asphyxia and to the introduction through the
lungs of septic elements into the blood.”
It would have been but justice to recall other researches connected
with Delafond’s name. In 1863, Delafond had collected some blood
infected with charbon, and, at a time when such experiments had hardly
been thought of, he had attempted some experiments on the development of
the bacteridium, under a watch glass, at the normal blood temperature.
He had seen the little rods grow into filaments, and compared them to a
“very remarkable mycelium.” “I have vainly tried to see the mechanism of
fructification,” added Delafond, “but I hope I still may.” Death struck
down Delafond before he could continue his work.
In 1869 a scientific congress was held at Chartres; one of the questions
examined being this: “What has been done to oppose splenic fever in
sheep?” A veterinary surgeon enumerated the causes which contributed,
according to him, to produce and augment mortality by splenic fever: bad
hygienic conditions; tainted food, musty or cryptogamized; heated and
vitiated air in the crowded pens, full of putrid manure; paludic miasma
or effluvia; damp soil flooded by storms, etc., etc. A well-known
veterinary surgeon, M. Boutet, saw no other means to preserve what
remained of a stricken flock but to take it to another soil, which, in
contradiction with his colleague, he thought should be chosen cool and
damp. No conclusion could be drawn. The disastrous loss caused by
splenic fever in the Beauce alone was terrible; it was said to have
reached 20,000,000 francs in some particularly bad years. The migration
of the tainted flock seemed the only remedy, but it was difficult in
practice and offered danger to other flocks, as carcases of dead sheep
were wont to mark the road that had been followed.
Pasteur, starting from the fact that the charbon disease is produced by
the bacteridium, proposed to prove that, in a department like that of
Eure et Loir, the disease maintained itself by itself. When an animal
dies of splenic fever in a field, it is frequently buried in the very
spot where it fell; thus a focus of contagion is created, due to the
anthrax spores mixed with the earth where other flocks are brought to
graze. Those germs, thought Pasteur, are probably like the germs of the
flachery vibrio, which survive from one year to another and transmit the
disease. He proposed to study the disease on the spot.
It almost always happened that, when he was most anxious to give himself
up entirely to the study of a problem, some new discussion was started
to hinder him. He had certainly thought that the experimental power of
giving anthrax to hens had been fully demonstrated, and that that
question was dead, as dead as the inoculated and immersed hen.
Colin, however, returned to the subject, and at an Academy meeting of
July 9 said somewhat insolently, “I wish we could have seen the
bacteridia of that dead hen which M. Pasteur showed us without taking it
out of its cage, and which he took away intact instead of making us
witness the necropsy and microscopical examination.” “I will take no
notice,” said Pasteur at the following meeting, “of the malevolent
insinuations contained in that sentence, and only consider M. Colin’s
desire to hold in his hands the body of a hen dead of anthrax, full of
bacteridia. I will, therefore, ask M. Colin if he will accept such a hen
under the following condition: the necropsy and microscopic examination
shall be made by himself, in my presence, and in that of one of our
colleagues of this Academy, designated by himself or by this Academy,
and an official report shall be drawn up and signed by the persons
present. So shall it be well and duly stated that M. Colin’s
conclusions, in his paper of May 14, are null and void. The Academy will
understand my insistence in rejecting M. Colin’s superficial
contradictions.
“I say it here with no sham modesty: I have always considered that my
only right to a seat in this place is that given me by your great
kindness, for I have no medical or veterinary knowledge. I therefore
consider that I must be more scrupulously exact than any one else in the
presentations which I have the honour to make to you; I should promptly
lose all credit if I brought you erroneous or merely doubtful facts. If
ever I am mistaken, a thing which may happen to the most scrupulous, it
is because my good faith has been greatly surprised.
“On the other hand, I have come amongst you with a programme to follow
which demands accuracy at every step. I can tell you my programme in two
words: I have sought for twenty years, and I am still seeking,
spontaneous generation properly so called.
“If God permit, I shall seek for twenty years and more the spontaneous
generation of transmissible diseases.
“In these difficult researches, whilst sternly deprecating frivolous
contradiction, I only feel esteem and gratitude towards those who may
warn me if I should be in error.”
The Academy decided that the necropsy and microscopic examination of the
dead hen which Pasteur was to bring to Colin should take place in the
presence of a Commission composed of Pasteur, Colin, Davaine, Bouley,
and Vulpian. This Commission met on the following Saturday, July 20, in
the Council Chamber of the Academy of Medicine. M. Armand Moreau, a
member of the Academy, joined the five members present, partly out of
curiosity, and partly because he had special reasons for wishing to
speak to Pasteur after the meeting.
Three hens were lying on the table, all of them dead. The first one had
been inoculated under the thorax with five drops of yeast water slightly
alkalized, which had been given as a nutritive medium to some bacteridia
anthracis; the hen had been placed in a bath at 25° C., and had died
within twenty-two hours. The second one, inoculated with ten drops of a
culture liquid, had been placed in a warmer bath, 30° C., and had died
in thirty-six hours. The third hen, also inoculated and immersed, had
died in forty-six hours.
Besides those three dead hens, there was a living one which had been
inoculated in the same way as the first hen. This one had remained for
forty-three hours with one-third of its body immersed in a barrel of
water. When it was seen in the laboratory that its temperature had gone
down to 36° C., that it was incapable of eating and seemed very ill, it
was taken out of the tub that very Saturday morning, and warmed in a
stove at 42° C. It was now getting better, though still weak, and gave
signs of an excellent appetite before leaving the Academy council
chamber.
The third hen, which had been inoculated with ten drops, was dissected
then and there. Bouley, after noting a serous infiltration at the
inoculation focus, showed to the judges sitting in this room, thus
suddenly turned into a testing laboratory, numerous bacteridia scattered
throughout every part of the hen.
“After those ascertained results,” wrote Bouley, who drew up the report,
“M. Colin declared that it was useless to proceed to the necropsy of the
two other hens, that which had just been made leaving no doubt of the
presence of bacilli anthracis in the blood of a hen inoculated with
charbon and then placed under the conditions designated by M. Pasteur as
making inoculation efficacious.
“The hen No. 2 has been given up to M. Colin to be used for any
examination or experiment which he might like to try at Alfort.
“Signed: G. Colin, H. Bouley, C. Davaine, L. Pasteur, A. Vulpian.”
“This is a precious autograph, headed as it is by M. Colin’s signature!”
gaily said Bouley. But Pasteur, pleased as he was with this conclusion,
which put an end to all discussion on that particular point, was already
turning his thoughts into another channel. The Academician who had
joined the members of the Commission was showing him a number of the
_Revue Scientifique_ which had appeared that morning, and which
contained an article of much interest to Pasteur.
In October, 1877, Claude Bernard, staying for the last time at St.
Julien, near Villefranche, had begun some experiments on fermentations.
He had continued them on his return to Paris, alone, in the study which
was above his laboratory at the Collège de France.
When Paul Bert, his favourite pupil, M. d’Arsonval, his curator, M.
Dastre, a former pupil, and M. Armand Moreau, his friend, came to see
him, he said to them in short, enigmatical sentences, with no comment or
experimental demonstration, that he had done some good work during the
vacation. “Pasteur will have to look out.... Pasteur has only seen one
side of the question.... I make alcohol without cells.... There is no
life without air....”
Bernard’s and Pasteur’s seats at the Academy of Sciences were next to
each other, and they usually enjoyed interchanging ideas. Claude Bernard
had come to the November and December sittings, but, with a reticence to
which he had not accustomed Pasteur, he had made no allusion to his
October experiments. In January, 1878, he became seriously ill; in his
conversations with M. d’Arsonval, who was affectionately nursing him,
Claude Bernard talked of his next lecture at the Museum, and said that
he would discuss his ideas with Pasteur before handling the subject of
fermentations. At the end of January M. d’Arsonval alluded to these
incomplete revelations. “It is all in my head,” said Claude Bernard,
“but I am too tired to explain it to you.” He made the same weary answer
two or three days before his death. When he succumbed, on February 10,
1878, Paul Bert, M. d’Arsonval and M. Dastre thought it their duty to
ascertain whether their master had left any notes relative to the work
which embodied his last thoughts. M. d’Arsonval, after a few days’
search, discovered some notes, carefully hidden in a cabinet in Claude
Bernard’s bedroom; they were all dated from the 1st to the 20th of
October, 1877; of November and December there was no record. Had he then
not continued his experiments during that period? Paul Bert thought that
these notes did not represent a work, not even a sketch, but a sort of
programme. “It was all condensed into a series of masterly conclusions,”
said Paul Bert, “which evidenced certitude, but there were no means of
discussing through which channel that certitude had come to his prudent
and powerful mind.” What should be done with those notes? Claude
Bernard’s three followers decided to publish them. “We must,” said Paul
Bert, “while telling the conditions under which the manuscript was
found, give it its character of incomplete notes, of confidences made to
itself by a great mind seeking its way, and marking its road
indiscriminately with facts and with hypotheses in order to arrive at
that feeling of certainty which, in the mind of a man of genius, often
precedes proof.” M. Berthelot, to whom the manuscript was brought,
presented these notes to the readers of the _Revue Scientifique_. He
pointed to their character, too abbreviated to conclude with a rigorous
demonstration, but he explained that several friends and pupils of
Claude Bernard had “thought that there would be some interest for
Science in preserving the trace of the last subjects of thought, however
incomplete, of that great mind.”
Pasteur, after the experiment at the Académie de Médecine, hurried back
to his laboratory and read with avidity those last notes of Claude
Bernard. Were they a precious find, explaining the secrets Claude
Bernard had hinted at? “Should I,” said Pasteur, “have to defend my
work, this time against that colleague and friend for whom I professed
deep admiration, or should I come across unexpected revelations,
weakening and discrediting the results I thought I had definitely
established?”
His reading reassured him on that point, but saddened him on the other
hand. Since Claude Bernard had neither desired nor even authorized the
publication of those notes, why, said Pasteur, were they not accompanied
by an experimental commentary? Thus Claude Bernard would have been
credited with what was good in his MSS., and he would not have been held
responsible for what was incomplete or defective.
“As for me, personally,” wrote Pasteur in the first pages of his
_Critical Examination of a Posthumous Work of Claude Bernard on
Fermentation_, “I found myself cruelly puzzled; had I the right to
consider Claude Bernard’s MS. as the expression of his thought, and was
I free to criticize it thoroughly?” The table of contents and headings
of chapters in Claude Bernard’s incomplete MS. condemned Pasteur’s work
on alcoholic fermentation. The non-existence of life without air; the
ferment not originated by exterior germs; alcohol formed by a soluble
ferment outside life ... such were Claude Bernard’s conclusions. “If
Claude Bernard was convinced,” thought Pasteur, “that he held the key to
the masterly conclusions with which he ended his manuscript, what could
have been his motive in withholding it from me? I looked back upon the
many marks of kindly affection which he had given me since I entered on
a scientific career, and I came to the conclusion that the notes left by
Bernard were but a programme of studies, that he had tackled the
subject, and that, following in this a method habitual to him, he had,
the better to discover the truth, formed the intention of trying
experiments which might contradict my opinions and results.”
Pasteur, much perplexed, resolved to put the case before his colleagues,
and did so two days later. He spoke of Bernard’s silence, his abstention
from any allusion at their weekly meetings. “It seems to me almost
impossible,” he said, “and I wonder that those who are publishing these
notes have not perceived that it is a very delicate thing to take upon
oneself, with no authorization from the author, the making public of
private notebooks! Which of us would care to think it might be done to
him!... Bernard must have put before himself that leading idea, that I
was in the wrong on every point, and taken that method of preparing the
subject he intended to study.” Such was also the opinion of those who
remembered that Claude Bernard’s advice invariably was that every theory
should be doubted at first and only trusted when found capable of
resisting objections and attacks.
“If then, in the intimacy of conversation with his friends and the yet
more intimate secret of notes put down on paper and carefully put away,
Claude Bernard develops a plan of research with a view to judging of a
theory--if he imagines experiments--he is resolved not to speak about it
until those experiments have been clearly checked; we should therefore
not take from his notes the most expressly formulated propositions
without reminding ourselves that all that was but a project, and that he
meant to go once again through the experiments he had already made.”
Pasteur declared himself ready to answer any one who would defend those
experiments which he looked upon as doubtful, erroneous, or wrongly
interpreted. “In the opposite case,” he said, “out of respect for Claude
Bernard’s memory, I will repeat his experiments before discussing them.”
Some Academicians discoursed on these notes as on simple suggestions and
advised Pasteur to continue his studies without allowing himself to be
delayed by mere control experiments. Others considered these notes as
the expression of Claude Bernard’s thought. “That opinion,” said
Pasteur--man of sentiment as he was--“that opinion, however, does not
explain the enigma of his silence towards me. But why should I look for
that explanation elsewhere than in my intimate knowledge of his fine
character? Was not his silence a new proof of his kindness, and one of
the effects of our mutual esteem? Since he thought that he held in his
hands a proof that the interpretation I had given to my experiments was
fallacious, did he not simply wish to wait to inform me of it until the
time when he thought himself ready for a definite statement? I prefer to
attribute high motives to my friend’s actions, and, in my opinion, the
surprise caused in me by his reserve towards the one colleague whom his
work most interested should give way in my heart to feelings of pious
gratitude. However, Bernard would have been the first to remind me that
scientific truth soars above the proprieties of friendship, and that my
duty lies in discussing views and opinions in my turn with full
liberty.”
Pasteur having made this communication to the Academy on July 22,
hastily ordered three glass houses, which he intended to take with him
into the Jura, “where I possess,” he told his colleagues, “a vineyard
occupying some thirty or forty square yards.”
Two observations expounded in a chapter of his _Studies on Beer_ tend to
establish that yeast can only appear about the time when grapes ripen,
and that it disappears in the winter only to show itself again at the
end of the summer. Therefore “germs of yeast do not yet exist on green
grapes.” “We are,” he added, “at an epoch in the year when, by reason
of the lateness of vegetation due to a cold and rainy season, grapes
are still in the green stage in the vineyards of Arbois. If I choose
this moment to enclose some vines in almost hermetically closed glass
houses, I shall have in October during the vintage some vines bearing
ripe grapes without the exterior germs of wine yeast. Those grapes,
crushed with precautions which will not allow of the introduction of
yeast germs, will neither ferment nor produce wine. I shall give myself
the pleasure of bringing some back to Paris, to present them to the
Academy and to offer a few bunches to those of our colleagues who are
still able to believe in the spontaneous generation of yeast.”
In the midst of the agitation caused by that posthumous work some said,
or only insinuated, that if Pasteur was announcing new researches on the
subject, it was because he felt that his work was threatened.
“I will not accept such an interpretation of my conduct,” he wrote to J.
B. Dumas on August 4, 1878, at the very time when he was starting for
the Jura; “I have clearly explained this in my notice of July 22, when I
said I would make new experiments solely from respect to Bernard’s
memory.”
As soon as Pasteur’s glass houses arrived, they were put up in the
little vineyard he possessed, two kilometres from Arbois. While they
were being put together, he examined whether the yeast germs were really
absent from the bunches of green grapes; he had the satisfaction of
seeing that it was so, and that the particular branches which were about
to be placed under glass did not bear a trace of yeast germs. Still,
fearing that the closing of the glass might be insufficient and that
there might thus be a danger of germs, he took the precaution, “while
leaving some bunches free, of wrapping a few on each plant with cotton
wool previously heated to 150° C.”
He then returned to Paris and his studies on anthrax, whilst patiently
waiting for the ripening of his grapes.
Besides M. Chamberland, Pasteur had enrolled M. Roux, the young man who
was so desirous of taking part in the work at the laboratory. He and M.
Chamberland were to settle down at Chartres in the middle of the summer.
A recent student of the Alfort Veterinary School, M. Vinsot, joined them
at his own request. M. Roux has told of those days in a paper on
_Pasteur’s Medical Work_:
“Our guide was M. Boutet, who had unrivalled knowledge of the splenic
fever country, and we sometimes met M. Toussaint, who was studying the
same subject as we were. We have kept a pleasant memory of that campaign
against charbon in the Chartres neighbourhood. Early in the morning, we
would visit the sheepfolds scattered on that wide plateau of the Beauce,
dazzling with the splendour of the August sunshine; then necropsies took
place in M. Rabourdin’s knacker’s yard or in the farmyards. In the
afternoon, we edited our experiment notebooks, wrote to Pasteur, and
arranged for new experiments. The day was well filled, and how
interesting and salutary was that bacteriology practised in the open
air!
“On the days when Pasteur came to Chartres, we did not linger over our
lunch at the Hôtel de France; we drove off to St. Germain, where M.
Maunoury had kindly put his farm and flocks at our disposal. During the
drive we talked of the week’s work and of what remained to be done.
“As soon as Pasteur left the carriage he hurried to the folds. Standing
motionless by the gate, he would gaze at the lots which were being
experimented upon, with a careful attention which nothing escaped; he
would spend hours watching one sheep which seemed to him to be
sickening. We had to remind him of the time and to point out to him that
the towers of Chartres Cathedral were beginning to disappear in the
falling darkness before we could prevail upon him to come away. He
questioned farmers and their servants, giving much credit to the
opinions of shepherds, who on account of their solitary life, give their
whole attention to their flocks and often become sagacious observers.”
When again at Arbois, on September 17, Pasteur began to write to the
Minister of Agriculture a note on the practical ideas suggested by this
first campaign. A few sheep, bought near Chartres and gathered in a
fold, had received, amongst the armfuls of forage offered them, a few
anthrax spores. Nothing had been easier than to bring these from the
laboratory, in a liquid culture of bacteria, and to scatter them on the
field where the little flock grazed. The first meals did not give good
scientific results, death was not easily provoked. But when the
experimental menu was completed by prickly plants, likely to wound the
sheep on their tongue or in their pharynx, such, for instance, as
thistles or ears of barley, the mortality began. It was perhaps not as
considerable as might have been wished for demonstration purposes, but
nevertheless it was sufficient to explain how charbon could declare
itself, for necropsy showed the characteristic lesions of the so-called
spontaneous splenic fever. It was also to be concluded therefrom that
the evil begins in the mouth, or at the back of the throat, supervening
on meals of infected food, alone or mixed with prickly plants likely to
cause abrasion.
It was therefore necessary, in a department like that of Eure et Loir,
which must be full of anthrax germs,--particularly on the surface of the
graves containing carcases of animals which had fallen victims to the
disease,--that sheep farmers should keep from the food of their animals
plants such as thistles, ears of barley, and sharp pieces of straw; for
the least scratch, usually harmless to sheep, became dangerous through
the possible introduction of the germs of the disease.
“It would also be necessary” wrote Pasteur, “to avoid all probable
diffusion of charbon germs through the carcases of animals dying of that
disease, for it is likely that the department of Eure et Loir contains
those germs in greater quantities than the other departments; splenic
fever having long been established there, it always goes on, dead
animals not being disposed of so as to destroy all germs of ulterior
contagion.”
After finishing this report, Pasteur went to his little vineyard on the
Besançon road, where he met with a disappointment; his precious grapes
had not ripened, all the strength of the plant seemed to have gone to
the wood and leaves. But the grapes had their turn at the end of
September and in October, those bunches that were swathed in cotton wool
as well as those which had remained free under the glass; there was a
great difference of colour between them, the former being very pale.
Pasteur placed grapes from the two series in distinct tubes. On October
10, he compared the grapes of the glass houses, free or swathed, with
the neighbouring open-air grapes. “The result was beyond my
expectations; the tubes of open-air grapes fermented with grape yeast
after a thirty-six or forty-eight hours’ sojourn in a stove from 25° C.
to 30° C.; not one, on the contrary, of the numerous tubes of grapes
swathed in cotton wool entered into alcoholic fermentation, neither did
any of the tubes containing grapes ripened free under glass. It was the
experiment described in my _Studies on Beer_. On the following days I
repeated these experiments with the same results.” He went on to
another experiment. He cut some of the swathed bunches and hung them to
the vines grown in the open air, thinking that those bunches--exactly
similar to those which he had found incapable of fermentation--would
thus get covered with the germs of alcoholic ferments, as did the
bunches grown in the open air and their wood. After that, the bunches
taken from under the glass and submitted to the usual régime would
ferment under the influence of the germs which they would receive as
well as the others; this was exactly what happened.
The difficulty now was to bring to the Académie des Sciences these
branches bearing swathed bunches of grapes; in order to avoid the least
contact to the grapes, these vine plants, as precious as the rarest
orchids, had to be held upright all the way from Arbois to Paris.
Pasteur came back to Paris in a coupé carriage on the express train,
accompanied by his wife and daughter, who took it in turns to carry the
vines. At last, they arrived safely at the Ecole Normale, and from the
Ecole Normale to the Institute, and Pasteur had the pleasure of bringing
his grapes to his colleagues as he had brought his hens. “If you crush
them while in contact with pure air,” he said, “I defy you to see them
ferment.” A long discussion then ensued with M. Berthelot, which was
prolonged until February, 1879.
“It is a characteristic of exalted minds,” wrote M. Roux, “to put
passion into ideas.... For Pasteur, the alcoholic fermentation was
correlative with the life of the ferment; for Bernard and M. Berthelot,
it was a chemical action like any other, and could be accomplished
without the participation of living cells.” “In alcoholic fermentation,”
said M. Berthelot, “a soluble alcoholic ferment may be produced, which
perhaps consumes itself as its production goes on.”
M. Roux had seen Pasteur try to “extract the soluble alcoholic ferment
from yeast cells by crushing them in a mortar, by freezing them until
they burst, or by putting them into concentrated saline solutions, in
order to force by osmose the succus to leave its envelope.” Pasteur
confessed that his efforts were vain. In a communication to the Académie
des Sciences on December 30, 1878, he said--
“It ever is an enigma to me that it should be believed that the
discovery of soluble ferments in fermentations properly so called, or of
the formation of alcohol by means of sugar, independently of cells
would hamper me. It is true--I own it without hesitation, and I am ready
to explain myself more lengthily if desired--that at present I neither
see the necessity for the existence of those ferments, nor the
usefulness of their action in this order of fermentations. Why should
actions of _diastase_, which are but phenomena of hydration, be confused
with those of organized ferments, or vice versâ? But I do not see that
the presence of those soluble substances, if it were ascertained, could
change in any way the conclusions drawn from my labours, and even less
so if alcohol were formed by electrolysis.
“They agree with me who admit:
“Firstly. That fermentations, properly so called, offer as an essential
condition the presence of microscopic organisms.
“Secondly. That those organisms have not a spontaneous origin.
“Thirdly. That the life of every organism which can exist away from free
oxygen is suddenly concomitant with acts of fermentation; and that it is
so with every cell which continues to produce chemical action without
the contact of oxygen.”
When Pasteur related this discussion, and formed of it an appendix to
his book, _Critical Examination of a Posthumous Work of Claude Bernard
on Fermentations_, his painful feelings in opposing a friend who was no
more were so clearly evidenced that Sainte Claire Deville wrote to him
(June 9, 1879): “My dear Pasteur, I read a few passages of your new book
yesterday to a small party of professors and _savants_. We all were much
moved by the expressions with which you praise our dear Bernard, and by
your feelings of friendship and pure fraternity.”
Sainte Claire Deville often spoke of his admiration for Pasteur’s
precision of thought, his forcible speech, the clearness of his
writings. As for J. B. Dumas, he called the attention of his colleagues
at the Académie Française to certain pages of that _Critical
Examination_. Though unaccustomed to those particular subjects, they
could not but be struck by the sagacity and ingenuity of Pasteur’s
researches, and by the eloquence inspired by his genius. A propos of
those ferment germs, which turn grape juice into wine, and from which he
had preserved his swathed bunches, Pasteur wrote--
“What meditations are induced by those results! It is impossible not to
observe that, the further we penetrate into the experimental study of
germs, the more we perceive sudden lights and clear ideas on the
knowledge of the causes of contagious diseases! Is it not worthy of
attention that, in that Arbois vineyard (and it would be true of the
million _hectares_ of vineyards of all the countries in the world),
there should not have been, at the time when I made the aforesaid
experiments, one single particle of earth which would not have been
capable of provoking fermentation by a grape yeast, and that, on the
other hand, the earth of the glass houses I have mentioned should have
been powerless to fulfil that office? And why? Because, at a given
moment, I covered that earth with some glass. The death, if I may so
express it, of a bunch of grapes thrown at that time on any vineyard,
would infallibly have occurred through the _saccharomyces_ parasites of
which I speak; that kind of death would have been impossible, on the
contrary, on the little space enclosed by my glass houses. Those few
cubic yards of air, those few square yards of soil, were there, in the
midst of a universal possible contagion, and they were safe from it.”
And suddenly looking beyond those questions of yeast and vintage,
towards the germs of disease and of death: “Is it not permissible to
believe, by analogy, that a day will come when easily applied preventive
measures will arrest those scourges which suddenly desolate and terrify
populations; such as the fearful disease (yellow fever) which has
recently invaded Senegal and the valley of the Mississippi, or that
other (bubonic plague), yet more terrible perhaps, which has ravaged the
banks of the Volga.”
Pasteur, with his quick answers, his tenacious refutations, was looked
upon as a great fighter by his colleagues at the Academy, but in the
laboratory, while seeking Claude Bernard’s soluble ferment, he tackled
subjects from which he drew conclusions which were amazing to
physicians.
A worker in the laboratory had had a series of furuncles. Pasteur, whose
proverb was “Seek the microbe,” asked himself whether the pus of
furuncles might not have an organism, which, carried to and fro,--for it
may be said that a furuncle never comes alone--would explain the centre
of inflammation and the recurrence of the furuncles. After
abstracting--with the usual purity precautions--some pus from three
successive furuncles, he found in some sterilized broth a microbe,
formed of little rounded specks which clustered to the sides of the
culture vessel. The same was observed on a man whom Dr. Maurice Raynaud,
interested in those researches on furuncles, had sent to the laboratory,
and afterwards on a female patient of the Lariboisière Hospital, whose
back was covered with furuncles. Later on, Pasteur, taken by Dr.
Lannelongue to the Trousseau Hospital, where a little girl was about to
be operated on for that disease of the bones and marrow called
_osteomyelitis_, gathered a few drops of pus from the inside and the
outside of the bone, and again found clusters of microbes. Sown into a
culture liquid, this microbe seemed so identical with the furuncle
organism that “it might be affirmed at first sight,” said Pasteur, “that
osteomyelitis is the furuncle of bones.”
The hospital now took as much place in Pasteur’s life as the laboratory.
“Chamberland and I assisted him in those studies,” writes M. Roux. “It
was to the Hôpital Cochin or to the Maternité that we went most
frequently, taking our culture tubes and sterilized pipets into the
wards or operating theatres. No one knows what feelings of repulsion
Pasteur had to overcome before visiting patients and witnessing
post-mortem examinations. His sensibility was extreme, and he suffered
morally and physically from the pains of others; the cut of the bistoury
opening an abscess made him wince as if he himself had received it. The
sight of corpses, the sad business of necropsies, caused him real
disgust; we have often seen him go home ill from those operating
theatres. But his love of science, his desire for truth were the
stronger; he returned the next day.”
He was highly interested in the study of puerperal fever, which was
still enveloped in profound darkness. Might not the application of his
theories to the progress of surgery be realized in obstetrics? Could not
those epidemics be arrested which passed like scourges over lying-in
hospitals? It was still remembered with horror how, in the Paris
Maternity Hospital, between April 1 and May 10, 1856, 64 fatalities had
taken place out of 347 confinements. The hospital had to be closed, and
the survivors took refuge at the Lariboisière Hospital, where they
nearly all succumbed, pursued, it was thought, by the epidemic.
Dr. Tarnier, a student residing at the Maternité during that disastrous
time, related afterwards how the ignorance of the causes of puerperal
fever was such that he was sometimes called away, by one of his chiefs,
from some post-mortem business, to assist in the maternity wards; nobody
being struck by the thought of the infection which might thus be carried
from the theatre to the bed of the patient.
The discussion which arose in 1858 at the Académie de Médecine lasted
four months, and hypotheses of all kinds were brought forward. Trousseau
alone showed some prescience of the future by noticing an analogy
between infectious surgical accidents and infectious puerperal
accidents; the idea of a ferment even occurred to him. Years passed;
women of the lower classes looked upon the Maternité as the vestibule of
death. In 1864, 310 deaths occurred out of 1,350 confinement cases; in
1865, the hospital had to be closed. Works of cleansing and improvements
gave rise to a hope that the “epidemic genius” might be driven away.
“But, at the very beginning of 1866,” wrote Dr. Trélat, then
surgeon-in-chief at the Maternité, “the sanitary condition seemed
perturbed, the mortality rose in January, and in February we were
overwhelmed.” Twenty-eight deaths had occurred out of 103 cases.
Trélat enumerated various causes, bad ventilation, neighbouring wards,
etc., but where was the origin of the evil?
“Under the influence of causes which escape us,” wrote M. Léon Le Fort
about that time, “puerperal fever develops in a recently delivered
woman; she becomes a centre of infection, and, if that infection is
freely exercised, the epidemic is constituted.”
Tarnier, who took Trélat’s place at the Maternité, in 1867, had been for
eleven years so convinced of the infectious nature of puerperal fever
that he thought but of arresting the evil by every possible means of
defence, the first of which seemed to him isolation of the patients.
In 1874, Dr. Budin, then walking the hospitals, had noted in Edinburgh
the improvement due to antisepsis, thanks to Lister. Three or four years
later, in 1877 and 1878, after having seen that, in the various
maternity hospitals of Holland, Germany, Austria, Russia and Denmark,
antisepsis was practised with success, he brought his impressions with
him to Paris. Tarnier hastened to employ carbolic acid at the Maternité
with excellent results, and his assistant, M. Bar, tried sublimate.
While that new period of victory over fatal cases was beginning, Pasteur
came to the Académie de Médecine, having found, in certain puerperal
infections, a microbe in the shape of a chain or chaplet, which lent
itself very well to culture.
“Pasteur,” wrote M. Roux, “does not hesitate to declare that that
microscopic organism is the most frequent cause of infection in recently
delivered women. One day, in a discussion on puerperal fever at the
Academy, one of his most weighty colleagues was eloquently enlarging
upon the causes of epidemics in lying-in hospitals; Pasteur interrupted
him from his place. ‘None of those things cause the epidemic; it is the
nursing and medical staff who carry the microbe from an infected woman
to a healthy one.’ And as the orator replied that he feared that microbe
would never be found, Pasteur went to the blackboard and drew a diagram
of the chain-like organism, saying: ‘There, that is what it is like!’
His conviction was so deep that he could not help expressing it
forcibly. It would be impossible now to picture the state of surprise
and stupefaction into which he would send the students and doctors in
hospitals, when, with an assurance and simplicity almost disconcerting
in a man who was entering a lying-in ward for the first time, he
criticized the appliances, and declared that all the linen should be put
into a sterilizing stove.”
Pasteur was not satisfied with offering advice and criticism, making for
himself irreconcilable enemies amongst those who were more desirous of
personal distinction than of the progress of Science. In order the
better to convince those who still doubted, he affirmed that, in a badly
infected patient--what he usually and sorrowfully called an _invaded_
patient--he could bring the microbe into evidence by a simple pin prick
on the finger tip of the unhappy woman doomed to die the next day.
“And he did so,” writes M. Roux. “In spite of the tyranny of medical
education which weighed down the public mind, some students were
attracted, and came to the laboratory to examine more closely those
matters, which allowed of such precise diagnosis and such confident
prognosis.”
What struggles, what efforts, were necessary before it could be
instilled into every mind that a constant watch must be kept in the
presence of those invisible foes, ready to invade the human body through
the least scratch--that surgeons, dressers and nurses may become causes
of infection and propagators of death through forgetfulness! and before
the theory of germs and the all powerfulness of microbes could be put
under a full light à propos of that discussion on puerperal fever!
But Pasteur was supported and inspired during that period, perhaps the
most fruitful of his existence, by the prescience that those notions
meant the salvation of human lives, and that mothers need no longer be
torn by death from the cradle of their new-born infants.
“I shall force them to see; they will have to see!” he repeated with a
holy wrath against doctors who continued to talk, from their study or at
their clubs, with some scepticism, of those newly discovered little
creatures, of those ultra-microscopic parasites, trying to moderate
enthusiasm and even confidence.
An experimental fact which occurred about that time was followed with
interest, not only by the Académie des Sciences, but by the general
public, whose attention was beginning to be awakened. A professor at the
Nancy Faculty, M. Feltz, had announced to the Académie des Sciences in
March, 1879, that, in the blood abstracted from a woman, who had died at
the Nancy Hospital of puerperal fever, he had found motionless
filaments, simple or articulated, transparent, straight or curved, which
belonged, he said, to the genus _leptothrix_. Pasteur, who in his
studies on puerperal fever had seen nothing of the kind, wrote to Dr.
Feltz, asking him to send him a few drops of that infected blood. After
receiving and examining the sample, Pasteur hastened to inform M. Feltz
that that leptothrix was no other than the bacillus anthracis. M. Feltz,
much surprised and perplexed, declared himself ready to own his error
and to proclaim it if he were convinced by examining blood infected by
charbon, and which, he said, he should collect wherever he could find
it. Pasteur desired to save him that trouble, and offered to send him
three little guinea-pigs alive, but inoculated, the one with the
deceased woman’s blood, the other with the bacteridia of
charbon-infected blood from Chartres, the third with some
charbon-infected blood from a Jura cow.
The three rodents were inoculated on May 12, at three o’clock in the
afternoon, and arrived, living, at Nancy, on the morning of the
thirteenth. They died on the fourteenth, in the laboratory of M. Feltz,
who was thus able to observe them with particular attention until their
death.
“After carefully examining the blood of the three animals after their
death, I was unable,” said M. Feltz, “to detect the least difference;
not only the blood, but the internal organs, and notably the spleen,
were affected in the same manner.”... “It is a certainty to my mind,”
he wrote to Pasteur, “that the contaminating agent has been the same in
the three cases, and that it was the bacteridium of what you call
anthrax.”
There was therefore no such thing as a leptothrix puerperalis. And it
was at a distance, without having seen the patient, that Pasteur said:
“That woman died of charbon.” With an honourable straightforwardness, M.
Feltz wrote to the Académie des Sciences relating the facts.
“It is doubly regrettable,” he concluded, “that I should not have known
charbon already last year, for, on the one hand, I might have diagnosed
the redoubtable complication presented by the case, and, on the other
hand, sought for the mode of contamination, which at present escapes me
almost completely.” All he had been able to find was that the woman, a
charwoman, lived in a little room near a stable belonging to a horse
dealer. Many animals came there; the stable might have contained
diseased ones; M. Feltz had been unable to ascertain the fact. “I must
end,” he added, “with thanks to M. Pasteur for the great kindness he has
shown me during my intercourse with him. Thanks to him, I was able to
convince myself of the identity between the bacillus anthracis and the
bacteridium found in the blood of a woman who presented all the symptoms
of grave puerperal fever.”
At the time when that convincing episode was taking place, other
experiments equally precise were being undertaken concerning splenic
fever. The question was to discover whether it would be possible to find
germs of charbon in the earth of the fields which had been contaminated
purposely, fourteen months before, by pouring culture liquids over it.
It seemed beyond all probability that those germs might be withdrawn and
isolated from the innumerable other microbes contained in the soil. It
was done, however; 500 grammes of earth were mixed with water, and
infinitesimal particles of it isolated. The spore of the bacillus
anthracis resists a temperature of 80° C. or 90° C., which would kill
any other microbe; those particles of earth were accordingly raised to
that degree of heat and then injected into some guinea-pigs, several of
which died of splenic fever. It was therefore evident that flocks were
exposed to infection merely by grazing over certain fields in that land
of the Beauce. For it was sufficient that some infected blood should
have remained on the ground, for germs of bacteridia to be found there,
perhaps years later. How often was such blood spilt as a dead animal was
being taken to the knacker’s yard or buried on the spot! Millions of
bacteridia, thus scattered on and below the surface of the soil,
produced their spores, seeds of death ready to germinate.
And yet negative facts were being opposed to these positive facts, and
the theory of spontaneity invoked! “It is with deep sorrow,” said
Pasteur at the Académie de Médecine on November 11, 1873, “that I so
frequently find myself obliged to answer thoughtless contradiction; it
also grieves me much to see that the medical Press speaks of these
discussions in apparent ignorance of the true principles of experimental
method....
“That aimlessness of criticism seems explicable to me, however, by this
circumstance--that Medicine and Surgery are, I think, going through a
crisis, a transition. There are two opposite currents, that of the old
and that of the new-born doctrine; the first, still followed by
innumerable partisans, rests on the belief in the spontaneity of
transmissible diseases; the second is the theory of germs, of the living
contagium with all its legitimate consequences....”
The better to point out that difference between epochs, Pasteur
respectfully advised M. Bouillaud, who was taking part in the
discussion, to read over Littré’s _Medicine and Physicians_, and to
compare with present ideas the chapter on epidemics written in 1836,
four years after the cholera which had spread terror over Paris and over
France. “Poisons and venoms die out on the spot after working the evil
which is special to them,” wrote Littré, “and are not reproduced in the
body of the victim, but virus and miasmata are reproduced and
propagated. Nothing is more obscure to physiologists than those
mysterious combinations of organic elements; but there lies the dark
room of sickness and of death which we must try to open.” “Among
epidemic diseases,” said Littré in another passage equally noted by
Pasteur, “some occupy the world and decimate nearly all parts of it,
others are limited to more or less wide areas. The origin of the latter
may be sought either in local circumstances of dampness, of marshy
ground, of decomposing animal or vegetable matter, or in the changes
which take place in men’s mode of life.”
“If I had to defend the novelty of the ideas introduced into medicine by
my labours of the last twenty years,” wrote Pasteur from Arbois in
September, 1879, “I should invoke the significant spirit of Littré’s
words. Such was then the state of Science in 1836, and those ideas on
the etiology of great epidemics were those of one of the most advanced
and penetrating minds of the time. I would observe, contrarily to
Littré’s opinion, that nothing proves the spontaneity of great
epidemics! As we have lately seen the phylloxera, imported from America,
invade Europe, so it might be that the causes of great pests were
originated, unknowingly to stricken countries, in other countries which
had had fortuitous contact with the latter. Imagine a microscopic being,
inhabiting some part of Africa and existing on plants, on animals, or
even on men, and capable of communicating a disease to the white race;
if brought to Europe by some fortuitous circumstance, it may become the
occasion of an epidemic....”
And, writing later, about the same passage: “Nowadays, if an article had
to be written on the same subject, it would certainly be the idea of
living ferments and microscopic beings and germs which would be
mentioned and discussed as a cause. That is the great progress,” added
Pasteur with legitimate pride, “in which my labours have had so large a
share. But it is characteristic of Science and Progress that they go on
opening new fields to our vision; the scientist, who is exploring the
unknown, resembles the traveller who perceives further and higher
summits as he reaches greater altitudes. In these days, more infectious
diseases, more microscopic beings appear to the mind as things to be
discovered, the discovery of which will render a wonderful account of
pathological conditions and of their means of action and propagation, of
self-multiplication within and destruction of the organism. The point of
view is very different from Littré’s!!”
On his return to Paris, Pasteur, his mind overflowing with ideas, had
felt himself impelled to speak again, to fight once more the fallacious
theory of the spontaneity of transmissible diseases. He foresaw the
triumph of the germ theory arising from the ruin of the old
doctrines--at the price, it is true, of many efforts, many struggles,
but those were of little consequence to him.
The power of his mind, the radiating gifts that he possessed, were such
that his own people were more and more interested in the laboratory,
every one trying day by day to penetrate further into Pasteur’s
thoughts. His family circle had widened; his son and his daughter had
married, and the two new-comers had soon been initiated into past
results and recent experiments. He had, in his childhood and youth, been
passionately loved by his parents and sisters, and now, in his middle
age, his tenderness towards his wife and children was eagerly repaid by
the love they bore him. He made happiness around him whilst he gave
glory to France.
CHAPTER X
1880--1882.
A new microbe now became the object of the same studies of culture and
inoculation as the bacillus anthracis. Readers of this book may have had
occasion to witness the disasters caused in a farmyard by a strange and
sudden epidemic. Hens, believed to be good sitters, are found dead on
their nests. Others, surrounded by their brood, allow the chicks to
leave them, giving them no attention; they stand motionless in the
centre of the yard, staggering under a deadly drowsiness. A young and
superb cock, whose triumphant voice was yesterday heard by all the
neighbours, falls into a sudden agony, his beak closed, his eyes dim,
his purple comb drooping limply. Other chickens, respited till the next
day, come near the dying and the dead, picking here and there grains
soiled with excreta containing the deadly germs: it is chicken cholera.
An Alsatian veterinary surgeon of the name of Moritz had been the first
to notice, in 1869, some “granulations” in the corpses of animals struck
down by this lightning disease, which sometimes kills as many as ninety
chickens out of a hundred, those who survive having probably recovered
from a slight attack of the cholera. Nine years after Moritz,
Perroncito, an Italian veterinary surgeon, made a sketch of the microbe,
which has the appearance of little specks. Toussaint studied it, and
demonstrated that this microbe was indeed the cause of virulence in the
blood. He sent to Pasteur the head of a cock that had died of cholera.
The first thing to do, after isolating the microbe, was to try
successive cultures; Toussaint had used neutralized urine. This, though
perfect for the culture of the bacillus anthracis, proved a bad culture
medium for the microbe of chicken cholera; its multiplication soon
became arrested. If sown in a small flask of yeast water, equally
favourable to bacteridia, the result was worse still: the microbe
disappeared in forty-eight hours.
“Is not that” said Pasteur--with the gift of comparison which made him
turn each failure into food for reflection--“an image of what we observe
when a microscopic organism proves to be harmless to a particular animal
species? It is harmless because it does not develop within the body, or
because its development does not reach the organs essential to life.”
After trying other culture mediums, Pasteur found that the one which
answered best was a broth of chicken gristle, neutralized with potash
and sterilized by a temperature of 110° C. to 115° C.
“The facility of multiplication of the micro-organism in that culture
medium is really prodigious,” wrote Pasteur in a duplicate communication
to the Academies of Sciences and of Medicine (February, 1880), entitled
_Of Virulent Diseases, and in particular that commonly called Chicken
Cholera_. “In a few hours, the most limpid broth becomes turgid and is
found to be full of little articles of an extreme tenuity, slightly
strangled in their middle and looking at first sight like isolated
specks; they are incapable of locomotion. Within a few days, those
beings, already so small, change into a multitude of specks so much
smaller, that the culture liquid, which had at first become turgid,
almost milky, becomes nearly clear again, the specks being of such
narrow diameter as to be impossible to measure, even approximately.
“This microbe certainly belongs to quite another group than that of the
vibriones. I imagine that it will one day find a place with the still
mysterious virus, when the latter are successfully cultivated, which
will be soon, I hope.”
Pasteur stated that the virulence of this microbe was such that the
smallest drop of recent culture, on a few crumbs, was sufficient to kill
a chicken. Hens fed in this way contracted the disease by their
intestinal canal, an excellent culture medium for the micro-organism,
and perished rapidly. Their infected excreta became a cause of contagion
to the hens which shared with them the laboratory cages. Pasteur thus
described one of these sick hens--
“The animal suffering from this disease is powerless, staggering, its
wings droop and its bristling feathers give it the shape of a ball; an
irresistible somnolence overpowers it. If its eyes are made to open, it
seems to awake from a deep sleep, and death frequently supervenes after
a dumb agony, before the animal has stirred from its place; sometimes
there is a faint fluttering of the wings for a few seconds.”
Pasteur tried the effect of this microbe on guinea-pigs which had been
brought up in the laboratory, and found it but rarely mortal; in general
it merely caused a sore, terminating in an abscess, at the point of
inoculation. If this abscess were opened, instead of being allowed to
heal of its own accord, the little microbe of chicken cholera was to be
found in the pus, preserved in the abscess as it might be in a phial.
“Chickens or rabbits,” remarked Pasteur, “living in the society of
guinea-pigs presenting these abscesses, might suddenly become ill and
die without any alteration being seen in the guinea-pigs’ health. It
would suffice for this purpose that those abscesses should open and drop
some of their contents on the food of the chickens and rabbits.
“An observer witnessing those facts, and ignorant of the above-mentioned
cause, would be astonished to see hens and rabbits decimated without
apparent cause, and would believe in the spontaneity of the evil; for he
would be far from supposing that it had its origin in the guinea-pigs,
all of them in good health. How many mysteries in the history of
contagions will one day be solved as simply as this!!!”
A chance, such as happens to those who have the genius of observation,
was now about to mark an immense step in advance and prepare the way for
a great discovery. As long as the culture flasks of chicken-cholera
microbe had been sown without interruption, at twenty-four hours’
interval, the virulence had remained the same; but when some hens were
inoculated with an old culture, put away and forgotten a few weeks
before, they were seen with surprise to become ill and then to recover.
These unexpectedly refractory hens were then inoculated with some new
culture, but the phenomenon of resistance recurred. What had happened?
What could have attenuated the activity of the microbe? Researches
proved that oxygen was the cause; and, by putting between the cultures
variable intervals of days, of one, two or three months, variations of
mortality were obtained, eight hens dying out of ten, then five, then
only one out of ten, and at last, when, as in the first case, the
culture had had time to get stale, no hens died at all, though the
microbe could still be cultivated.
“Finally,” said Pasteur, eagerly explaining this phenomenon, “if you
take each of these attenuated cultures as a starting-point for
successive and uninterrupted cultures, all this series of cultures will
reproduce the attenuated virulence of that which served as the
starting-point; in the same way non-virulence will reproduce
non-virulence.”
And, while hens who had never had chicken-cholera perished when exposed
to the deadly virus, those who had undergone attenuated inoculations,
and who afterwards received more than their share of the deadly virus,
were affected with the disease in a benign form, a passing
indisposition, sometimes even they remained perfectly well; they had
acquired immunity. Was not this fact worthy of being placed by the side
of that great fact of vaccine, over which Pasteur had so often pondered
and meditated?
He now felt that he might entertain the hope of obtaining, through
artificial culture, some vaccinating-virus against the virulent diseases
which cause great losses to agriculture in the breeding of domestic
animals, and, beyond that, the greater hope of preserving humanity from
those contagious diseases which continually decimate it. This invincible
hope led him to wish that he might live long enough to accomplish some
new discoveries and to see his followers step into the road he had
marked out.
Strong in his experimental method which enabled him to produce proofs
and thus to demonstrate the truth; able to establish the connection
between a virulent and a microbian disease; finally, ready to reproduce
by culture, in several degrees of attenuation, a veritable vaccine,
could he not now force those of his opponents who were acting in good
faith to acknowledge the evidence of facts? Could he not carry all
attentive minds with him into the great movement which was about to
replace old ideas by new and precise notions, more and more accessible?
Pasteur enjoyed days of incomparable happiness during that period of
enthusiasm, joys of the mind in its full power, joys of the heart in all
its expansion; for good was being done. He felt that nothing could
arrest the course of his doctrine, of which he said--“The breath of
Truth is carrying it towards the fruitful fields of the future.” He had
that intuition which makes a great poet of a great scientist. The
innumerable ideas surging through his mind were like so many bees all
trying to issue from the hive at the same time. So many plans and
preconceived ideas only stimulated him to further researches; but, when
he was once started on a road, he distrusted each step and only
progressed in the train of precise, clear and irrefutable experiments.
A paper of his on the plague, dated April, 1880, illustrates his train
of thought. The preceding year the Academy of Medicine had appointed a
commission composed of eight members, to draw up a programme of research
relative to the plague. The scourge had appeared in a village situated
on the right bank of the Volga, in the district of Astrakhan. There had
been one isolated case at first, followed ten days later by another
death; the dread disease had then invaded and devoured the whole
village, going from house to house like an inextinguishable fire; 370
deaths had occurred in a population of 1,372 inhabitants; thirty or
forty people died every day. In one of those sinister moments when men
forget everything in their desire to live, parents and relations had
abandoned their sick and dying among the unburied dead, with 20° C. of
frost!! The neighbouring villages were contaminated; but, thanks to the
Russian authorities, who had established a strict sanitary cordon, the
evil was successfully localized. Some doctors, meeting in Vienna,
declared that that plague was no other than the Black Death of the
fourteenth century, which had depopulated Europe. The old pictures and
sculptures of the time, which represent Death pressing into his
lugubrious gang children and old men, beggars and emperors, bear witness
to the formidable ravages of such a scourge. In France, since the
epidemic at Marseilles in 1720, it seemed as if the plague were but a
memory, a distant nightmare, almost a horrible fairy tale. Dr. Rochard,
in a report to the Académie de Médecine, recalled how the contagion had
burst out in May, 1720; a ship, having lost six men from the plague on
its journey, had entered Marseilles harbour. The plague, after an
insidious first phase, had raged in all its fury in July.
“Since the plague is a disease,” wrote Pasteur (whose paper was a sort
of programme of studies), “the cause of which is absolutely unknown, it
is not illogical to suppose that it too is perhaps produced by a special
microbe. All experimental research must be guided by some preconceived
ideas, and it would probably be very useful to tackle the study of that
disease with the belief that it is due to a parasite.
“The most decisive of all the proofs which can be invoked in favour of
the possible correlation between a determined affection and the presence
of a micro-organism, is that afforded by the method of cultures of
organisms in a state of purity; a method by which I have solved, within
the last twenty-two years, the chief difficulties relative to
fermentations properly so called; notably the important question, much
debated formerly, of the correlation which exists between those
fermentations and their particular ferments.”
He then pointed out that if, after gathering either blood or pus
immediately before or immediately after the death of a plague patient,
one could succeed in discovering the micro-organism, and then in finding
for that microbe an appropriate culture medium, it would be advisable to
inoculate with it animals of various kinds, perhaps monkeys for
preference, and to look for the lesions capable of establishing
relations from cause to effect between that organism and the disease in
mankind.
He did not hide from himself the great difficulties to be met with in
experimenting; for, after discovering and isolating the organism, there
is nothing to indicate _a priori_ to the experimentalist an appropriate
culture medium. Liquids which suit some microbes admirably are
absolutely unsuitable to others. Take, for instance, the microbe of
chicken-cholera, which will not develop in beer yeast; a hasty
experimentalist might conclude that the chicken-cholera is not produced
by a micro-organism, and that it is a spontaneous disease with unknown
immediate causes. “The fallacy would be a fatal one,” said Pasteur, “for
in another medium, say, for instance, in chicken-broth, there would be a
virulent culture.”
In these researches on the plague, then, various mediums should be
tried; also the character, either aërobic or anaërobic, of the microbe
should be present to the mind.
“The sterility of a culture liquid may come from the presence of air and
not from its own constitution; the septic vibrio, for instance, is
killed by oxygen in air. From this last circumstance it is plain that
culture must be made not only in the presence of air but also in a
vacuum or in the presence of pure carbonic acid gas. In the latter case,
immediately after sowing the blood or humour to be tested, a vacuum must
be made in the tubes, they must be sealed by means of a lamp, and left
in a suitable temperature, usually between 30° C. and 40° C.” Thus he
prepared landmarks for the guidance of scientific research on the
etiology of the plague.
* * * * *
Desiring as Pasteur did that the public in general should take an
interest in laboratory research, he sent to his friend Nisard the number
of the _Bulletin of the Académie de Médecine_ which contained a first
communication on chicken-cholera, and also his paper on the plague.
“Read them if you have time,” he wrote (May 3, 1880): “they may interest
you, and _there should be no blanks in your education_. They will be
followed by others.
“To-day at the Institute, and to-morrow at the Académie de Médecine, I
shall give a new lecture.
“Do repeat to me every criticism you hear; I much prefer them to praise,
barren unless encouragement is wanted, which is certainly not my case; I
have a lasting provision of faith and fire.”
Nisard answered on May 7: “My very dear friend, I am almost dazed with
the effort made by my ignorance to follow your ideas, and dazzled with
the beauty of your discoveries on the principal point, and the number of
secondary discoveries enumerated in your marvellous paper. You are right
not to care for barren praise; but you would wrong those who love you if
you found no pleasure in being praised by them when they have no other
means of acknowledging your notes.
“I am reading the notice on chicken-cholera for the second time, and I
observe that the writer is following the discoverer, and that your
language becomes elevated, supple and coloured, in order to express the
various aspects of the subject.
“It gives me pleasure to see the daily growth of your fame, and I am
indeed proud of enjoying your friendship.”
Amidst his researches on a vaccine for chicken-cholera, the etiology of
splenic fever was unceasingly preoccupying Pasteur. Did the splenic
germs return to the surface of the soil, and how? One day, in one of his
habitual excursions with Messrs. Roux and Chamberland to the farm of St.
Germain, near Chartres, he suddenly perceived an answer to that enigma.
In a field recently harvested, he noticed a place where the colour of
the soil differed a little from the neighbouring earth. He questioned M.
Maunoury, the proprietor of the farm, who answered that sheep dead of
anthrax had been buried there the preceding year. Pasteur drew nearer,
and was interested by the mass of little earth cylinders, those little
twists which earthworms deposit on the ground. Might that be, he
wondered, the explanation of the origin of the germs which reappear on
the surface? Might not the worms, returning from their subterranean
journeys in the immediate neighbourhood of graves, bring back with them
splenic spores, and thus scatter the germs so exhumed? That would again
be a singular revelation, unexpected but quite simple, due to the germ
theory. He wasted no time in dreaming of the possibilities opened by
that preconceived idea, but, with his usual impatience to get at the
truth, decided to proceed to experiment.
On his return to Paris Pasteur spoke to Bouley of this possible part of
germ carriers played by earthworms, and Bouley caused some to be
gathered which had appeared on the surface of pits where animals dead of
splenic fever had been buried some years before. Villemin and Davaine
were invited as well as Bouley to come to the laboratory and see the
bodies of these worms opened; anthrax spores were found in the earth
cylinders which filled their intestinal tube.
* * * * *
At the time when Pasteur revealed this pathogenic action of the
earthworm, Darwin, in his last book, was expounding their share in
agriculture. He too, with his deep attention and force of method, able
to discover the hidden importance of what seemed of little account to
second-rate minds, had seen how earthworms open their tunnels, and how,
by turning over the soil, and by bringing so many particles up to the
surface by their “castings,” they ventilate and drain the soil, and, by
their incessant and continuous work, render great services to
agriculture. These excellent labourers are redoubtable grave-diggers;
each of those two tasks, the one beneficent and the other full of
perils, was brought to light by Pasteur and Darwin, unknowingly to each
other.
Pasteur had gathered earth from the pits where splenic cows had been
buried in July, 1878, in the Jura. “At three different times within
those two years,” he said to the Académie des Sciences and to the
Académie de Médecine in July, 1880, “the surface soil of those same pits
has presented charbon spores.” This fact had been confirmed by recent
experiments on the soil of the Beauce farm; particles of earth from
other parts of the field had no power of provoking splenic fever.
Pasteur, going on to practical advice, showed how grazing animals might
find in certain places the germs of charbon, freed by the loosening by
rain of the little castings of earthworms. Animals are wont to choose
the surface of the pits, where the soil, being richer in humus, produces
thicker growth, and in so doing risk their lives, for they become
infected, somewhat in the same manner as in the experiments when their
forage was poisoned with a few drops of splenic culture liquid. Septic
germs are brought to the surface of the soil in the same way.
“Animals,” said Pasteur, “should never be buried in fields intended for
pasture or the growing of hay. Whenever it is possible, burying-grounds
should be chosen in sandy or chalky soils, poor, dry, and unsuitable to
the life of earthworms.”
Pasteur, like a general with only two aides de camp, was obliged to
direct the efforts of Messrs. Chamberland and Roux simultaneously in
different parts of France. Sometimes facts had to be checked which had
been over-hastily announced by rash experimentalists. Thus M. Roux went,
towards the end of the month of July, to an isolated property near
Nancy, called Bois le Duc Farm, to ascertain whether the successive
deaths of nineteen head of cattle were really, as affirmed, due to
splenic fever. The water of this pasture was alleged to be contaminated;
the absolute isolation of the herd seemed to exclude all idea of
contagion. After collecting water and earth from various points on the
estate M. Roux had returned to the laboratory with his tubes and pipets.
He was much inclined to believe that there had been septicæmia and not
splenic fever.
M. Chamberland was at Savagna, near Lons-le-Saulnier, where, in order to
experiment on the contamination of the surface of pits, he had had a
little enclosure traced out and surrounded by an open paling in a meadow
where victims of splenic fever had been buried two years previously.
Four sheep were folded in this enclosure. Another similar fold, also
enclosing four sheep, was placed a few yards above the first one. This
experiment was intended to occupy the vacation, and Pasteur meant to
watch it from Arbois.
A great sorrow awaited him there. “I have just had the misfortune of
losing my sister,” he wrote to Nisard at the beginning of August, “to
see whom (as also my parents’ and children’s graves) I returned yearly
to Arbois. Within forty-eight hours I witnessed life, sickness, death
and burial; such rapidity is terrifying. I deeply loved my sister, who,
in difficult times, when modest ease even did not reign in our home,
carried the heavy burden of the day and devoted herself to the little
ones of whom I was one. I am now the only survivor of my paternal and
maternal families.”
In the first days of August, Toussaint, the young professor of the
Toulouse Veterinary School, declared that he had succeeded in
vaccinating sheep against splenic fever. One process of vaccination
(which consisted in collecting the blood of an animal affected with
charbon just before or immediately after death, defibrinating it and
then passing it through a piece of linen and filtering it through ten or
twelve sheets of paper) had been unsuccessful; the bacteridia came
through it all and killed instead of preserving the animal. Toussaint
then had recourse to heat to kill the bacteridia: “I raised,” he said,
“the defibrinated blood to a heat of 55° C. for ten minutes; the result
was complete. Five sheep inoculated with three cubic cent. of that
blood, and afterwards with very active charbon blood, have not felt it
in the least.” However, several successive inoculations had to be made.
“All ideas of holidays must be postponed; we must set to work in Jura as
well as in Paris,” wrote Pasteur to his assistants. Bouley, who thought
that the goal was reached, did not hide from himself the difficulties of
interpretation of the alleged fact. He obtained from the Minister of
Agriculture permission to try at Alfort this so-called vaccinal liquid
on twenty sheep.
“Yesterday,” wrote Pasteur to his son-in-law on August 13, “I went to
give M. Chamberland instructions so that I may verify as soon as
possible the Toussaint fact, which I will only believe when I have seen
it, seen it with my own eyes. I am having twenty sheep bought, and I
hope to be satisfied as to the exactitude of this really extraordinary
observation in about three weeks’ time. Nature may have mystified M.
Toussaint, though his assertions seem to attest the existence of a very
interesting fact.”
Toussaint’s assertion had been hasty, and Pasteur was not long in
clearing up that point. The temperature of 55° C. prolonged for ten
minutes was not sufficient to kill the bacteridia in the blood; they
were but weakened and retarded in their development; even after fifteen
minutes’ exposure to the heat, there was but a numbness of the
bacteridium. Whilst these experiments were being pursued in the Jura and
in the laboratory of the Ecole Normale, the Alfort sheep were giving
Bouley great anxiety. One died of charbon one day after inoculation,
three two days later. The others were so ill that M. Nocard wanted to
sacrifice one in order to proceed to immediate necropsy; Bouley
apprehended a complete disaster. But the sixteen remaining sheep
recovered gradually and became ready for the counter test of charbon
inoculation.
Whilst Pasteur was noting the decisive points, he heard from Bouley and
from Roux at the same time, that Toussaint now obtained his vaccinal
liquid, no longer by the action of heat, but by the measured action of
carbolic acid on splenic fever blood. The interpretation by weakening
remained the same.
“What ought we to conclude from that result?” wrote Bouley to Pasteur.
“It is evident that Toussaint does not vaccinate as he thought, with a
liquid destitute of bacteridia, since he gives charbon with that liquid;
but that he uses a liquid in which the power of the bacteridium is
reduced by the diminished number and the attenuated activity. His
vaccine must then only be charbon liquid of which the intensity of
action may be weakened to the point of not being mortal to a certain
number of susceptible animals receiving it. But it may be a most
treacherous vaccine, in that it might be capable of recuperating its
power with time. The Alfort experiment makes it probable that the
vaccine tested at Toulouse and found to be harmless, had acquired in the
lapse of twelve days before it was tried at Alfort, a greater intensity,
because the bacteridium, numbed for a time by carbolic acid, had had
time to awaken and to swarm, in spite of the acid.”
Whilst Toussaint had gone to Rheims (where sat the French Association
for the Advancement of Science) to state that it was not, as he had
announced, the liquid which placed the animal into conditions of
relative immunity and to epitomize Bouley’s interpretation, to wit, that
it was a bearable charbon which he had inoculated, Pasteur wrote rather
a severe note on the subject. His insisting on scrupulous accuracy in
experiment sometimes made him a little hard; though the process was
unreliable and the explanation inexact, Toussaint at least had the merit
of having noted a condition of transitory attenuation in the
bacteridium. Bouley begged Pasteur to postpone his communication out of
consideration for Toussaint.
One of the sheep folded over splenic-fever pits had died on August 25,
its body, full of bacteridia, proving once more the error of those who
believed in the spontaneity of transmissible diseases. Pasteur informed
J. B. Dumas of this, and at the same time expressed his opinion on the
Toussaint fact. This letter was read at the Académie des Sciences.
“Allow me, before I finish, to tell you another secret. I have hastened,
again with the assistance of Messrs. Chamberland and Roux, to verify the
extraordinary facts recently announced to the Academy by M. Toussaint,
professor at the Toulouse Veterinary School.
“After numerous experiments leaving no room for doubt, I can assure you
that M. Toussaint’s interpretations should be gone over again. Neither
do I agree with M. Toussaint on the identity which he affirms as
existing between acute septicæmia and chicken-cholera; those two
diseases differ absolutely.”
Bouley was touched by this temperate language after all the verifying
experiments made at the Ecole Normale and in the Jura. When relating the
Alfort incidents, and while expressing a hope that some vaccination
against anthrax would shortly be discovered, he revealed that Pasteur
had had “the delicacy of abstaining from a detailed criticism, so as to
leave M. Toussaint the care of checking his own results.”
The struggle against virulent diseases was becoming more and more the
capital question for Pasteur. He constantly recurred to the subject, not
only in the laboratory, but in his home conversations, for he associated
his family with all the preoccupations of his scientific life. Now that
the oxygen of air appeared as a modifying influence on the development
of a microbe in the body of animals, it seemed possible that there might
be a general law applicable to every virus! What a benefit it would be
if the vaccine of every virulent disease could thus be discovered! And
in his thirst for research, considering that the scientific history of
chicken-cholera was more advanced than that of variolic and vaccinal
affections--the great fact of vaccination remaining isolated and
unexplained--he hastened on his return to Paris (September, 1880) to
press physicians on this special point--the relations between small-pox
and vaccine. “From the point of view of physiological experimentation,”
he said, “the identity of the variola virus with the vaccine virus has
never been demonstrated.” When Jules Guérin--a born fighter, still
desirous at the age of eighty to measure himself successfully with
Pasteur--declared that “human vaccine is the product of animal variola
(cow pox and horse pox) inoculated into man and humanised by its
successive transmissions on man,” Pasteur answered ironically that he
might as well say, “Vaccine is--vaccine.”
Those who were accustomed to speak to Pasteur with absolute sincerity
advised him not to let himself be dragged further into those discussions
when his adversaries, taking words for ideas, drowned the debate in a
flood of phrases. Of what good were such debates to science, since those
who took the first place among veterinary surgeons, physicians and
surgeons, loudly acknowledged the debt which science owned to Pasteur?
Why be surprised that certain minds, deeply disturbed in their habits,
their principles, their influence, should feel some difficulty, some
anger even in abandoning their ideas? If it is painful to tenants to
leave a house in which they have spent their youth, what must it be to
break with one’s whole education?
Pasteur, who allowed himself thus to be told that he lacked
philosophical serenity, acknowledged this good advice with an
affectionate smile. He promised to be calm; but when once in the room,
his adversaries’ attacks, their prejudices and insinuations, enervated
and irritated him. All his promises were forgotten.
“To pretend to express the relation between human variola and vaccine by
speaking but of vaccine and its relations with cow pox and horse pox,
without even pronouncing the word small-pox, is mere equivocation, done
on purpose to avoid the real point of the debate.” Becoming excited by
Guérin’s antagonism, Pasteur turned some of Guérin’s operating processes
into ridicule with such effect that Guérin started from his place and
rushed at him. The fiery octogenarian was stopped by Baron Larrey; the
sitting was suspended in confusion. The following day, Guérin sent two
seconds to ask for reparation by arms from Pasteur. Pasteur referred
them to M. Béclard, Permanent Secretary to the Académie de Médicine, and
M. Bergeron, its Annual Secretary, who were jointly responsible for the
_Official Bulletin of the Academy_. “I am ready,” said Pasteur, “having
no right to act otherwise, to modify whatever the editors may consider
as going beyond the rights of criticism and legitimate defence.”
In deference to the opinion of Messrs. Béclard and Bergeron, Pasteur
consented to terminate the quarrel by writing to the chairman of the
Academy that he had no intention of offending a colleague, and that in
all discussions of that kind, he never thought of anything but to defend
the exactitude of his own work.
The _Journal de la Médecine et de la Chimie_, edited by M.
Lucas-Championnière, said à propos of this very reasonable letter--“We,
for our part, admire the meekness of M. Pasteur, who is so often
described as combative and ever on the warpath. Here we have a
scientist, who now and then makes short, substantial and extremely
interesting communications. He is not a medical man, and yet, guided by
his genius, he opens new paths across the most arduous studies of
medical science. Instead of being offered the tribute of attention and
admiration which he deserves, he meets with a raging opposition from
some quarrelsome individuals, ever inclined to contradict after
listening as little as possible. If he makes use of a scientific
expression not understood by everybody, or if he uses a medical
expression slightly incorrectly, then rises before him the spectre of
endless speeches, intended to prove to him that all was for the best in
medical science before it was assisted by the precise studies and
resources of chemistry and experimentation.... Indeed, M. Pasteur’s
expression of _equivocation_ seemed to us moderate!”
How many such futile incidents, such vain quarrels, traverse the life of
a great man! Later on, we only see glory, apotheosis, and the statues in
public places; the demi-gods seemed to have marched in triumph towards a
grateful posterity. But how many obstacles and oppositions are there to
retard the progress of a free mind desirous of bringing his task to a
successful conclusion and incited by the fruitful thought of Death, ever
present to spirits preoccupied with interests of a superior order?
Pasteur looked upon himself as merely a passing guest of those homes of
intellect which he wished to enlarge and fortify for those who would
come after him.
Confronted with the hostility, indifference and scepticism which he
found in the members of the Medical Academy, he once appealed to the
students who sat on the seats open to the public.
“Young men, you who sit on those benches, and who are perhaps the hope
of the medical future of the country, do not come here to seek the
excitement of polemics, but come and learn Method.”
His method, as opposed to vague conceptions and _a priori_ speculations,
went on fortifying itself day by day. Artificial attenuation, that is,
virus modified by the oxygen of air, which weakens and abates virulence;
vaccination by the attenuated virus--those two immense steps in advance
were announced by Pasteur at the end of 1880. But would the same process
apply to the microbe of charbon? That was a great problem. The vaccine
of chicken-cholera was easy to obtain; by leaving pure cultures to
themselves for a time in contact with air, they soon lost their
virulence. But the spores of charbon, very indifferent to atmospheric
air, preserved an indefinitely prolonged virulence. After eight, ten or
twelve years, spores found in the graves of victims of splenic fever
were still in full virulent activity. It was therefore necessary to turn
the difficulty by a culture process which would act on the
filament-shaped bacteridium before the formation of spores. What may now
be explained in a few words demanded long weeks of trials, tests and
counter tests.
In neutralized chicken broth, the bacteridium can no longer be
cultivated at a temperature of 45° C.; it can still be cultivated easily
at a temperature of 42° C. or 43° C., but the spores do not develop.
“At that extreme temperature,” explains M. Chamberland, “the bacteridia
yet live and reproduce themselves, but they never give any germs.
Thenceforth, when trying the virulence of the phials after six, eight,
ten or fifteen days, we have found exactly the same phenomena as for
chicken-cholera. After eight days, for instance, our culture, which
originally killed ten sheep out of ten, only kills four or five; after
ten or twelve days it does not kill any; it merely communicates to
animals a benignant malady which preserves them from the deadly form.
“A remarkable thing is that the bacteridia whose virulence has been
attenuated may afterwards be cultivated in a temperature of 30° C. to
35° C., at which temperature they give germs presenting the same
virulence as the filaments which formed them.”
Bouley, who was a witness of all these facts, said, in other words, that
“if that attenuated and degenerated bacteridium is translated to a
culture medium in a lower temperature, favourable to its activity, it
becomes once again apt to produce spores. But those spores born of
weakened bacteridia, will only produce bacteridia likewise weakened in
their swarming faculties.”
Thus is obtained and enclosed in inalterable spores a vaccine ready to
be sent to every part of the world to preserve animals by vaccination
against splenic fever.
On the day when he became sure of this discovery, Pasteur, returning to
his rooms from his laboratory, said to his family, with a deep
emotion--“Nothing would have consoled me if this discovery, which my
collaborators and I have made, had not been a French discovery.”
He desired to wait a little longer before proclaiming it. Yet the cause
of the evil was revealed, the mode of propagation indicated, prophylaxis
made easy; surely, enough had been achieved to move attentive minds to
enthusiasm and to deserve the gratitude of sheep owners!
So thought the _Society of French Agricultors_, when it decided, on
February 21, 1881, to offer to Pasteur a medal of honour. J. B. Dumas,
detained at the Académie des Sciences, was unable to attend the meeting.
He wrote to Bouley, who had been requested to enumerate Pasteur’s
principal discoveries at that large meeting--“I had desired to make
public by my presence my heartfelt concurrence in your admiration for
him who will never be honoured to the full measure of his merits, of his
services and of his passionate devotion to truth and to our country.”
On the following Monday, Bouley said to Dumas, as they were walking to
the Académie des Sciences, “Your letter assures me of a small share of
immortality.”
“See,” answered Dumas, pointing to Pasteur, who was preceding them,
“there is he who will lead us both to immortality.”
On that Monday, February 28, Pasteur made his celebrated communication
on the vaccine of splenic fever and the whole graduated scale of
virulence. The secret of those returns to virulence lay entirely in some
successive cultures through the body of certain animals. If a weakened
bacteridium was inoculated into a guinea-pig a few days old it was
harmless; but it killed a new-born guinea-pig.
“If we then go from one new-born guinea-pig to another,” said Pasteur,
“by inoculation of the blood of the first to the second, from the second
to a third, and so on, the virulence of the bacteridium--that is: its
adaptability to development within the economy--becomes gradually
strengthened. It becomes by degrees able to kill guinea-pigs three or
four days old, then a week, a month, some years old, then sheep
themselves; the bacteridium has returned to its original virulence. We
may affirm, without hesitation, though we have not had the opportunity
of testing the fact, that it would be capable of killing cows and
horses; and it preserves that virulence indefinitely if nothing is done
to attenuate it again.
“As to the microbe of chicken-cholera, when it has lost its power of
action on hens, its virulence may be restored to it by applying it to
small birds such as sparrows or canaries, which it kills immediately.
Then by successive passages through the bodies of those animals, it
gradually assumes again a virulence capable of manifesting itself anew
on adult hens.
“Need I add, that, during that return to virulence, by the way,
virus-vaccines can be prepared at every degree of virulence for the
bacillus anthracis and for the chicken-cholera microbe.
“This question of the return to virulence is of the greatest interest
for the etiology of contagious diseases.”
Since charbon does not recur, said Pasteur in the course of that
communication, each of the charbon microbes attenuated in the laboratory
constitutes a vaccine for the superior microbe. “What therefore is
easier than to find in those successive virus, virus capable of giving
splenic fever to sheep, cows and horses, without making them perish, and
assuring them of ulterior immunity from the deadly disease? We have
practised that operation on sheep with the greatest success. When the
season comes for sheep-folding in the Beauce, we will try to apply it on
a large scale.”
The means of doing this were given to Pasteur before long; assistance
was offered to him by various people for various reasons; some desired
to see a brilliant demonstration of the truth; others whispered their
hopes of a signal failure. The promoter of one very large experiment was
a Melun veterinary surgeon, M. Rossignol.
In the _Veterinary Press_, of which M. Rossignol was one of the editors,
an article by him might have been read on the 31st January, 1881, less
than a month before that great discovery on charbon vaccine, wherein he
expressed himself as follows: “Will you have some microbe? There is some
everywhere. Microbiolatry is the fashion, it reigns undisputed; it is a
doctrine which must not even be discussed, especially when its Pontiff,
the learned M. Pasteur, has pronounced the sacramental words, _I have
spoken_. The microbe alone is and shall be the characteristic of a
disease; that is understood and settled; henceforth the germ theory must
have precedence of pure clinics; the Microbe alone is true, and Pasteur
is its prophet.”
At the end of March, M. Rossignol began a campaign, begging for
subscriptions, pointing out how much the cultivators of the Brie--whose
cattle suffered almost as much as that of the Beauce--were interested in
the question. The discovery, _if it were genuine_, should not remain
confined to the Ecole Normale laboratory, or monopolized by the
privileged public of the Académie des Sciences, who had no use for it.
M. Rossignol soon collected about 100 subscribers. Did he believe that
Pasteur and his little phials would come to a hopeless fiasco in a
farmyard before a public of old practitioners who had always been
powerless in the presence of splenic fever? Microbes were a subject for
ceaseless joking; people had hilarious visions of the veterinary
profession confined some twenty years hence in a model laboratory
assiduously cultivating numberless races, sub-races, varieties and
sub-varieties of microbes.
It is probable that, if light comes from above, a good many
practitioners would not have been sorry to see a strong wind from below
putting out Pasteur’s light.
M. Rossignol succeeded in interesting every one in this undertaking.
When the project was placed before the Melun Agricultural Society on the
2nd April, they hastened to approve of it and to accord their patronage.
The chairman, Baron de la Rochette, was requested to approach Pasteur
and to invite him to organize public experiments on the preventive
vaccination of charbon in the districts of Melun, Fontainebleau and
Provins.
“The noise which those experiments will necessarily cause,” wrote M.
Rossignol, “will strike every mind and convince those who may still be
doubting; the evidence of facts will have the result of ending all
uncertainty.”
Baron de la Rochette was a typical old French gentleman; his whole
person was an ideal of old-time distinction and courtesy. Well up to
date in all agricultural progress, and justly priding himself, with the
ease of a great landowner, that he made of agriculture an art and a
science, he could speak in any surroundings with knowledge of his
subject and a winning grace of manner. When he entered the laboratory,
he was at once charmed by the simplicity of the scientist, who hastened
to accept the proposal of an extensive experiment.
At the end of April, Pasteur wrote out the programme which was to be
followed near Melun at the farm of Pouilly le Fort. M. Rossignol had a
number of copies of that programme printed, and distributed them, not
only throughout the Department of Seine et Marne, but in the whole
agricultural world. This programme was so decidedly affirmative that
some one said to Pasteur, with a little anxiety: “You remember what
Marshal Gouyion St. Cyr said of Napoleon, that ‘he liked hazardous games
with a character of grandeur and audacity.’ It was neck or nothing with
him; you are going on in the same way!”
“Yes,” answered Pasteur, who meant to compel a victory.
And as his collaborators, to whom he had just read the precise and
strict arrangements he had made, themselves felt a little nervous, he
said to them, “What has succeeded in the laboratory on fourteen sheep
will succeed just as well at Melun on fifty.”
This programme left him no retreat. The Melun Agricultural Society put
sixty sheep at Pasteur’s disposal; twenty-five were to be vaccinated by
two inoculations, at twelve or fifteen days’ interval, with some
attenuated charbon virus. Some days later those twenty-five and also
twenty-five others would be inoculated with some very virulent charbon
culture.
“The twenty-five unvaccinated sheep will all perish,” wrote Pasteur,
“the twenty-five vaccinated ones will survive.” They would afterwards be
compared with the ten sheep which had undergone no treatment at all. It
would thus be seen that vaccination did not prevent sheep from returning
to their normal state of health after a certain time.
Then came other prescriptions, for instance, the burying of the dead
sheep in distinct graves, near each other and enclosed within a paling.
“In May, 1882,” added Pasteur, “twenty new sheep, that is, sheep never
before used for experimentation, will be shut within that paling.”
And he predicted that the following year, 1882, out of those twenty-five
sheep fed on the grass of that little enclosure or on forage deposited
there, several would become infected by the charbon germs brought to
the surface by earthworms, and that they would die of splenic fever.
Finally, twenty-five other sheep might be folded in a neighbouring spot,
where no charbon victims had ever been buried, and under these
conditions none would contract the disease.
M. de la Rochette having expressed a desire that cows should be included
in the programme, Pasteur answered that he was willing to try that new
experiment, though his tests on vaccine for cows were not as advanced as
those on sheep vaccine. Perhaps, he said, the results may not be as
positive, though he thought they probably would be. He was offered ten
cows; six were to be vaccinated and four not vaccinated. The experiments
were to begin on the Thursday, 5th May, and would in all likelihood
terminate about the first fortnight in June.
At the time when M. Rossignol declared that all was ready for the fixed
time, an editor’s notice in the _Veterinary Press_ said that the
laboratory experiments were about to be repeated _in campo_, and that
Pasteur could thus “demonstrate that he had not been mistaken when he
affirmed before the astonished Academy that he had discovered the
vaccine of splenic fever, a preventative to one of the most terrible
diseases with which animals and even men could be attacked.” This notice
ended thus, with an unexpected classical reminiscence: “These
experiments are solemn ones, and they will become memorable if, as M.
Pasteur asserts, with such confidence, they confirm all those he has
already instituted. We ardently wish that M. Pasteur may succeed and
remain the victor in a tournament which has now lasted long enough. If
he succeeds, he will have endowed his country with a great benefit, and
his adversaries should, as in the days of antiquity, wreathe their brows
with laurel leaves and prepare to follow, chained and prostrate, the
chariot of the immortal Victor. But he must succeed: such is the price
of triumph. Let M. Pasteur not forget that the Tarpeian Rock is near the
Capitol.”
On May 5 a numerous crowd arriving from Melun station or from the little
station of Cesson, was seen moving towards the yard of Pouilly le Fort
farm; it looked like a mobilisation of _Conseillers Généraux_,
agricultors, physicians, apothecaries, and especially veterinary
surgeons. Most of these last were full of scepticism--as was remarked by
M. Thierry, who represented the Veterinary Society of the Yonne, and one
of his colleagues, M. Biot, of Pont-sur-Yonne. They were exchanging
jokes and looks to the complete satisfaction of Pasteur’s adversaries.
They were looking forward to the last and most virulent inoculation.
Pasteur, assisted not only by Messrs. Chamberland and Roux, but also by
a third pupil of the name of Thuillier, proceeded to the arrangement of
the subjects. At the last moment, two goats were substituted for two of
the sheep.
Vaccination candidates and unvaccinated test sheep were divided under a
large shed. For the injection of the vaccinal liquid, Pravaz’s little
syringe was used; those who have experienced morphia injections know how
easily the needle penetrates the subcutaneous tissues. Each of the
twenty-five sheep received, on the inner surface of the right thigh,
five drops of the bacteridian culture which Pasteur called the first
vaccine. Five cows and one ox substituted for the sixth cow were
vaccinated in their turn, behind the shoulder. The ox and the cows were
marked on the right horn, and the sheep on the ear.
Pasteur was, after this, asked to give a lecture on splenic fever in the
large hall of the Pouilly farm. Then, in clear, simple language, meeting
every objection half-way, showing no astonishment at ignorance or
prejudice, knowing perfectly well that many were really hoping for a
failure, he methodically described the road already travelled, and
pointed to the goal he would reach. For nearly an hour he interested and
instructed his mixed audience; he made them feel the genuineness of his
faith, and, besides his interest in the scientific problem, his desire
to spare heavy losses to cultivators. After the lecture, some, better
informed than others, were admiring the logical harmony of that career,
mingling with pure science results of incalculable benefit to the
public, an extraordinary alliance which gave a special moral physiognomy
to this man of prodigious labours.
An appointment was made for the second inoculation. In the interval--on
May 6, 7, 8 and 9--Messrs. Chamberland and Roux came to Pouilly le Fort
to take the temperature of the vaccinated animals, and found nothing
abnormal. On May 17 a second inoculation was made with a liquid which,
though still attenuated, was more virulent than the first. If that
liquid had been inoculated to begin with it would have caused a
mortality of 50 per 100.
“On Tuesday, May 31,” wrote Pasteur to his son-in-law, “the third and
last inoculation will take place--this time with fifty sheep and ten
cows. I feel great confidence--for the two first, on the 5th and the
17th, have been effected under the best conditions without any mortality
amongst the twenty-five vaccinated subjects. On June 5 at latest the
final result will be known, and should be twenty-five survivors out of
twenty-five vaccinated, and six cows. If the success is complete, this
will be one of the finest examples of applied science in this century,
consecrating one of the greatest and most fruitful discoveries.”
This great experiment did not hinder other studies being pursued in the
laboratory. The very day of the second inoculation at Pouilly le Fort,
Mme. Pasteur wrote to her daughter, “One of the laboratory dogs seems to
be sickening for hydrophobia; it seems that that would be very lucky, in
view of the interesting experiment it would provide.”
On May 25, another letter from Mme. Pasteur shows how deeply each member
of the family shared Pasteur’s preoccupations and hopes and was carried
away with the stream of his ideas: “Your father has just brought great
news from the laboratory. The new dog which was trephined and inoculated
with hydrophobia died last night after nineteen days’ incubation only.
The disease manifested itself on the fourteenth day, and this morning
the same dog was used for the trephining of a fresh dog, which was done
by Roux with unrivalled skill. All this means that we shall have as many
mad dogs as will be required for experiments, and those experiments will
become extremely interesting.
“Next month one of the _master’s_ delegates will go to the south of
France to study the ‘rouget’ of swine, which ordinarily rages at this
time.
“It is much hoped that the vaccine of that disease will be found.”
The trephining of that dog had much disturbed Pasteur. He, who was
described in certain anti-vivisectionist quarters as a laboratory
executioner, had a great horror of inflicting suffering on any animal.
“He could assist without too much effort,” writes M. Roux, “at a simple
operation such as a subcutaneous inoculation, and even then, if the
animal screamed at all, Pasteur was immediately filled with compassion,
and tried to comfort and encourage the victim, in a way which would have
seemed ludicrous if it had not been touching. The thought of having a
dog’s cranium perforated was very disagreeable to him; he very much
wished that the experiment should take place, and yet he feared to see
it begun. I performed it one day when he was out. The next day, as I was
telling him that the intercranial inoculation had presented no
difficulty, he began pitying the dog. ‘Poor thing! His brain is no doubt
injured, he must be paralysed!’ I did not answer, but went to fetch the
dog, whom I brought into the laboratory. Pasteur was not fond of dogs,
but when he saw this one, full of life, curiously investigating every
part of the laboratory, he showed the keenest pleasure, and spoke to the
dog in the most affectionate manner. Pasteur was infinitely grateful to
this dog for having borne trephining so well, thus lessening his
scruples for future trephining.”
As the day was approaching for the last experiments at Pouilly le Fort,
excitement was increasing in the veterinary world. Every chance meeting
led to a discussion; some prudent men said “Wait.” Those that believed
were still few in number.
One or two days before the third and decisive inoculation, the
veterinary surgeon of Pont-sur-Yonne, M. Biot, who was watching with a
rare scepticism the Pouilly le Fort experiments, met Colin on the road
to Maisons-Alfort. “Our conversation”--M. Biot dictated the relation of
this episode to M. Thierry, his colleague, also very sceptical and
expecting the Tarpeian Rock--“our conversation naturally turned on
Pasteur’s experiments. Colin said: ‘You must beware, for there are two
parts in the bacteridia-culture broth: one upper part which is inert,
and one deep part very active, in which the bacteridia become
accumulated, having dropped to the bottom because of their weight. The
vaccinated sheep will be inoculated with the upper part of the liquid,
whilst the others will be inoculated with the bottom liquid, which will
kill them.’” Colin advised M. Biot to seize at the last moment the phial
containing the virulent liquid and to shake it violently, “so as to
produce a perfect mixture rendering the whole uniformly virulent.”
If Bouley had heard such a thing, he would have lost his temper, or he
would have laughed heartily. A year before this, in a letter to M.
Thierry, who not only defended but extolled Colin, Bouley had written:
“No doubt Colin is a man of some value, and he has cleverly taken
advantage of his position of Chief of the Anatomy department at Alfort
to accomplish some important labours. But it is notable that his
negative genius has ever led him to try and demolish really great work.
He denied Davaine, Marey, Claude Bernard, Chauveau; now he is going for
Pasteur.” Bouley, to whom Colin was indebted for his situation at
Alfort, might have added, “And he calls me his persecutor!” But Biot
refused to believe in Colin’s hostility and only credited him with
scruples on the question of experimental physiology. Colin did not doubt
M. Pasteur’s bona fides, M. Biot said, but only his aptitude to conduct
experiments _in anima vili_.
On May 31, every one was at the farm. M. Biot executed Colin’s
indications and shook the virulent tube with real veterinary energy. He
did more: still acting on advice from Colin, who had told him that the
effective virulence was in direct proportion to the quantity injected,
he asked that a larger quantity of liquid than had been intended should
be inoculated into the animals. A triple dose was given. Other
veterinary surgeons desired that the virulent liquid should be
inoculated alternatively into vaccinated and unvaccinated animals.
Pasteur lent himself to these divers requests with impassive
indifference and without seeking for their motives.
At half-past three everything was done, and a rendezvous fixed for June
2 at the same place. The proportion between believers and unbelievers
was changing. Pasteur seemed so sure of his ground that many were saying
“He can surely not be mistaken.” One little group had that very morning
drunk to a _fiasco_. But, whether from a sly desire to witness a
failure, or from a generous wish to be present at the great scientific
victory, every man impatiently counted the hours of the two following
days.
On June 4, Messrs. Chamberland and Roux went back to Pouilly le Fort to
judge of the condition of the patients. Amongst the lot of unvaccinated
sheep, several were standing apart with drooping heads, refusing their
food. A few of the vaccinated subjects showed an increase of
temperature; one of them even had 40° C. (104° Fahrenheit); one sheep
presented a slight œdema of which the point of inoculation was the
centre; one lamb was lame, another manifestly feverish, but all, save
one, had preserved their appetite. All the unvaccinated sheep were
getting worse and worse. “In all of them” noted M. Rossignol,
“breathlessness is at its maximum; the heaving of the sides is now and
then interrupted by groans. If the most sick are forced to get up and
walk, it is with great difficulty that they advance a few steps, their
limbs being so weak and vacillating.” Three had died by the time M.
Rossignol left Pouilly le Fort. “Everything leads me to believe,” he
wrote, “that a great number of sheep will succumb during the night.”
Pasteur’s anxiety was great when Messrs. Chamberland and Roux returned,
having noticed a rise in the temperature of certain vaccinated subjects.
It was increased by the arrival of a telegram from M. Rossignol
announcing that he considered one sheep as lost. By a sudden reaction,
Pasteur, who had drawn up such a bold programme, leaving no margin for
the unexpected, and who the day before seemed of an imperturbable
tranquillity among all those sheep, the life or death of whom was about
to decide between an immortal discovery and an irremediable failure, now
felt himself beset with doubts and anguish.
Bouley, who had that evening come to see his _master_, as he liked to
call him, could not understand this reaction--the result of too much
strain on the mind, said M. Roux, whom it did not astonish. Pasteur’s
emotional nature, strangely allied to his fighting temperament, was
mastering him. “His faith staggered for a time,” writes M. Roux, “as if
the experimental method could betray him.” The night was a sleepless
one.
“This morning, at eight o’clock,” wrote Mme. Pasteur to her daughter,
“we were still very much excited and awaiting the telegram which might
announce some disaster. Your father would not let his mind be distracted
from his anxiety. At nine o’clock the laboratory was informed, and the
telegram handed to me five minutes later. I had a moment’s emotion,
which made me pass through all the colours of the rainbow. Yesterday, a
considerable rise of temperature had been noticed with terror in one of
the sheep; this morning that same sheep was well again.”
On the arrival of the telegram Pasteur’s face lighted up; his joy was
deep, and he desired to share it immediately with his absent children.
Before starting for Melun, he wrote them this letter:
“_June 2, 1881._
“It is only Thursday, and I am already writing to you; it is because a
great result is now acquired. A wire from Melun has just announced it.
On Tuesday last, 31st May, we inoculated all the sheep, vaccinated and
non-vaccinated, with very virulent splenic fever. It is not forty-eight
hours ago. Well, the telegram tells me that, when we arrive at two
o’clock this afternoon, all the non-vaccinated subjects will be dead;
eighteen were already dead this morning, and the others dying. As to the
vaccinated ones, they are all well; the telegram ends by the words
‘_stunning success_’; it is from the veterinary surgeon, M. Rossignol.
“It is too early yet for a final judgment; the vaccinated sheep might
yet fall ill. But when I write to you on Sunday, if all goes well, it
may be taken for granted that they will henceforth preserve their good
health, and that the success will indeed have been startling. On
Tuesday, we had a foretaste of the final results. On Saturday and
Sunday, two sheep had been abstracted from the lot of twenty-five
vaccinated sheep, and two from the lot of twenty-five non-vaccinated
ones, and inoculated with a very virulent virus. Now, when on Tuesday
all the visitors arrived, amongst whom were M. Tisserand, M. Patinot,
the Prefect of Seine et Marne, M. Foucher de Careil, Senator, etc., we
found the two unvaccinated sheep dead, and the two others in good
health. I then said to one of the veterinary surgeons who were present,
‘Did I not read in a newspaper, signed by you, à propos of the virulent
little organism of saliva, “There! one more microbe; when there are 100
we shall make a cross”?’ ‘It is true,’ he immediately answered,
honestly. ‘But I am a converted and repentant sinner.’ ‘Well,’ I
answered, ‘allow me to remind you of the words of the Gospel: Joy shall
be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and
nine just persons which need no repentance.’ Another veterinary surgeon
who was present said, ‘I will bring you another, M. Colin.’ ‘You are
mistaken,’ I replied. ‘M. Colin contradicts for the sake of
contradicting, and does not believe because he will not believe. You
would have to cure a case of neurosis, and you cannot do that!’ Joy
reigns in the laboratory and in the house. Rejoice, my dear children.”
When Pasteur arrived, at two o’clock in the afternoon, at the farmyard
of Pouilly le Fort, accompanied by his young collaborators, a murmur of
applause arose, which soon became loud acclamation, bursting from all
lips. Delegates from the Agricultural Society of Melun, from medical
societies, veterinary societies, from the Central Council of Hygiene of
Seine et Marne, journalists, small farmers who had been divided in their
minds by laudatory or injurious newspaper articles--all were there. The
carcases of twenty-two unvaccinated sheep were lying side by side; two
others were breathing their last; the last survivors of the sacrificed
lot showed all the characteristic symptoms of splenic fever. All the
vaccinated sheep were in perfect health.
Bouley’s happy face reflected the feelings which were so characteristic
of his attractive personality: enthusiasm for a great cause, devotion to
a great man. M. Rossignol, in one of those loyal impulses which honour
human nature, disowned with perfect sincerity his first hasty judgment;
Bouley congratulated him. He himself, many years before, had allowed
himself to judge too hastily, he said, of certain experiments of
Davaine’s, of which the results then appeared impossible. After having
witnessed these experiments, Bouley had thought it a duty to proclaim
his error at the Académie de Médecine, and to render a public homage to
Davaine. “That, I think,” he said, “is the line of conduct which should
always be observed; we honour ourselves by acknowledging our mistakes
and by rendering justice to neglected merit.”
No success had ever been greater than Pasteur’s. The veterinary
surgeons, until then the most incredulous, now convinced, desired to
become the apostles of his doctrine. M. Biot spoke of nothing less than
of being himself vaccinated and afterwards inoculated with the most
active virus. Colin’s absence was much regretted. Pasteur was not yet
satisfied. “We must wait until the 5th of June,” he said, “for the
experiment to be complete, and the proof decisive.”
M. Rossignol and M. Biot proceeded on the spot to the necropsy of two of
the dead sheep. An abundance of bacteridia was very clearly seen in the
blood through the microscope.
Pasteur was accompanied back to the station by an enthusiastic crowd,
saluting him--with a luxury of epithets contrasting with former
ironies--as the immortal author of the magnificent discovery of splenic
fever vaccination, and it was decided that the farm of Pouilly le Fort
would henceforth bear the name of _Clos Pasteur_.
The one remaining unvaccinated sheep died that same night. Amongst the
vaccinated lot one ewe alone caused some anxiety. She was pregnant, and
died on the 4th of June, but from an accident due to her condition, and
not from the consequences of the inoculation, as was proved by a
post-mortem examination.
Amongst the cattle, those which had been vaccinated showed no sign
whatever of any disturbance; the others presented enormous œdemata.
Pasteur wrote to his daughter: “Success is definitely confirmed; the
vaccinated animals are keeping perfectly well, the test is complete. On
Wednesday a report of the facts and results will be drawn up which I
shall communicate to the Académie des Sciences on Monday, and on Tuesday
to the Académie de Médecine.”
And, that same day, he addressed a joyful telegram to Bouley, who, in
his quality of General Inspector of Veterinary Schools, had been obliged
to go to Lyons. Bouley answered by the following letter:
“Lyons, June 5, 1881. Dearest Master, your triumph has filled me with
joy. Though the days are long past now when my faith in you was still
somewhat hesitating, not having sufficiently impregnated my mind with
your spirit, as long as the event--which has just been realized in a
manner so rigorously in conformity with your predictions--was still in
the future, I could not keep myself from feeling a certain anxiety, of
which you were yourself the cause, since I had seen you also a prey to
it, like all inventors on the eve of the day which reveals their glory.
At last your telegram, _for which I was pining_, has come to tell me
that the world has found you faithful to all your promises, and that you
have inscribed one more great date in the _annals of Science_, and
particularly in those of Medicine, for which you have opened a new era.
“I feel the greatest joy at your triumph; in the first place, for you,
who are to-day receiving the reward of your noble efforts in the pursuit
of Truth; and--shall I tell you?--for myself too, for I have so
intimately associated myself with your work that I should have felt your
failure absolutely as if it had been personal to me. All my teaching at
the Museum consists in relating your labours and predicting their
fruitfulness.”
Those experiments at Pouilly le Fort caused a tremendous sensation; the
whole of France burst out in an explosion of enthusiasm. Pasteur now
knew fame under its rarest and purest form; the loving veneration, the
almost worship with which he inspired those who lived near him or worked
with him, had become the feeling of a whole nation.
On June 13, at the Académic des Sciences, he was able to state as
follows his results and their practical consequences: “We now possess
virus vaccines of charbon, capable of preserving from the deadly
disease, without ever being themselves deadly--living vaccines, to be
cultivated at will, transportable anywhere without alteration, and
prepared by a method which we may believe susceptible of being
generalized, since it has been the means of discovering the vaccine of
chicken-cholera. By the character of the conditions I am now
enumerating, and from a purely scientific point of view, the discovery
of the vaccine of anthrax constitutes a marked step in advance of that
of Jenner’s vaccine, since the latter has never been experimentally
obtained.”
On all sides, it was felt that something very great, very unexpected,
justifying every sort of hope, had been brought forth. Ideas of research
were coming up. On the very morrow of the results obtained at Pouilly le
Fort, Pasteur was asked to go to the Cape to study a contagious disease
raging among goats.
“Your father would like to take that long journey,” wrote Mme. Pasteur
to her daughter, “passing on his way through Senegal to gather some good
germs of pernicious fever; but I am trying to moderate his ardour. I
consider that the study of hydrophobia should suffice him for the
present.”
He was at that time “at boiling point,” as he put it--going from his
laboratory work to the Academies of Sciences and Medicine to read some
notes; then to read reports at the Agricultural Society; to Versailles,
to give a lecture to an Agronomic Congress, and to Alfort to lecture to
the professors and students. His clear and well-arranged words, the
connection between ideas and the facts supporting them, the methodical
recital of experiments, allied to an enthusiastic view of the future and
its prospects--especially when addressing a youthful audience--deeply
impressed his hearers. Those who saw and heard him for the first time
were the more surprised that, in certain circles, a legend had formed
round Pasteur’s name. He had been described as of an irritable,
intolerant temper, domineering and authoritative, almost despotic; and
people now saw a man of perfect simplicity, so modest that he did not
seem to realize his own glory, pleased to answer--even to provoke--every
objection, only raising his voice to defend Truth, to exalt Work, and to
inspire love for France, which he wished to see again in the first rank
of nations. He did not cease to repeat that the country must regain her
place through scientific progress. Boys and youths--ever quick to
penetrate the clever calculations of those who seek their own interest
instead of accomplishing a duty--listened to him eagerly and, very soon
conquered, enrolled themselves among his followers. In him they
recognized the three rarely united qualities which go to form true
benefactors of humanity: a mighty genius, great force of character, and
genuine goodness.
The Republican Government, desirous of recognizing this great discovery
of splenic fever vaccination, offered him the Grand Cordon of the Legion
of Honour. Pasteur put forward one condition; he wanted, at the same
time, the red ribbon for his two collaborators. “What I have most set my
heart upon is to obtain the Cross for Chamberland and Roux,” he wrote to
his son-in-law on June 26; “only at that price will I accept the Grand
Cross. They are taking such trouble! Yesterday they went to a place
fifteen kilometres from Senlis, to vaccinate ten cows and 250 sheep. On
Thursday we vaccinated 300 sheep at Vincennes. On Sunday they were near
Coulommiers. On Friday we are going to Pithiviers. What I chiefly wish
is that the discovery should be consecrated by an exceptional
distinction to two devoted young men, full of merit and courage. I wrote
yesterday to Paul Bert, asking him to intervene most warmly in their
favour.”
One of Pasteur’s earliest friends, who, in 1862, had greeted with joy
his election to the Académie des Sciences, and who had never ceased to
show the greatest interest in the progress due to the experimental
method, entered the Ecole Normale laboratory with a beaming face. Happy
to bring good tidings, he took his share of them like the devoted,
hardworking, kindly man that he was. “M. Grandeau,” wrote Mme. Pasteur
to her children, “has just brought to the laboratory the news that Roux
and Chamberland have the Cross and M. Pasteur the Grand Cross of the
Legion of Honour. Hearty congratulations were exchanged in the midst of
the rabbits and guinea-pigs.”
* * * * *
Those days were darkened by a great sorrow. Henri Sainte Claire Deville
died. Pasteur was then reminded of the words of his friend in 1868: “You
will survive me, I am your senior; promise that you will pronounce my
funeral oration.” When formulating this desire, Sainte Claire Deville
had no doubt been desirous of giving another direction to the
presentiments of Pasteur, who believed himself death-stricken. But,
whether it was from a secret desire, or from an affectionate impulse, he
felt that none understood him better than Pasteur. Both loved Science
after the same manner; they gave to patriotism its real place; they had
hopes for the future of the human mind; they were moved by the same
religious feelings before the mysteries of the Infinite.
Pasteur began by recalling his friend’s wish: “And here am I, before thy
cold remains, obliged to ask my memory what thou wert in order to repeat
it to the multitude crowding around thy coffin. But how superfluous! Thy
sympathetic countenance, thy witty merriment and frank smile, the sound
of thy voice remain with us and live within us. The earth which bears
us, the air we breathe, the elements, often interrogated and ever docile
to answer thee, could speak to us of thee. Thy services to Science are
known to the whole world, and every one who has appreciated the progress
of the human mind is now mourning for thee.”
He then enumerated the scientist’s qualities, the inventive precision of
that eager mind, full of imagination, and at the same time the
strictness of analysis and the fruitful teaching so delightedly
recognized by those who had worked with him, Debray, Troost, Fouqué,
Grandeau, Hautefeuille, Gernez, Lechartier. Then, showing that, in
Sainte Claire Deville, the man equalled the scientist:
“Shall I now say what thou wert in private life? Again, how superfluous!
Thy friends do not want to be reminded of thy warm heart. Thy pupils
want no proofs of thy affection for them and thy devotion in being of
service to them! See their sorrow.
“Should I tell thy sons, thy five sons, thy joy and pride, of the
preoccupations of thy paternal and prudent tenderness? And can I speak
of thy smiling goodness to her, the companion of thy life, the mere
thought of whom filled thy eyes with a sweet emotion?
“Oh! I implore thee, do not now look down upon thy weeping wife and
afflicted sons: thou wouldst regret this life too much! Wait for them
rather in those divine regions of knowledge and full light, where thou
knowest all now, where thou canst understand the Infinite itself, that
terrible and bewildering notion, closed for ever to man in this world,
and yet the eternal source of all Grandeur, of all Justice and all
Liberty.”
Pasteur’s voice was almost stifled by his team, as had been that of J.
B. Dumas speaking at Péclet’s tomb. The emotions of savants are all the
deeper that they are not enfeebled, as in so many writers or speakers,
by the constant use of words which end by wearing out the feelings.
Little groups slowly walking away from a country churchyard seem to take
with them some of the sadness they have been feeling, but the departure
from a Paris cemetery gives a very different impression. Life
immediately grasps again and carries away in its movement the mourners,
who now look as if they had been witnessing an incident in which they
were not concerned. Pasteur felt such bitter contrasts with all his
tender soul, he had a cult for dear memories; Sainte Claire Deville’s
portrait ever remained in his study.
* * * * *
The adversaries of the new discovery now had recourse to a new mode of
attack. The virus which had been used at Pouilly le Fort to show how
efficacious were the preventive vaccinations was, they said, a culture
virus--some even said a Machiavellian preparation of Pasteur’s. Would
vaccinated animals resist equally well the action of the charbon blood
itself, the really malignant and infallibly deadly blood? Those sceptics
were therefore impatiently awaiting the result of some experiments which
were being carried out near Chartres in the farm of Lambert. Sixteen
Beauceron sheep were joined to a lot of nineteen sheep brought from
Alfort and taken from the herd of 300 sheep vaccinated against charbon
three weeks before, on the very day of the lecture at Alfort. On July
16, at 10 o’clock in the morning, the thirty-five sheep, vaccinated and
non-vaccinated, were gathered together. The corpse of a sheep who had
died of charbon four hours before, in a neighbouring farm, was brought
into the field selected for the experiments. After making a post-mortem
examination and noting the characteristic injuries of splenic fever, ten
drops of the dead sheep’s blood were injected into each of the
thirty-five sheep, taking one vaccinated at Alfort and one
non-vaccinated Beauceron alternately. Two days later, on July 18, ten of
the latter were already dead, most of the others were prostrated. The
vaccinated sheep were perfectly well.
While the ten dead sheep were being examined, two more died, and three
more on the 19th. Bouley, informed by the veterinary surgeon, Boutet, of
those successive incidents, wrote on the 20th to Pasteur: “My dear
Master, Boutet has just informed me of the Chartres event. All has been
accomplished according to the master’s words; your vaccinated sheep have
triumphantly come through the trial, and all the others save one are
dead. That result is of special importance in a country-side where
incredulity was being maintained in spite of all the demonstrations
made. It seems that the doctors especially were refractory. They said it
was too good to be true, and they counted on the strength of the natural
charbon to find your method in default. Now they are converted, Boutet
writes, and the veterinary surgeon too--one amongst others, whose brain,
it seems, was absolutely _iron-clad_--also the agricultors. There is a
general Hosannah in your honour.”
After congratulating Pasteur on the Grand Cross, he added, “I was also
very glad of the reward you have obtained for your two young
collaborators, so full of your spirit, so devoted to your work and your
person, and whose assistance is so self-sacrificing and disinterested.
The Government has honoured itself by so happily crowning with that
distinction the greatness of the discovery in which they took part.”
Henceforth, and for a time, systematic opposition ceased. Thousands and
thousands of doses were used of the new vaccine, which afterwards saved
millions to agriculture.
A few days later, came a change in Pasteur’s surroundings. He was
invited by the Organizing Committee to attend the International Medical
Congress in London, and desired by the Government of the Republic to
represent France.
On August 3, when he arrived in St. James’ Hall, filled to overflowing,
from the stalls to the topmost galleries, he was recognized by one of
the stewards, who invited him to come to the platform reserved for the
most illustrious members of the Congress. As he was going towards the
platform, there was an outburst of applause, hurrahs and acclamations.
Pasteur turned to his two companions, his son and his son-in-law, and
said, with a little uneasiness: “It is no doubt the Prince of Wales
arriving; I ought to have come sooner.”
“But it is you that they are all cheering,” said the President of the
Congress, Sir James Paget, with his grave, kindly smile.
A few moments later, the Prince of Wales entered, accompanying his
brother-in-law, the German Crown Prince.
In his speech, Sir James Paget said that medical science should aim at
three objects: novelty, utility and charity. The only scientist named
was Pasteur; the applause was such that Pasteur, who was sitting behind
Sir James Paget, had to rise and bow to the huge assembly.
“I felt very proud,” wrote Pasteur to Mme. Pasteur in a letter dated
that same day, “I felt inwardly very proud, not for myself--you know how
little I care for triumph!--but for my country, in seeing that I was
specially distinguished among that immense concourse of foreigners,
especially of Germans, who are here in much greater numbers than the
French, whose total, however, reaches two hundred and fifty. Jean
Baptiste and René were in the Hall; you can imagine their emotion.
“After the meeting, we lunched at Sir James Paget’s house; he had the
Prussian Crown Prince on his right and the Prince of Wales on his left.
Then there was a gathering of about twenty-five or thirty guests in the
drawing-room. Sir James presented me to the Prince of Wales, to whom I
bowed, saying that I was happy to salute a friend to France. ‘Yes,’ he
answered, ‘a great friend.’ Sir James Paget had the good taste not to
ask me to be presented to the Prince of Prussia; though there is of
course room for nothing but courtesy under such circumstances, I could
not have brought myself to appear to wish to be presented to him. But he
himself came up to me and said, ‘M. Pasteur, allow me to introduce
myself to you, and to tell you that I had great pleasure in applauding
you just now,’ adding some more pleasant things.”
In the midst of the unexpected meetings brought about by that Congress,
it was an interesting thing to see this son of a King and Emperor, the
heir to the German crown, thus going towards that Frenchman whose
conquests were made over disease and death. Of what glory might one day
dream this Prince, who became Frederic III!
His tall and commanding stature, the highest position in the Prussian
army conferred on him by his father, King William, in a solemn letter
dated from Versailles, October, 1870--everything seemed to combine in
making a warlike man of this powerful-looking prince. And yet was it not
said in France that he had protested against certain barbarities,
coldly executed by some Prussian generals during that campaign of 1870?
Had he not considered the clauses of the Treaty of Frankfort as
Draconian and dangerous? If he had been sole master, would he have torn
Alsace away from France? What share would his coming reign bear in the
history of civilization?... Fate had already marked this Prince, only
fifty years old, for an approaching death. In his great sufferings,
before the inexorable death which was suffocating him, he was heroically
patient. His long agony began at San Remo, amongst the roses and
sunshine; he was an Emperor for less than one hundred days, and, on his
death-bed, words of peace, peace for his people, were on his lips.
As Pasteur, coming to this Congress, was not only curious to see what
was the place held in medicine and surgery by the germ-theory, but also
desirous to learn as much as possible, he never missed a discussion and
attended every meeting. It was in a simple sectional meeting that
Bastian attempted to refute Lister. After his speech, the President
suddenly said, “I call on M. Pasteur,” though Pasteur had not risen.
There was great applause; Pasteur did not know English; he turned to
Lister and asked him what Bastian had said.
“He said,” whispered Lister, “that microscopic organizations in disease
were formed by the tissues themselves.”
“That is enough for me,” said Pasteur. And he then invited Bastian to
try the following experiment:
“Take an animal’s limb, crush it, allow blood and other normal or
abnormal liquids to spread around the bones, only taking care that the
skin should neither be torn nor opened in any way, and I defy you to see
any micro-organism formed within that limb as long as the illness will
last.”
Pasteur, desired to do so by Sir James Paget at one of the great General
Meetings of the Congress, gave a lecture on the principles which had led
him to the attenuation of virus, on the methods which had enabled him to
obtain the vaccines of chicken-cholera and of charbon, and, finally, on
the results obtained. “In a fortnight,” he said, “we vaccinated, in the
Departments surrounding Paris, nearly 20,000 sheep, and a great many
oxen, cows and horses....
“Allow me,” he continued, “not to conclude without telling you of the
great joy that I feel in thinking that it is as a member of the
International Medical Congress sitting in London that I have made known
to you the vaccination of a disease more terrible perhaps for domestic
animals than is small-pox for man. I have given to the word vaccination
an extension which I hope Science will consecrate as a homage to the
merit and immense services rendered by your Jenner, one of England’s
greatest men. It is a great happiness to me to glorify that immortal
name on the very soil of the noble and hospitable city of London!”
“Pasteur was the greatest success of the Congress,” wrote the
correspondent of the _Journal des Débats_, Dr. Daremberg, glad as a
Frenchman and as a physician to hear the unanimous hurrahs which greeted
the delegate of France. “When M. Pasteur spoke, when his name was
mentioned, a thunder of applause rose from all benches, from all
nations. An indefatigable worker, a sagacious seeker, a precise and
brilliant experimentalist, an implacable logician, and an enthusiastic
apostle, he has produced an invincible effect on every mind.”
The English people, who chiefly look in a great man for power of
initiative and strength of character, shared this admiration. One group
only, alone in darkness, away from the Congress, was hostile to the
general movement and was looking for an opportunity for direct or
indirect revenge; it was the group of anti-vaccinators and
anti-vivisectionists. The influence of the latter was great enough in
England to prevent experimentation on animals. At a general meeting of
the Congress, Virchow, the German scientist, spoke on the use of
experimenting in pathology.
Already at a preceding Congress held in Amsterdam, Virchow had said amid
the applause of the Assembly: “Those who attack vivisection have not the
faintest idea of Science, and even less of the importance and utility of
vivisection for the progress of medicine.” But to this just argument,
the international leagues for the protection of animals--very powerful,
like everything that is founded on a sentiment which may be exalted--had
answered by combative phrases. The physiological laboratories were
compared to chambers of torture. It seemed as if, through caprice or
cruelty, quite uselessly at any rate, this and that man of science had
the unique desire of inflicting on bound animals, secured on a board,
sufferings of which death was the only limit. It is easy to excite pity
towards animals; an audience is conquered as soon as dogs are mentioned.
Which of us, whether a cherished child, a neglected old maid, a man in
the prime of his youth or a misanthrope weary of everything, has not,
holding the best place in his recollections, the memory of some example
of fidelity, courage or devotion given by a dog? In order to raise the
revolt, it was sufficient for anti-vivisectionists to evoke amongst the
ghosts of dog martyrs the oft-quoted dog who, whilst undergoing an
experiment, licked the hand of the operator. As there had been some
cruel abuses on the part of certain students, those abuses alone were
quoted. Scientists did not pay much heed to this agitation, partly a
feminine one: they relied on the good sense of the public to put an end
to those doleful declamations. But the English Parliament voted a Bill
prohibiting vivisection; and, after 1876, English experimentalists had
to cross the Channel to inoculate a guinea-pig.
Virchow did not go into details; but, in a wide exposé of Experimental
Physiological Medicine, he recalled how, at each new progress of
Science--at one time against the dissection of dead bodies and now
against experiments on living animals--the same passionate criticisms
had been renewed. The Interdiction Bill voted in England had filled a
new Leipzig Society with ardour; it had asked the Reichstag in that same
year, 1881, to pass a law punishing cruelty to animals under pretext of
scientific research, by imprisonment, varying between five weeks and two
years, and deprivation of civil rights. Other societies did not go quite
so far, but asked that some of their members should have a right of
entrance and inspection into the laboratories of the Faculties.
“He who takes more interest in animals than in Science and in the
knowledge of truth is not qualified to inspect officially things
pertaining to Science,” said Virchow. With an ironical gravity on his
quizzical wrinkled face, he added, “Where shall we be if a scientist who
has just begun a bonâ fide experiment finds himself, in the midst of his
researches, obliged to answer questions from a new-comer and afterwards
to defend himself before some magistrate for the crime of not having
chosen another method, other instruments, perhaps another experiment?...
“We must prove to the whole world the soundness of our cause,” concluded
Virchow, uneasy at those “leagues” which grew and multiplied, and
scattered through innumerable lecture halls the most fallacious
judgments on the work of scientists.
Pasteur might have brought him, to support his statements relative to
certain deviations of ideas and sentiments, numberless letters which
reached him regularly from England--letters full of threats, insults and
maledictions, devoting him to eternal torments for having multiplied his
crimes on the hens, guinea-pigs, dogs and sheep of the laboratory. Love
of animals carries some women to such lengths!
It would have been interesting, if, after Virchow’s speech, some French
physician had in his turn related a series of facts, showing how
prejudices equally tenacious had had to be struggled against in France,
and how savants had succeeded in enforcing the certainty that there can
be no pathological science if Physiology is not progressing, and that it
can only progress by means of the experimental method. Claude Bernard
had expressed this idea under so many forms that it would almost have
been enough to give a few extracts from his works.
In 1841, when he was Magendie’s curator, he was one day attending a
lesson on experimental physiology, when he saw an old man come in, whose
costume--a long coat with a straight collar and a hat with a very wide
brim--indicated a Quaker.
“Thou hast no right,” he said, addressing Magendie, “to kill animals or
to make them suffer. Thou givest a wicked example and thou accustomest
thy fellow creatures to cruelty.”
Magendie replied that it was a pity to look at it from that point of
view, and that a physiologist, when moved by the thought of making a
discovery useful to Medicine, and consequently useful to his fellow
creatures, did not deserve that reproach.
“Your countryman Harvey,” said he, hoping to convince him, “would not
have discovered the circulation of the blood if he had not made some
experiments in vivisection. That discovery was surely worth the
sacrifice of a few deer in Charles the First’s Park?”
But the Quaker stuck to his idea; his mission, he said, was to drive
three things from this world: war, hunting and shooting, and experiments
on live animals. Magendie had to show him out.
Three years later, Claude Bernard, in his turn, was taxed with
barbarity by a Police Magistrate. In order to study the digestive
properties of gastric juice, it had occurred to him to collect it by
means of a cannula, a sort of silver tap which he adapted to the stomach
of live dogs. A Berlin surgeon, M. Dieffenbach, who was staying in
Paris, expressed a wish to see this application of a cannula to the
stomach. M. Pelouze, the chemist, had a laboratory in the Rue Dauphine;
he offered it to Claude Bernard. A stray dog was used as a subject for
the experiment and shut up in the yard of the house, where Claude
Bernard wished to keep a watch on him. But, as the treatment in no wise
hindered the dog from running about, the door of the yard was hardly
opened when he escaped, cannula and all.
“A few days later,” writes Claude Bernard in the course of an otherwise
grave report concerning the progress of general physiology in France
(1867), “I was still in bed, early one morning, when I received a visit
from a man who came to tell men that the Police Commissary of the
Medicine School District wished to speak to me, and that I must go round
to see him. I went in the course of the day to the Police Commissariat
of the Rue du Jardinet; I found a very respectable-looking little old
man, who received me very coldly at first and without saying anything.
He took me into another room and showed me, to my great astonishment,
the dog on whom I had operated in M. Pelouze’s laboratory, asking me if
I confessed to having fixed that instrument in his stomach. I answered
affirmatively, adding that I was delighted to see my cannula, which I
thought I had lost. This confession, far from satisfying the Commissary,
apparently provoked his wrath, for he gave me an admonition of most
exaggerated severity, accompanied with threats for having had the
audacity to steal his dog to experiment on it.
“I explained that I had not stolen his dog, but that I had bought it of
some individuals who sold dogs to physiologists, and who claimed to be
employed by the police in picking up stray dogs. I added that I was
sorry to have been the involuntary cause of the grief occasioned in his
household by the misadventure to the dog, but that the animal would not
die of it; that the only thing to do was to let me take away my silver
cannula and let him keep his dog. Those last words altered the
Commissary’s language and completely calmed his wife and daughter. I
removed my instrument and left, promising to return, which I did the
next and following days. The dog was perfectly cured in a day or two,
and I became a friend of the family, completely securing the
Commissary’s future protection. It was on that account that I soon after
set up my laboratory in his District, and for many years continued my
private classes of experimental physiology, enjoying the protection and
warnings of the Commissary and thus avoiding much unpleasantness, until
the time when I was at last made an assistant to Magendie at the Collège
de France.”
The London Society for the Protection of Animals had the singular idea
of sending to Napoleon III complaints, almost remonstrances, on the
vivisection practised within the French Empire. The Emperor simply sent
on those English lamentations to the Academy of Medicine. The matter was
prolonged by academical speeches. In a letter addressed to M. Grandeau,
undated, but evidently written in August, 1863, Claude Bernard showed
some irritation, a rare thing with him. Declaring that he would not go
to the Academy and listen to the “nonsense” of “those who protect
animals in hatred of mankind” he gave his concluding epitome: “You ask
me what are the principal discoveries due to vivisection, so that you
can mention them as arguments for that kind of study. All the knowledge
possessed by experimental physiology can be quoted in that connection;
there is not a single fact which is not the direct and necessary
consequence of vivisection. From Galen, who, by cutting the laryngeal
nerves, learnt their use for respiration and the voice, to Harvey, who
discovered circulation; Pecquet and Aselli, the lymphatic vessels;
Haller, muscular irritability; Bell and Magendie, the nervous functions,
and all that has been learnt since the extension of that method of
vivisection, which is the only experimental method; in biology, all that
is known on digestion, circulation, the liver, the sympathetic system,
the bones, Development--all, absolutely all, is the result of
vivisection, alone or combined with other means of study.”
In 1875, he again returned to this idea in his experimental medicine
classes at the Collège de France: “It is to experimentation that we owe
all our precise notions on the functions of the viscera and _a fortiori_
on the properties of such organs as muscles, nerves, etc.”
One more interesting quotation might have been offered to the members of
the Congress. A Swede had questioned Darwin on vivisection, for the
anti-vivisectionist propaganda was spreading on every side. Darwin, who,
like Pasteur, did not admit that useless suffering should be inflicted
on animals (Pasteur carried this so far that he would never, he said,
have had the courage to shoot a bird for sport)--Darwin, in a letter
dated April 14th, 1881, approved any measures that could be taken to
prevent cruelty, but he added: “On the other hand, I know that
physiology can make no progress if experiments on living animals are
suppressed, and I have an intimate conviction that to retard the
progress of physiology is to commit a crime against humanity.... Unless
one is absolutely ignorant of all that Science has done for humanity,
one must be convinced that physiology is destined to render incalculable
benefits in the future to man and even to animals. See the results
obtained by M. Pasteur’s work on the germs of contagious diseases: will
not animals be the first to profit thereby? How many lives have been
saved, how much suffering spared by the discovery of parasitic worms
following on experiments made by Virchow and others on living animals!”
The London Congress marked a step on the road of progress. Besides the
questions which were discussed and which were capable of precise
solution, the scientific spirit showed itself susceptible of permeating
other general subjects. Instead of remaining the impassive Sovereign we
are wont to fancy her, Science--and this was proved by Pasteur’s
discoveries and their consequences, as Paget, Tyndall, Lister, and
Priestley loudly proclaimed--Science showed herself capable of
associating with pure research and perpetual care for Truth a deep
feeling of compassion for all suffering and an ever-growing thirst for
self-sacrifice.
Pasteur’s speech at the London Medical Congress was printed at the
request of an English M.P. and distributed to all the members of the
House of Commons. Dr. H. Gueneau de Mussy, who had spent part of his
life in England, having followed the Orleans family into exile, wrote to
Pasteur on August 15, “I have been very happy in witnessing your
triumph; you are raising us up again in the eyes of foreign nations.”
Applause was to Pasteur but a stimulus to further efforts. He was proud
of his discoveries, but not vain of the effect they produced; he said in
a private letter: “The _Temps_ again refers, in a London letter, to my
speech at the Congress. What an unexpected success!”
Having heard that yellow fever had just been brought into the Gironde,
at the Pauillac lazaretto by the vessel _Condé_ from Senegal, Pasteur
immediately started for Bordeaux. He hoped to find the microbe in the
blood of the sick or the dead, and to succeed in cultivating it. M. Roux
hastened to join his master.
If people spoke to Pasteur of the danger of infection, “What does it
matter?” he said. “Life in the midst of danger is _the_ life, the real
life, the life of sacrifice, of example, of fruitfulness.”
He was vexed to find his arrival notified in the newspapers; it worried
him not to be able to work and to travel _incognito_.
On September 17, he wrote to Mme. Pasteur: “...We rowed out to a great
transport ship which is lying in the Pauillac roads, having just
arrived. From our boat, we were able to speak to the men of the crew.
Their health is good, but they lost seven persons at St. Louis, two
passengers and five men of the crew. Save the captain and one engineer,
they are all Senegalese negroes on that ship. We have been near another
large steamboat, and yet another; their health is equally good....
“The most afflicted ship is the _Condé_, which is in quarantine in the
Pauillac roads, and near which we have not been able to go. She has lost
eighteen persons, either at sea or at the lazaretto....”
No experiment could be attempted--the patients were convalescent. “But,”
he wrote the next day, “the _Richelieu_ will arrive between the 25th and
28th, I think with some passengers.... It is more than likely that there
will have been deaths during the passage, and patients for the
lazaretto. I am therefore awaiting the arrival of that ship with the
hope--God forgive a scientist’s passion!!--that I may attempt some
researches at the Pauillac lazaretto, where I will arrange things in
consequence. You may be sure I shall take every precaution. In the
meanwhile, what shall I do in Bordeaux?
“I have made the acquaintance of the young librarian of the town
library, which is a few doors from the Hôtel Richelieu, in the Avenues
of Tourny. The library is opened to me at all hours: I am there even
now, alone and very comfortably seated, surrounded with more Littré
than I can possibly get through.”
For some months, several members of the Académie Française--according to
the traditions of the Society which has ever thought it an honour to
number among its members scientists such as Cuvier, Flourens, Biot,
Claude Bernard, J. B. Dumas--had been urging Pasteur to become a
candidate to the place left vacant by Littré. Pasteur was anxious to
know not only the works, but the life of him whose place he might be
called upon to fill. It was with some emotion that he first came upon
the following lines printed on the title-page of the translation of the
works of Hippocrates; they are a dedication by Littré to the memory of
his father, a sergeant-major in the Marines under the Revolution.
“...Prepared by his lessons and by his example, I have been sustained
through this long work by his ever present memory. I wish to inscribe
his name on the first page of this book, in the writing of which he has
had so much share from his grave, so that the work of the father should
not be forgotten in the work of the son, and that a pious and just
gratitude should connect the work of the living with the heritage of the
dead....”
Pasteur in 1876 had obeyed a similar filial feeling when he wrote on the
first page of his _Studies on Beer_--
“To the memory of my father, a soldier under the first Empire, and a
knight of the Legion of Honour. The more I have advanced in age, the
better I have understood thy love and the superiority of thy reason. The
efforts I have given to these Studies and those which have preceded them
are the fruit of thy example and advice. Wishing to honour these pious
recollections, I dedicate this work to thy memory.”
The two dedications are very similar. Those two soldiers’ sons had kept
the virile imprint of the paternal virtues. A great tenderness was also
in them both; Littré, when he lost his mother, had felt a terrible
grief, comparable to Pasteur’s under the same circumstances.
In spite of Pasteur’s interest in studying Littré in the Bordeaux
library, he did not cease thinking of yellow fever. He often saw M.
Berchon, the sanitary director, and inquired of him whether there were
any news of the _Richelieu_. A young physician, Dr. Talmy, had expressed
a desire to join Pasteur at Bordeaux and to obtain permission, when the
time came, to be shut up with the patients in the lazaretto. Pasteur
wrote on December 25 to Mme. Pasteur: “There is nothing new save the
Minister’s authorization to Dr. Talmy to enter the lazaretto; I have
just telegraphed to him that he might start. The owners of the
_Richelieu_ still suppose that she will reach Pauillac on Tuesday. M.
Berchon, who is the first to be informed of what takes place in the
roads, will send me a telegram as soon as the _Richelieu_ is signalled,
and we shall then go--M. Talmy, Roux and I--to ascertain the state of
the ship, of course without going on board, which we should not be
allowed to do if it has a suspicious bill of health.”
And, as Mme. Pasteur had asked what happened when a ship arrived, he
continued in the same letter: “From his boat to windward, M. Berchon
receives the ship’s papers, giving the sanitary state of the ship day by
day. Before passing from the hands of the captain of the vessel to those
of the sanitary director, the papers are sprinkled over with chloride of
lime.
“If there are cases of illness, all the passengers are taken to the
lazaretto; only a few men are left on board the ship, which is
henceforth in quarantine, no one being allowed to leave or enter it.
“God permit that, in the body of one of those unfortunate victims of
medical ignorance, I may discover some specific microscopic being. And
after that? Afterwards, it would be really beautiful to make that agent
of disease and death become its own vaccine. Yellow fever is one of the
three great scourges of the East--bubonic plague, cholera, and yellow
fever. Do you know that it is already a fine thing to be able to put the
problem in those words!”
The _Richelieu_ arrived, but she was free from fever. The last passenger
had died during the crossing and his body had been thrown into the sea.
Pasteur left Bordeaux and returned to his laboratory.
CHAPTER XI
1882--1884
Pasteur was in the midst of some new experiments when he heard that the
date of the election to the Académie Française was fixed for December 8.
Certain candidates spent half their time in _fiacres_, paying the
traditional calls, counting the voters, calculating their chances, and
taking every polite phrase for a promise. Pasteur, with perfect
simplicity, contented himself with saying to the Academicians whom he
went to see, “I had never in my life contemplated the great honour of
entering the Académie Française. People have been kind enough to say to
me, ‘Stand and you will be elected.’ It is impossible to resist an
invitation so glorious for Science and so flattering to myself.”
One member of the Académie, Alexandre Dumas, refused to let Pasteur call
on him. “I will not allow him to come and see me,” he said; “I will
myself go and thank him for consenting to become one of us.” He agreed
with M. Grandeau, who wrote to Pasteur that “when Claude Bernard and
Pasteur consent to enter the ranks of a Society, all the honour is for
the latter.”
When Pasteur was elected, his youthfulness of sentiment was made
apparent; it seemed to him an immense honour to be one of the Forty. He
therefore prepared his reception speech with the greatest care, without
however allowing his scientific work to suffer. The life of his
predecessor interested him more and more; to work in the midst of family
intimacy had evidently been Littré’s ideal of happiness.
Few people, beyond Littré’s colleagues, know that his wife and daughter
collaborated in his great work; they looked out the quotations necessary
to that Dictionary, of which, if laid end to end, the columns would
reach a length of thirty-seven kilometres. The Dictionary, commenced in
1857, when Littré was almost sixty years old, was only interrupted
twice: in 1861, when Auguste Comte’s widow asked Littré for a biography
of the founder of positive philosophy; and in 1870, when the life of
France was compromised and arrested during long months.
Littré, poor and disinterested as he was, had been able to realize his
only dream, which was to possess a house in the country. Pasteur,
bringing to bear in this, as in all things, his habits of scrupulous
accuracy, left his laboratory for one day, and visited that villa,
situated near Maisons-Laffitte.
The gardener who opened the door to him might have been the owner of
that humble dwelling; the house was in a bad state of repair, but the
small garden gave a look of comfort to the little property. It had been
the only luxury of the philosopher, who enjoyed cultivating vegetables
while quoting Virgil, Horace or La Fontaine, and listened to the
nightingale when early dawn found him still sitting at his work.
After visiting this house and garden, reflecting as they did the life of
a sage, Pasteur said sadly, “Is it possible that such a man should have
been so misjudged!”
A crucifix, hanging in the room where Littré’s family were wont to work,
testified to his respect for the beliefs of his wife and daughter. “I
know too well,” he said one day, “what are the sufferings and
difficulties of human life, to wish to take from any one convictions
which may comfort them.”
Pasteur also studied the Positivist doctrine of which Auguste Comte had
been the pontiff and Littré the prophet. This scientific conception of
the world affirms nothing, denies nothing, beyond what is visible and
easily demonstrated. It suggests altruism, a “subordination of
personality to sociability,” it inspires patriotism and the love of
humanity. Pasteur, in his scrupulously positive and accurate work, his
constant thought for others, his self-sacrificing devotion to humanity,
might have been supposed to be an adept of this doctrine. But he found
it lacking in one great point. “Positivism,” he said, “does not take
into account the most important of positive notions, that of the
Infinite.” He wondered that Positivism should confine the mind within
limits; with an impulse of deep feeling, Pasteur, the scientist, the
slow and precise observer, wrote the following passage in his speech:
“What is beyond? the human mind, actuated by an invincible force, will
never cease to ask itself: What is beyond?... It is of no use to
answer: Beyond is limitless space, limitless time or limitless grandeur;
no one understands those words. He who proclaims the existence of the
Infinite--and none can avoid it--accumulates in that affirmation more of
the supernatural than is to be found in all the miracles of all the
religions; for the notion of the Infinite presents that double character
that it forces itself upon us and yet is incomprehensible. When this
notion seizes upon our understanding, we can but kneel.... I see
everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world;
through it, the supernatural is at the bottom of every heart. The idea
of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of
the Infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the
worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah,
or Jesus; and on the pavement of those temples, men will be seen
kneeling, prostrated, annihilated in the thought of the Infinite.”
At that time, when triumphant Positivism was inspiring many leaders of
men, the very man who might have given himself up to what he called “the
enchantment of Science” proclaimed the Mystery of the universe; with his
intellectual humility, Pasteur bowed before a Power greater than human
power. He continued with the following words, worthy of being preserved
for ever, for they are of those which pass over humanity like a Divine
breath: “Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and
who obeys it; ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel
virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions;
they all reflect light from the Infinite.”
Pasteur concluded by a supreme homage to Littré. “Often have I fancied
him seated by his wife, as in a picture of early Christian times: he,
looking down upon earth, full of compassion for human suffering; she, a
fervent Catholic, her eyes raised to heaven: he, inspired by all earthly
virtues; she, by every Divine grandeur; uniting in one impulse and in
one heart the twofold holiness which forms the aureole of the Man-God,
the one proceeding from devotion to humanity, the other emanating from
ardent love for the Divinity: she a saint in the canonic sense of the
word, he a lay-saint. This last word is not mine; I have gathered it on
the lips of all those that knew him.”
The two colleagues whom Pasteur had chosen for his Academic sponsors
were J. B. Dumas and Nisard. Dumas, who appreciated more than any one
the scientific progress due to Pasteur, and who applauded his brilliant
success, was touched by the simplicity and modesty which his former
pupil showed, now as in the distant past, when the then obscure young
man sat taking notes on the Sorbonne benches.
Their mutual relationship had remained unchanged when Pasteur,
accompanied by one of his family, rang at Dumas’ door in March, 1882,
with the manuscript of his noble speech in his pocket; he seemed more
like a student, respectfully calling on his master, than like a savant
affectionately visiting a colleague.
Dumas received Pasteur in a little private study adjoining the fine
drawing-room where he was accustomed to dispense an elegant hospitality.
Pasteur drew a stool up to a table and began to read, but in a shy and
hurried manner, without even raising his eyes towards Dumas, who
listened, enthroned in his armchair, with an occasional murmur of
approbation. Whilst Pasteur’s careworn face revealed some of his ardent
struggles and persevering work, nothing perturbed Dumas’ grave and
gentle countenance. His smile, at most times prudently affable and
benevolent in varying degree, now frankly illumined his face as he
congratulated Pasteur. He called to mind his own reception speech at the
Academy when he had succeeded Guizot, and the fact that he too had
concluded by a confession of faith in his Creator.
Pasteur’s other sponsor, Nisard, almost an octogenarian, was not so
happy as Dumas; death had deprived him of almost all his old friends. It
was a great joy to him when Pasteur came to see him on the wintry Sunday
afternoons; he fancied himself back again at the Ecole Normale and the
happy days when he reigned supreme in that establishment. Pasteur’s
deference, greater even perhaps than it had been in former times, aided
the delightful delusion. Though Nisard was ever inclined to bring a
shade of patronage into every intimacy, he was a conversationalist of
the old and rare stamp. Pasteur enjoyed hearing Nisard’s recollections
and watching for a smile lighting up the almost blind face. Those Sunday
talks reminded him of the old delightful conversations with Chappuis at
the Besançon College when, in their youthful fervour, they read together
André Chénier’s and Lamartine’s verses. Eighteen years later, Pasteur
had not missed one of Sainte Beuve’s lectures to the Ecole Normale
students; he liked that varied and penetrating criticism, opening
sidelights on every point of the literary horizon. Nisard understood
criticism rather as a solemn treaty, with clauses and conditions; with
his taste for hierarchy, he even gave different ranks to authors as if
they had been students before his chair. But, when he spoke, the
rigidity of his system was enveloped in the grace of his conversation.
Pasteur had but a restricted corner of his mind to give to literature,
but that corner was a privileged one; he only read what was really worth
reading, and every writer worthy of the name inspired him with more than
esteem, with absolute respect. He had a most exalted idea of Literature
and its influence on society; he was saying one day to Nisard that
Literature was a great educator: “The mind alone can if necessary
suffice to Science; both the mind and the heart intervene in Literature,
and that explains the secret of its superiority in leading the general
train of thought.” This was preaching to an apostle: no homage to
literature ever seemed too great in the eyes of Nisard.
He approved of the modest exordium in Pasteur’s speech--
“At this moment when presenting myself before this illustrious assembly,
I feel once more the emotion with which I first solicited your
suffrages. The sense of my own inadequacy is borne in upon me afresh,
and I should feel some confusion in finding myself in this place, were
it not my duty to attribute to Science itself the honour--so to speak,
an impersonal one--which you have bestowed upon me.”
The Permanent Secretary, Camille Doucet, well versed in the usages of
the Institute, and preoccupied with the effect produced, thought that
the public would not believe in such self-effacement, sincere as it was,
and sent the following letter to Pasteur with the proof-sheet of his
speech--
“Dear and honoured colleague, allow me to suggest to you a modification
of your first sentence; your modesty is excessive.”
Camille Doucet had struck out _the sense of my own inadequacy is borne
in upon me afresh_, and further _so to speak, an impersonal one_.
Pasteur consulted Nisard, and _the sense of my own inadequacy_ was
replaced by _the sense of my deficiencies_, while Pasteur adhered
energetically to _so to speak, an impersonal one_; he saw in his
election less a particular distinction than a homage rendered to Science
in general.
A reception at the Académie Française is like a sensational first night
at a theatre; a special public is interested days beforehand in every
coming detail. Wives, daughters, sisters of Academicians, great ladies
interested in coming candidates, widows of deceased Academicians,
laureates of various Academy prizes--the whole literary world agitates
to obtain tickets. Pasteur’s reception promised to be full of interest,
some even said piquancy, for it fell to Renan to welcome him.
In order to have a foretaste of the contrast between the two men it was
sufficient to recall Renan’s opening speech three years before, when he
succeeded Claude Bernard. His thanks to his colleagues began thus--
“Your cenaculum is only reached at the age of Ecclesiastes, a delightful
age of serene cheerfulness, when after a laborious prime, it begins to
be seen that all is but vanity, but also that some vain things are
worthy of being lingeringly enjoyed.”
The two minds were as different as the two speeches; Pasteur took
everything seriously, giving to words their absolute sense; Renan, an
incomparable writer, with his supple, undulating style, slipped away and
hid himself within the sinuosities of his own philosophy. He disliked
plain statements, and was ever ready to deny when others affirmed, even
if he afterwards blamed excessive negation in his own followers. He
religiously consoled those whose faith he destroyed, and, whilst
invoking the Eternal, claimed the right of finding fault even there.
When applauded by a crowd, he would willingly have murmured _Noli me
tangere_, and even added with his joyful mixture of disdain and
good-fellowship, “Let infinitely witty men come unto me.”
On that Thursday, April 27, 1882, the Institute was crowded. When the
noise had subsided, Renan, seated at the desk as Director of the Academy
between Camille Doucet, the Permanent Secretary, and Maxime du Camp, the
Chancellor, declared the meeting opened. Pasteur, looking paler than
usual, rose from his seat, dressed in the customary green-embroidered
coat of an Academician, wearing across his breast the Grand Cordon of
the Legion of Honour. In a clear, grave voice, he began by expressing
his deep gratification, and, with the absolute knowledge and sincerity
which always compelled the attention of his audience, of whatever kind,
he proceeded to praise his predecessor. There was no artifice of
composition, no struggle after effect, only a homage to the man,
followed almost immediately by a confession of dissent on philosophic
questions. He was listened to with attentive emotion, and when he showed
the error of Positivism in attempting to do away with the idea of the
Infinite, and proclaimed the instinctive and necessary worship by Man of
the great Mystery, he seemed to bring out all the weakness and the
dignity of Man--passing through this world bowed under the law of Toil
and with the prescience of the Ideal--into a startling and consolatory
light.
One of the privileges of the Academician who receives a new member is to
remain seated in his armchair before a table, and to comfortably prepare
to read his own speech, in answer, often in contradiction, to the first.
Renan, visibly enjoying the presidential chair, smiled at the audience
with complex feelings, understood by some who were his assiduous
readers. Respect for so much work achieved by a scientist of the first
rank in the world; a gratified feeling of the honour which reverted to
France; some personal pleasure in welcoming such a man in the name of
the Académie, and, at the same time, in the opportunity for a light and
ironical answer to Pasteur’s beliefs--all these sensations were
perceptible in Renan’s powerful face, the benevolence of whose soft blue
eyes was corrected by the redoubtable keenness of the smile.
He began in a caressing voice by acknowledging that the Academy was
somewhat incompetent to judge of the work and glory of Pasteur. “But,”
he added, with graceful eloquence, “apart from the ground of the
doctrine, which is not within our attributions, there is, Sir, a
greatness on which our experience of the human mind gives us a right to
pronounce an opinion; something which we recognize in the most varied
applications, which belongs in the same degree to Galileo, Pascal,
Michael-Angelo, or Molière; something which gives sublimity to the poet,
depth to the philosopher, fascination to the orator, divination to the
scientist.
“That common basis of all beautiful and true work, that divine fire,
that indefinable breath which inspires Science, Literature, and Art--we
have found it in you, Sir--it is Genius. No one has walked so surely
through the circles of elemental nature; your scientific life is like
unto a luminous tract in the great night of the Infinitesimally Small,
in that last abyss where life is born.”
After a brilliant and rapid enumeration of the Pastorian discoveries,
congratulating Pasteur on having touched through his art the very
confines of the springs of life, Renan went on to speak of truth as he
would have spoken of a woman: “Truth, Sir, is a great coquette; she will
not be sought with too much passion, but often is most amenable to
indifference. She escapes when apparently caught, but gives herself up
if patiently waited for; revealing herself after farewells have been
said, but inexorable when loved with too much fervour.” And further:
“Nature is plebeian, and insists upon work, preferring horny hands and
careworn brows.”
He then commenced a courteous controversy. Whilst Pasteur, with his
vision of the Infinite, showed himself as religious as Newton, Renan,
who enjoyed moral problems, spoke of Doubt with delectation. “The answer
to the enigma which torments and charms us will never be given to us....
What matters it, since the imperceptible corner of reality which we see
is full of delicious harmonies, and since life, as bestowed upon us, is
an excellent gift, and for each of us a revelation of infinite
goodness?”
Legend will probably hand to posterity a picture of Renan as he was in
those latter days, ironically cheerful and unctuously indulgent. But,
before attaining the quizzical tranquillity he now exhibited to the
Academy, he had gone through a complete evolution. When about the age of
forty-eight, he might bitterly have owned that there was not one basis
of thought which in him had not crumbled to dust. Beliefs, political
ideas, his ideal of European civilization, all had fallen to the ground.
After his separation from the Church, he had turned to historical
science; Germany had appeared to him, as once to Madame de Staël and so
many others, as a refuge for thinkers. It had seemed to him that a
collaboration between France, England, and Germany would create “An
invincible trinity, carrying the world along the road of progress
through reason.” But that German façade which he took for that of a
temple hid behind it the most formidable barracks which Europe had ever
known, and beside it were cannon foundries, death-manufactories, all the
preparations of the German people for the invasion of France. His
awakening was bitter; war as practised by the Prussians, with a method
in their cruelty, filled him with grief.
Time passed and his art, like a lily of the desert growing amongst
ruins, gave flowers and perfumes to surrounding moral devastation, A
mixture of disdain and nobility now made him regard as almost
imperceptible the number of men capable of understanding his
philosophical elevation. Pasteur had bared his soul; Renan took pleasure
in throwing light on the intellectual antithesis of certain minds, and
on their points of contact.
“Allow me, Sir, to recall to you your fine discovery of right and left
tartaric acids.... There are some minds which it is as impossible to
bring together as it is impossible, according to your own comparison, to
fit two gloves one into the other. And yet both gloves are equally
necessary; they complete each other. One’s two hands cannot be
superposed, they may be joined. In the vast bosom of nature, the most
diverse efforts, added to each other, combine with each other, and
result in a most majestic unity.”
Renan handled the French language, “this old and admirable language,
poor but to those who do not know it,” with a dexterity, a choice of
delicate shades, of tasteful harmonies which have never been surpassed.
Able as he was to define every human feeling, he went on from the above
comparison, painting divergent intellectual capabilities, to the
following imprecation against death: “Death, according to a thought
admired by M. Littré, is but a function, the last and quietest of all.
To me it seems odious, hateful, insane, when it lays its cold blind hand
on virtue and on genius. A voice is in us, which only great and good
souls can hear, and that voice cries unceasingly ‘Truth and Good are the
ends of thy life; sacrifice all to that goal’; and when, following the
call of that siren within us, claiming to bear the promises of life, we
reach the place where the reward should await us, the deceitful consoler
fails us. Philosophy, which had promised us the secret of death, makes a
lame apology, and the ideal which had brought us to the limits of the
air we breathe disappears from view at the supreme hour when we look for
it. Nature’s object has been attained; a powerful effort has been
realized, and then, with characteristic carelessness, the enchantress
abandons us and leaves us to the hooting birds of the night.”
Renan, save in one little sentence in his answer to Pasteur--“The divine
work accomplishes itself by the intimate tendency to what is Good and
what is True in the universe”--did not go further into the statement of
his doctrines. Perhaps he thought them too austere for his audience; he
was wont to eschew critical and religious considerations when in a
world which he looked upon as frivolous. Moreover, he thought his own
century amusing, and was willing to amuse it further. If he raised his
eyes to Heaven, he said that we owe virtue to the Eternal, but that we
have the right to add to it irony. Pasteur thought it strange that irony
should be applied to subjects which have beset so many great minds and
which so many simple hearts solve in their own way.
* * * * *
The week which followed Pasteur’s reception at the Académie Française
brought him a manifestation of applause in the provinces. The town of
Aubenas in the Ardèche was erecting a statue to Olivier de Serres, and
desired to associate with the name of the founder of the silk industry
in France in the sixteenth century that of its preserver in the
nineteenth.
This was the second time that a French town proclaimed its gratitude
towards Pasteur. A few months before, the Melun Agricultural Society had
held a special meeting in his honour, and had decided “to strike a medal
with Pasteur’s effigy on it, in commemoration of one of the greatest
services ever rendered by Science to Agriculture.”
But amidst this pæan of praise, Pasteur, instead of dwelling
complacently on the recollection of his experiments at Pouilly le Fort,
was absorbed in one idea, characteristic of the man: he wanted to at
once begin some experiments on the peripneumonia of horned cattle. The
veterinary surgeon, Rossignol, had just been speaking on this subject to
the meeting. Pasteur, who had recently been asked by the Committee of
Epizootic Diseases to inquire into the mortality often caused by the
inoculation of the peripneumonia virus, reminded his hearers in a few
words of the variable qualities of virus and how the slightest impurity
in a virus may exercise an influence on the effects of that virus.
He and his collaborators had vainly tried to cultivate the virus of
peripneumonia in chicken-broth, veal-broth, yeast-water, etc. They had
to gather the virus from the lung of a cow which had died of
peripneumonia, by means of tubes previously sterilized; it was injected,
with every precaution against alteration, under the skin of the tail of
the animal, this part being chosen on account of the thickness of the
skin and of the cellular tissue. By operating on other parts, serious
accidents were apt to occur, the virus being extremely violent, so much
so in fact that the local irritation sometimes went so far as to cause
the loss of part of the tail. At the end of the same year (1882),
Pasteur published in the _Recueil de la Médecine Vétérinaire_ a paper
indicating the following means of preserving the virus in a state of
purity--
“Pure virus remains virulent for weeks and months. One lung is
sufficient to provide large quantities of it, and its purity can easily
be tested in a stove and even in ordinary temperature. From one lung
only, enough can be procured to be used for many animals. Moreover,
without having recourse to additional lungs, the provision of virus
could be maintained in the following manner; it would suffice, before
exhausting the first stock of virus, to inoculate a young calf behind
the shoulder. Death speedily supervenes, and all the tissues are
infiltrated with a serosity, which in its turn becomes virulent. This
also can be collected and preserved in a state of purity.” It remained
to be seen whether virus thus preserved would become so attenuated as to
lose all degree of virulence.
Aubenas, then, wished to follow the example of Melun. In deference to
the unanimous wish of the inhabitants of the little town, Pasteur went
there on the 4th of May. His arrival was a veritable triumph; there were
decorations at the station, floral arches in the streets, brass and
other bands, speeches from the Mayor, presentation of the Municipal
Council, of the Chamber of Commerce, etc., etc. Excitement reigned
everywhere, and the music of the bands was almost drowned by the
acclamations of the people. At the meeting of the Agricultural Society,
Pasteur was offered a medal with his own effigy, and a work of art
representing genii around a cup, their hands full of cocoons. A little
microscope--that microscope which had been called an impracticable
instrument, fit for scientists only--figured as an attribute.
“For us all,” said the President of the Aubenas Spinning Syndicate, “you
have been the kindly magician whose intervention conjured away the
scourge which threatened us; in you we hail our benefactor.”
Pasteur, effacing his own personality as he had done at the Académie,
laid all this enthusiasm and gratitude as an offering to Science.
“I am not its object, but rather a pretext for it,” he said, and
continued: “Science has been the ruling passion of my life. I have lived
but for Science, and in the hours of difficulty which are inherent to
protracted efforts, the thought of France upheld my courage. I
associated her greatness with the greatness of Science.
“By erecting a statue to Olivier de Serres, the illustrious son of the
Vivarais, you give to France a noble example; you show to all that you
venerate great men and the great things they have accomplished. Therein
lies fruitful seed; you have gathered it, may your sons see it grow and
fructify. I look back upon the time, already distant, when, desirous of
responding to the suggestions of a kind and illustrious friend, I left
Paris to study in a neighbouring Department the scourge which was
decimating your _magnaneries_. For five years I struggled to obtain some
knowledge of the evil and the means of preventing it; and, after having
found it, I still had to struggle to implant in other minds the
convictions I had acquired.
“All that is past and gone now, and I can speak of it with moderation. I
am not often credited with that characteristic, and yet I am the most
hesitating of men, the most fearful of responsibility, so long as I am
not in possession of a proof. But when solid scientific proofs confirm
my convictions, no consideration can prevent me from defending what I
hold to be true.
“A man whose kindness to me was truly paternal (Biot) had for his motto:
_Per vias rectas_. I congratulate myself that I borrowed it from him. If
I had been more timid or more doubtful in view of the principles I had
established, many points of science and of application might have
remained obscure and subject to endless discussion. The hypothesis of
spontaneous generation would still throw its veil over many questions.
Your nurseries of silkworms would be under the sway of charlatanism,
with no guide to the production of good seed. The vaccination of
charbon, destined to preserve agriculture from immense losses, would be
misunderstood and rejected as a dangerous practice.
“Where are now all the contradictions? They pass away, and Truth
remains. After an interval of fifteen years, you now render it a noble
testimony. I therefore feel a deep joy in seeing my efforts understood
and celebrated in an impulse of sympathy which will remain in my memory
and in that of my family as a glorious recollection.”
Pasteur was not allowed to return at once to his laboratory. The
agricultors and veterinary surgeons of Nîmes, who had taken an interest
in all the tests on the vaccination of charbon, had, in their turn,
drawn up a programme of experiments.
Pasteur arrived at a meeting of the Agricultural Society of the Gard in
time to hear the report of the veterinary surgeons and to receive the
congratulations of the Society. The President expressed to him the
gratitude of all the cattle-owners and breeders, hitherto powerless to
arrest the progress of the disease which he had now vanquished. Whilst a
commemoration medal was being offered to him and a banquet being
prepared--for Southern enthusiasm always implies a series of
toasts--Pasteur thanked these enterprising men who were contemplating
new experiments in order to dispel the doubts of a few veterinary
surgeons, and especially the characteristic distrust, felt by some of
the shepherds, of everything that did not come from the South. Sheep,
oxen, and horses, some of them vaccinated, others intact, were put at
Pasteur’s disposal; he, with his usual energy, fixed the experiments for
the next morning at eight o’clock. After inoculating all the animals
with the charbon virus, Pasteur announced that those which had been
vaccinated would remain unharmed, but that the twelve unvaccinated sheep
would be dead or dying within forty-eight hours. An appointment was made
for next day but one, on May 11, at the town knacker’s, near the Bridge
of Justice, where post-mortem examinations were made. Pasteur then went
on to Montpellier, where he was expected by the Hérault Central Society
of Agriculture, who had also made some experiments and had asked him to
give a lecture at the Agricultural School. He entered the large hall,
feeling very tired, almost ill, but his face lighted up at the sight of
that assembly of professors and students who had hurried from all the
neighbouring Faculties, and those agricultors crowding from every part
of the Department, all of them either full of scientific curiosity or
moved by their agricultural interests. His voice, at first weak and
showing marks of weariness, soon became strengthened, and, forgetting
his fatigue, he threw himself into the subject of virulent and
contagious diseases. He gave himself up, heart and soul, to this
audience for two whole hours, inspiring every one with his own
enthusiasm. He stopped now and then to invite questions, and his answers
to the objectors swept away the last shred of resistance.
“We must not,” said the Vice-President of the Agricultural Society, M.
Vialla, “encroach further on the time of M. Pasteur, which belongs to
France itself. Perhaps, however he will allow me to prefer a last
request: he has delivered us from the terrible scourge of splenic fever;
will he now turn to a no less redoubtable infection, viz. rot, which is,
so to speak, endemic in our regions? He will surely find the remedy for
it.”
“I have hardly finished my experiments on splenic fever,” answered
Pasteur gently, “and you want me to find a remedy for rot! Why not for
phylloxera as well?” And, while regretting that the days were not
longer, he added, with the energy of which he had just given a new
proof: “As to efforts, I am yours _usque ad mortem_.”
He afterwards was the honoured guest at the banquet prepared for him. It
was now not only Sericiculture, but also Agriculture, which proclaimed
its infinite gratitude to him; he was given an enthusiastic ovation, in
which, as usual, he saw no fame for himself, but for work and science
only.
On May 11, at nine o’clock in the morning, he was again at Nîmes to meet
the physicians, veterinary surgeons, cattle-breeders, and shepherds at
the Bridge of Justice. Of the twelve sheep, six were already dead, the
others dying; it was easy to see that their symptoms were the same as
are characteristic of the ordinary splenic fever. “M. Pasteur gave all
necessary explanations with his usual modesty and clearness,” said the
local papers.
“And now let us go back to work!” exclaimed Pasteur, as he stepped into
the Paris express; he was impatient to return to his laboratory.
* * * * *
In order to give him a mark of public gratitude greater still than that
which came from this or that district, the Académie des Sciences
resolved to organize a general movement of Scientific Societies. It was
decided to present him with a medal, engraved by Alphée Dubois, and
bearing on one side Pasteur’s profile and on the other the inscription:
“To Louis Pasteur, his colleagues, his friends, and his admirers.”
On June 25, a Sunday, a delegation, headed by Dumas, and composed of
Boussingault, Bouley, Jamin, Daubrée, Bertin, Tisserand and Davaine
arrived at the Ecole Normale and found Pasteur in the midst of his
family.
“My dear Pasteur,” said Dumas, in his deep voice, “forty years ago, you
entered this building as a student. From the very first, your masters
foresaw that you would be an honour to it, but no one would have dared
to predict the startling services which you were destined to render to
science, France, and the world.”
And after summing up in a few words Pasteur’s great career, the sources
of wealth which he had discovered or revived, the benefits he had
acquired to medicine and surgery: “My dear Pasteur,” continued Dumas,
with an affectionate emotion, “your life has known but success. The
scientific method which you use in such a masterly manner owes you its
greatest triumphs. The Ecole Normale is proud to number you amongst its
pupils; the Académie des Sciences is proud of your work; France ranks
you amongst its glories.
“At this time, when marks of public gratitude are flowing towards you
from every quarter, the homage which we have come to offer you, in the
name of your admirers and friends, may seem worthy of your particular
attention. It emanates from a spontaneous and universal feeling, and it
will preserve for posterity the faithful likeness of your features.
“May you, my dear Pasteur, long live to enjoy your fame, and to
contemplate the rich and abundant fruit of your work. Science,
agriculture, industry, and humanity will preserve eternal gratitude
towards you, and your name will live in their annals amongst the most
illustrious and the most revered.”
Pasteur, standing with bowed head, his eyes full of tears, was for a few
moments unable to reply, and then, making a violent effort, he said in a
low voice--
“My dear master--it is indeed forty years since I first had the
happiness of knowing you, and since you first taught me to love science.
“I was fresh from the country; after each of your classes, I used to
leave the Sorbonne transported, often moved to tears. From that moment,
your talent as a professor, your immortal labours and your noble
character have inspired me with an admiration which has but grown with
the maturity of my mind.
“You have surely guessed my feelings, my dear master. There has not been
one important circumstance in my life or in that of my family, either
happy or painful, which you have not, as it were, blessed by your
presence and sympathy.
“Again to-day, you take the foremost rank in the expression of that
testimony, very excessive, I think, of the esteem of my masters, who
have become my friends. And what you have done for me, you have done
for all your pupils; it is one of the distinctive traits of your nature.
Behind the individual, you have always considered France and her
greatness.
“What shall I do henceforth? Until now, great praise had inflamed my
ardour, and only inspired me with the idea of making myself worthy of it
by renewed efforts; but that which you have just given me in the names
of the Académie and of the Scientific Societies is in truth beyond my
courage.”
Pasteur, who for a year had been applauded by the crowd, received on
that June 25, 1882, the testimony which he rated above every other:
praise from his master.
Whilst he recalled the beneficent influence which Dumas had had over
him, those who were sitting in his drawing-room at the Ecole Normale
were thinking that Dumas might have evoked similar recollections with
similar charm. He too had known enthusiasms which had illumined his
youth. In 1822, the very year when Pasteur was born, Dumas, who was then
living in a student’s attic at Geneva, received the visit of a man about
fifty, dressed Directoire fashion, in a light blue coat with steel
buttons, a white waistcoat and yellow breeches. It was Alexander von
Humboldt, who had wished, on his way through Geneva, to see the young
man who, though only twenty-two years old, had just published, in
collaboration with Prévost, treatises on blood and on urea. That visit,
the long conversations, or rather the monologues, of Humboldt had
inspired Dumas with the feelings of surprise, pride, gratitude and
devotion with which the first meeting with a great man is wont to fill
the heart of an enthusiastic youth. When Dumas heard Humboldt speak of
Laplace, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Arago, Thenard, Cuvier, etc., and
describe them as familiarly accessible, instead of as the awe-inspiring
personages he had imagined, Dumas became possessed with the idea of
going to Paris, knowing those men, living near them and imbibing their
methods. “On the day when Humboldt left Geneva,” Dumas used to say, “the
town for me became empty.” It was thus that Dumas’ journey to Paris was
decided on, and his dazzling career of sixty years begun.
He was now near the end of his scientific career, closing peacefully
like a beautiful summer evening, and he was happy in the fame of his
former pupil. As he left the Ecole Normale, on that June afternoon, he
passed under the windows of the laboratory, where a few young men,
imbued with Pasteur’s doctrines, represented a future reserve for the
progress of science.
* * * * *
That year 1882 was the more interesting in Pasteur’s life, in that
though victory on many points was quite indisputable, partial struggles
still burst out here and there, and an adversary often arose suddenly
when he had thought the engagement over.
The sharpest attacks came from Germany. The Record of the Works of the
German Sanitary Office had led, under the direction of Dr. Koch and his
pupils, a veritable campaign against Pasteur, whom they declared
incapable of cultivating microbes in a state of purity. He did not even,
they said, know how to recognize the septic vibrio, though he had
discovered it. The experiments by which hens contracted splenic fever
under a lowered temperature after inoculation signified nothing. The
share of the earthworms in the propagation of charbon, the inoculation
into guinea-pigs of the germs found in the little cylinders produced by
those worms followed by the death of the guinea-pigs, all this they said
was pointless and laughable. They even contested the preserving
influence of vaccination.
Whilst these things were being said and written, the Veterinary School
of Berlin asked the laboratory of the Ecole Normale for some charbon
vaccine. Pasteur answered that he wished that experiments should be made
before a commission nominated by the German Government. It was
constituted by the Minister of Agriculture and Forests, and Virchow was
one of the members of it. A former student of the Ecole Normale--who,
after leaving the school first on the list of competitors for the
_agrégation_ of physical science, had entered the laboratory--one in
whom Pasteur founded many hopes, Thuillier, left for Germany with his
little tubes of attenuated virus. Pasteur was not satisfied; he would
have liked to meet his adversaries face to face and oblige them publicly
to own their defeat. An opportunity was soon to arise. He had come to
Arbois, as usual, for the months of August and September, and was having
some alterations made in his little house. The tannery pits were being
filled up. “It will not improve the house itself,” he wrote to his son,
“but it will be made brighter and more comfortable by having a tidy yard
and a garden along the riverside.”
The Committee of the International Congress of Hygiene, which was to
meet at Geneva, interrupted these peaceful holidays by inviting Pasteur
to read a paper on attenuated virus. As a special compliment, the whole
of one meeting, that of Tuesday, September 5, was to be reserved for his
paper only. Pasteur immediately returned to work; he only consented
under the greatest pressure to go for a short walk on the Besançon road
at five o’clock every afternoon. After spending the whole morning and
the whole afternoon sitting at his writing table over laboratory
registers, he came away grumbling at being disturbed in his work. If any
member of his family ventured a question on the proposed paper, he
hastily cut them short, declaring that he must be let alone. It was only
when Mme. Pasteur had copied out in her clear handwriting all the little
sheets covered with footnotes, that the contents of the paper became
known.
When Pasteur entered the Congress Hall, great applause greeted him on
every side. The seats were occupied, not only by the physicians and
professors who form the usual audience of a congress, but also by
tourists, who take an interest in scientific things when they happen to
be the fashion.
Pasteur spoke of the invitation he had received. “I hastened to accept
it,” he said, “and I am pleased to find myself the guest of a country
which has been a friend to France in good as in evil days. Moreover, I
hoped to meet here some of the contradictors of my work of the last few
years. If a congress is a ground for conciliation, it is in the same
degree a ground for courteous discussion. We all are actuated by a
supreme passion, that of progress and of truth.”
Almost always, at the opening of a congress, great politeness reigns in
a confusion of languages. Men are seen offering each other pamphlets,
exchanging visiting cards, and only lending an inattentive ear to the
solemn speeches going on. This time, the first scene of the first act
suspended all private conversation. Pasteur stood above the assembly in
his full strength and glory. Though he was almost sixty, his hair had
remained black, his beard alone was turning grey. His face reflected
indomitable energy; if he had not been slightly lame, and if his left
hand had not been a little stiff, no one could have supposed that he had
been struck with paralysis fourteen years before. The feeling of the
place France should hold in an International Congress gave him a proud
look and an imposing accent of authority. He was visibly ready to meet
his adversaries and to make of this assembly a tribunal of judges.
Except for a few diplomats who at the first words exchanged anxious
looks at the idea of possible polemics, Frenchmen felt happy at being
better represented than any other nation. Men eagerly pointed out to
each other Dr. Koch, twenty-one years younger than Pasteur, who sat on
one of the benches, listening, with impassive eyes behind his gold
spectacles.
Pasteur analysed all the work he had done with the collaboration of MM.
Chamberland, Roux, and Thuillier. He made clear to the most ignorant
among his hearers his ingenious experiments either to obtain, preserve
or modify the virulence of certain microbes. “It cannot be doubted,” he
said, “that we possess a general method of attenuation.... The general
principles are found, and it cannot be disbelieved that the future of
those researches is rich with the greatest hopes. But, however obvious a
demonstrated truth may be, it has not always the privilege of being
easily accepted. I have met in France and elsewhere with some obstinate
contradictors.... Allow me to choose amongst them the one whose personal
merit gives him the greatest claims to our attention, I mean Dr Koch, of
Berlin.”
Pasteur then summed up the various criticisms which had appeared in the
Record of the Works of the German Sanitary Office. “Perhaps there may be
some persons in this assembly,” he went on, “who share the opinions of
my contradictors. They will allow me to invite them to speak; I should
be happy to answer them.”
Koch, mounting the platform, declined to discuss the subject,
preferring, he said, to make answer in writing later on. Pasteur was
disappointed; he would have wished the Congress, or at least a
Commission designated by Koch, to decide on the experiments. He resigned
himself to wait. On the following days, as the members of the Congress
saw him attending meetings on general hygiene, school hygiene, and
veterinary hygiene, they hardly recognized in the simple, attentive man,
anxious for instruction, the man who had defied his adversary. Outside
the arena, Pasteur became again the most modest of men, never allowing
himself to criticize what he had not thoroughly studied. But, when sure
of his facts, he showed himself full of a violent passion, the passion
of truth; when truth had triumphed, he preserved not the least
bitterness of former struggles.
That day of the 5th September was remembered in Geneva. “All the honour
was for France,” wrote Pasteur to his son; “that was what I had wished.”
* * * * *
He was already keen in the pursuit of another malady which caused great
damage, the “rouget” disease or swine fever. Thuillier, ever ready to
start when a demonstration had to be made or an experiment to be
attempted, had ascertained, in March, 1882, in a part of the Department
of the Vienne, the existence of a microbe in the swine attacked with
that disease.
In order to know whether this microbe was the cause of the evil, the
usual operations of the sovereign method had to be resorted to. First of
all, a culture medium had to be found which was suitable to the
micro-organism (veal broth was found to be very successful); then a drop
of the culture had to be abstracted from the little phials where the
microbe was developing and sown into other flasks; lastly the culture
liquid had to be inoculated into swine. Death supervened with all the
symptoms of swine fever; the microbe was therefore the cause of the
evil? Could it be attenuated and a vaccine obtained? Being pressed to
study that disease, and to find the remedy for it, by M. Maucuer, a
veterinary surgeon of the Department of Vaucluse, living at Bollène,
Pasteur started, accompanied by his nephew, Adrien Loir, and M.
Thuillier. The three arrived at Bollène on September 13.
“It is impossible to imagine more obliging kindness than that of those
excellent Maucuers,” wrote Pasteur to his wife the next day. “Where, in
what dark corner they sleep, in order to give us two bedrooms, mine and
another with two beds, I do not like to think. They are young, and have
an eight-year-old son at the Avignon College, for whom they have
obtained a half-holiday to-day in order that he may be presented to ‘M.
Pasteur.’ The two men and I are taken care of in a manner you might
envy. It is colder here and more rainy than in Paris. I have a fire in
my room, that green oak-wood fire that you will remember we had at the
Pont Gisquet.
“I was much pleased to hear that the swine fever is far from being
extinguished. There are sick swine everywhere, some dying, some dead, at
Bollène and in the country around; the evil is disastrous this year. We
saw some dead and dying yesterday afternoon. We have brought here a
young hog who is very ill, and this morning we shall attempt vaccination
at a M. de Ballincourt’s, who has lost all his pigs, and who has just
bought some more in the hope that the vaccine will be preservative. From
morning till night we shall be able to watch the disease and to try to
prevent it. This reminds me of the pébrine, with pigsties and sick pigs
instead of nurseries full of dying silkworms. Not ten thousand, but at
least twenty thousand swine have perished, and I am told it is worse
still in the Ardèche.”
On the 17th, the day was taken up by the inoculation of some pigs on the
estate of M. de la Gardette, a few kilometres from Bollène. In the
evening, a former State Councillor, M. de Gaillard, came at the head of
a delegation to compliment Pasteur and invite him to a banquet. Pasteur
declined this honour, saying he would accept it when the swine fever was
conquered. They spoke to him of his past services, but he had no thought
for them; like all progress-seeking men, he saw but what was before him.
Experiments were being carried out--he had hastened to have an
experimental pigsty erected near M. Maucuer’s house--and already, on the
21st, he wrote to Mme. Pasteur, in one of those letters which resembled
the loose pages of a laboratory notebook--
“Swine fever is not nearly so obscure to me now, and I am persuaded that
with the help of time the scientific and practical problem will be
solved.
“Three post-mortem examinations to-day. They take a long time, but that
seems of no account to Thuillier, with his cool and patient eagerness.”
Three days later: “I much regret not being able to tell you yet that I
am starting back for Paris. It is quite impossible to abandon all these
experiments which we have commenced; I should have to return here at
least once or twice. The chief thing is that things are getting clearer
with every experiment. You know that nowadays a medical knowledge of
disease is nothing; it must be prevented beforehand. We are attempting
this, and I think I can foresee success; but keep this for yourself and
our children. I embrace you all most affectionately.
“P.S.--I have never felt better. Send me 1,000 fr.; I have but 300 fr.
left of the 1,600 fr. I brought. Pigs are expensive, and we are killing
a great many.”
At last on December 8: “I am sending M. Dumas a note for to-morrow’s
meeting at the Academy. If I had time I would transcribe it for the
laboratory and for René.”
“Our researches”--thus ran the report to the Academy--“may be summed up
in the following propositions--
“I. The swine fever, or rouget disease, is produced by a special
microbe, easy to cultivate outside the animal’s body. It is so tiny that
it often escapes the most attentive search. It resembles the microbe of
chicken cholera more than any other; its shape is also that of a figure
8, but finer and less visible than that of the cholera. It differs
essentially from the latter by its physiological properties; it kills
rabbits and sheep, but has no effect on hens.
“II. If inoculated in a state of purity into pigs, in almost
inappreciable doses, it speedily brings the fever and death, with all
the characteristics usual in _spontaneous_ cases. It is most deadly to
the white, so-called improved, race, that which is most sought after by
pork-breeders.
“III. Dr. Klein published in London (1878) an extensive work on swine
fever which he calls _Pneumo-enteritis of Swine_; but that author is
entirely mistaken as to the nature of the parasite. He has described as
the microbe of the rouget a bacillus with spores, more voluminous even
than the bacteridium of splenic fever. Dr. Klein’s microbe is very
different from the true microbe of swine fever, and has, besides, no
relation to the etiology of that disease.
“IV. After having satisfied ourselves by direct tests that the malady
does not recur, we have succeeded in inoculating in a benignant form,
after which the animal has proved refractory to the mortal disease.
“V. Though we consider that further control experiments are necessary,
we have already great confidence in this, that, dating from next spring,
vaccination by the virulent microbe of swine fever, attenuated, will
become the salvation of pigsties.”
Pasteur ended thus his letter of December 3: “We shall start to-morrow,
Monday. Adrien Loir and I shall sleep at Lyons. Thuillier will go
straight to Paris, to take care of ten little pigs which we have bought,
and which he will take with him. In this way they will not be kept
waiting at stations. Pigs, young and old, are very sensitive to cold;
they will be wrapped up in straw. They are very young and quite
charming; one cannot help getting fond of them.”
The next day Pasteur wrote to his son: “Everything has gone off well,
and we much hope, Thuillier and I, that preventive vaccination of this
evil can be established in a practical fashion. It would be a great
boon in pork-breeding countries, where terrible ravages are made by the
rouget (so called because the animals die covered with red or purple
blotches, already developed during the fever which precedes death). In
the United States, over a million swine died of this disease in 1879; it
rages in England and in Germany. This year, it has desolated the
Côtes-du-Nord, the Poitou, and the departments of the Rhone Valley. I
sent to M. Dumas yesterday a _résumé_ in a few lines of our results, to
be read at to-day’s meeting.”
Pasteur, once more in Paris, returned eagerly to his studies on divers
virus and on hydrophobia. If he was told that he over-worked himself, he
replied: “It would seem to me that I was committing a theft if I were to
let one day go by without doing some work.” But he was again disturbed
in the work he enjoyed by the contradictions of his opponents.
Koch’s reply arrived soon after the Bollène episode. The German
scientist had modified his views to a certain extent; instead of denying
the attenuation of virus as in 1881, he now proclaimed it as a discovery
of the first order. But he did not believe much, he said, in the
practical results of the vaccination of charbon.
Pasteur put forward, in response, a report from the veterinary surgeon
Boutet to the Chartres Veterinary and Agricultural School, made in the
preceding October. The sheep vaccinated in Eure et Loir during the last
year formed a total of 79,392. Instead of a mortality which had been
more than nine per cent, on the average in the last ten years, the
mortality had only been 518 sheep, much less than one per cent; 5,700
sheep had therefore been preserved by vaccination. Amongst cattle 4,562
animals had been vaccinated; out of a similar number 300 usually died
every year. Since vaccination, only eleven cows had died.
“Such results appear to us convincing,” wrote M. Boutet. “If our
cultivators of the Beauce understand their own interest, splenic fever
and malignant pustules will soon remain a mere memory, for charbon
diseases never are spontaneous, and, by preventing the death of their
cattle by vaccination, they will destroy all possibility of propagation
of that terrible disease, which will in consequence entirely disappear.”
Koch continued to smile at the discovery on the earthworms’ action in
the etiology of anthrax. “You are mistaken, Sir,” replied Pasteur. “You
are again preparing for yourself a vexing change of opinion.” And he
concluded as follows: “However violent your attacks, Sir, they will not
hinder the success of the method of attenuated virus. I am confidently
awaiting the consequences which it holds in reserve to help humanity in
its struggle against the diseases which assault it.”
This debate was hardly concluded when new polemics arose at the Académie
de Médecine. A new treatment of typhoid fever was under discussion.
In 1870, M. Glénard, a Lyons medical student, who had enlisted, was,
with many others, taken to Stettin as prisoner of war. A German
physician, Dr. Brand, moved with compassion by the sufferings of the
vanquished French soldiers, showed them great kindness and devotion. The
French student attached himself to him, helped him with his work, and
saw him treat typhoid fever with success by baths at 20° C. Brand prided
himself on this cold-bath treatment, which produced numerous cures. M.
Glénard, on his return to Lyons, remembering with confidence this method
of which he had seen the excellent results, persuaded the physician of
the Croix Rousse hospital, where he resided, to attempt the same
treatment. This was done for ten years, and nearly all the Lyons
practitioners became convinced that Brand’s method was efficacious. M.
Glénard came to Paris and read to the Academy of Medicine a paper on the
cold-bath treatment of typhoid fever. The Academy appointed a
commission, composed of civil and military physicians, and the
discussion was opened.
The oratorical display which had struck Pasteur when he first came to
the Académie de Médecine was much to the fore on that occasion; the
merely curious hearers of that discussion had an opportunity of enjoying
medical eloquence, besides acquiring information on the new treatment of
typhoid fever. There were some vehement denunciations of the microbe
which was suspected in typhoid fever. “You aim at the microbe and you
bring down the patient!” exclaimed one of the orators, who added, amidst
great applause, that it was time “to offer an impassable barrier to such
adventurous boldness and thus to preserve patients from the unforeseen
dangers of that therapeutic whirlwind!”
Another orator took up a lighter tone: “I do not much believe in that
invasion of parasites which threatens us like an eleventh plague of
Egypt,” said M. Peter. And attacking the scientists who meddled with
medicine, _chymiasters_ as he called them, “They have come to this,” he
said, “that in typhoid fevers they only see _the_ typhoid fever, in
typhoid fever, fever only, and in fever, increased heat. They have thus
reached that luminous idea that heat must be fought by cold. This
organism is on fire, let us pour water over it; it is a fireman’s
doctrine.”
Vulpian, whose grave mind was not unlike Pasteur’s, intervened, and said
that new attempts should not be discouraged by sneers. Without
pronouncing on the merits of the cold-bath method, which he had not
tried, he looked beyond this discussion, indicating the road which
theoretically seemed to him to lead to a curative treatment. The first
thing was to discover the agent which causes typhoid fever, and then,
when that was known, attempt to destroy or paralyse it in the tissues of
typhoid patients, or else to find drugs capable either of preventing the
aggressions of that agent or of annihilating the effects of that
aggression, “to produce, relatively to typhoid fever, the effect
determined by salicylate of soda in acute rheumatism of the
articulations.”
Beyond the restricted audience, allowed a few seats in the Académie de
Médecine, the general public itself was taking an interest in this
prolonged debate. The very high death rate in the army due to typhoid
fever was the cause of this eager attention. Whilst the German army,
where Brand’s method was employed, hardly lost five men out of a
thousand, the French army lost more than ten per thousand.
Whilst military service was not compulsory, epidemics in barracks were
looked upon with more or less compassionate attention. But the thought
that typhoid fever had been more destructive within the last ten years
than the most sanguinary battle now awakened all minds and hearts. Is
then personal fear necessary to awaken human compassion?
Bouley, who was more given to propagating new doctrines than to
lingering on such philosophical problems, thought it was time to
introduce into the debate certain ideas on the great problems tackled by
medicine since the discovery of what might be called a fourth kingdom in
nature, that of microbia. In a statement read at the Académie de
Médecine, he formulated in broad lines the rôle of the infinitesimally
small and their activity in producing the phenomena of fermentations and
diseases. He showed by the parallel works of Pasteur on the one hand,
and M. Chauveau on the other, that contagion is the function of a living
element. “It is especially,” said Bouley, “on the question of the
prophylaxis of virulent diseases that the microbian doctrine has given
the most marvellous results. To seize upon the most deadly virus, to
submit them to a methodical culture, to cause modifying agents to act
upon them in a measured proportion, and thus to succeed in attenuating
them in divers degrees, so as to utilize their strength, reduced but
still efficacious, in transmitting a benignant malady by means of which
immunity is acquired against the deadly disease: what a beautiful
dream!! And M. Pasteur has made that dream into a reality!!!...”
The debate widened, typhoid fever became a mere incident. The pathogenic
action of the infinitesimally small entered into the discussion;
traditional medicine faced microbian medicine. M. Peter rushed once more
to the front rank for the fight. He declared that he did not apply the
term _chymiaster_ to Pasteur; he recognized that it was but “fair to
proclaim that we owe to M. Pasteur’s researches the most useful
practical applications in surgery and in obstetrics.” But considering
that medicine might claim more independence, he repeated that the
discovery of the material elements of virulent diseases did not throw so
much light as had been said, either on pathological anatomy, on the
evolution, on the treatment or especially on the prophylaxis of virulent
diseases. “Those are but natural history curiosities,” he added,
“interesting no doubt, but of very little profit to medicine, and not
worth either the time given to them or the noise made about them. After
so many laborious researches, nothing will be changed in medicine, there
will only be a few more microbes.”
A newspaper having repeated this last sentence, a professor of the
Faculty of Medicine, M. Cornil, simply recalled how, at the time when
the acarus of itch had been discovered, many partisans of old doctrines
had probably exclaimed, “What is your acarus to me? Will it teach me
more than I know already?” “But,” added M. Cornil, “the physician who
had understood the value of that discovery no longer inflicted internal
medication upon his patients to cure them of what seemed an inveterate
disease, but merely cured them by means of a brush and a little
ointment.”
M. Peter, continuing his violent speech, quoted certain vaccination
failures, and incompletely reported experiments, saying, grandly: “M.
Pasteur’s excuse is that he is a chemist, who has tried, out of a wish
to be useful, to reform medicine, to which he is a complete stranger....
“In the struggle I have undertaken the present discussion is but a
skirmish; but, to judge from the reinforcements which are coming to me,
the _mêlée_ may become general, and victory will remain, I hope, to the
larger battalions, that is to say, to the ‘old medicine.’”
Bouley, amazed that M. Peter should thus scout the notion of microbia
introduced into pathology, valiantly fought this “skirmish” alone. He
recalled the discussions à propos of tuberculosis, so obscure until a
new and vivifying notion came to simplify the solution of the problem.
“And you reject that solution! You say, ‘What does it matter to me?’...
What! M. Koch, of Berlin--who with such discoveries as he has made might
well abstain from envy--M. Koch points out to you the presence of
bacteria in tubercles, and that seems to you of no importance? But that
microbe gives you the explanation of those contagious properties of
tuberculosis so well demonstrated by M. Villemin, for it is the
instrument of virulence itself which is put under your eyes.”
Bouley then went on to refute the arguments of M. Peter, epitomized the
history of the discovery of the attenuation of virus, and all that this
method of cultures possible in an extra-organic medium might suggest
that was hopeful for a vaccine of cholera and of yellow fever, which
might be discovered one day and protect humanity against those terrible
scourges. He concluded thus--“Let M. Peter do what I have done; let him
study M. Pasteur, and penetrate thoroughly into all that is admirable,
through the absolute certainty of the results, in the long series of
researches which have led him from the discovery of ferments to that of
the nature of virus; and then I can assure him that instead of decrying
this great glory of France, of whom we must all be proud, he too will
feel himself carried away by enthusiasm and will bow with admiration and
respect before the chemist, who, though not a physician, illumines
medicine and dispels, in the light of his experiments, a darkness which
had hitherto remained impenetrable.”
A year before this (Peter had not failed to report the fact) an
experiment of anthrax vaccination had completely failed at the Turin
Veterinary School. All the sheep, vaccinated and non-vaccinated, had
succumbed subsequently to the inoculation of the blood of a sheep which
had died of charbon.
This took place in March, 1882. As soon as Pasteur heard of this
extraordinary fiasco, which seemed the counterpart of the
Pouilly-le-Fort experiment, he wrote on April 16 to the director of the
Turin Veterinary School, asking on what day the sheep had died the blood
of which had been used for the virulent inoculation.
The director answered simply that the sheep had died on the morning of
March 22, and that its blood had been inoculated during the course of
the following day. “There has been,” said Pasteur, “a grave scientific
mistake; the blood inoculated was septic as well as full of charbon.”
Though the director of the Turin Veterinary School affirmed that the
blood had been carefully examined and that it was in no wise septic,
Pasteur looked back on his 1877 experiments on anthrax and septicæmia,
and maintained before the Paris Central Veterinary Society on June 8,
1882, that the Turin School had done wrong in using the blood of an
animal at least twenty-four hours after its death, for the blood must
have been septic besides containing anthrax. The six professors of the
Turin School protested unanimously against such an interpretation. “We
hold it marvellous,” they wrote ironically, “that your Illustrious
Lordship should have recognized so surely, from Paris, the disease which
made such havoc amongst the animals vaccinated and non-vaccinated and
inoculated with blood containing anthrax in our school on March 23,
1882.
“It does not seem to us possible that a scientist should affirm the
existence of septicæmia in an animal he has not even seen....”
The quarrel with the Turin School had now lasted a year. On April 9,
1883, Pasteur appealed to the Academy of Sciences to judge of the Turin
incident and to put an end to this agitation, which threatened to cover
truth with a veil. He read out the letter he had just addressed to the
Turin professors.
“Gentlemen, a dispute having arisen between you and myself respecting
the interpretation to be given to the absolute failure of your control
experiment of March 23, 1882, I have the honour to inform you that, if
you will accept the suggestion, I will go to Turin any day you may
choose; you shall inoculate in my presence some virulent charbon into
any number of sheep you like. The exact moment of death in each case
shall be determined, and I will demonstrate to you that in every case
the blood of the corpse containing only charbon at the first will also
be septic on the next day. It will thus be established with absolute
certainty that the assertion formulated by me on June 8, 1882, against
which you have protested on two occasions, arises, not as you say, from
an arbitrary opinion, but from an immovable scientific principle; and
that I have legitimately affirmed from Paris the presence of septicæmia
without it being in the least necessary that I should have seen the
corpse of the sheep you utilized for your experiments.
“Minutes of the facts as they are produced shall be drawn up day by day,
and signed by the professors of the Turin Veterinary School and by the
other persons, physicians or veterinary surgeons, who may have been
present at the experiments; these minutes will then be published both at
the Academies of Turin and of Paris.”
Pasteur contented himself with reading this letter to the Academy of
Sciences. For months he had not attended the Academy of Medicine; he was
tired of incessant and barren struggles; he often used to come away from
the discussions worn out and excited. He would say to Messrs.
Chamberland and Roux, who waited for him after the meetings, “How is it
that certain doctors do not understand the range, the value, of our
experiments? How is it that they do not foresee the great future of all
these studies?”
The day after the Académie des Sciences meeting, judging that his letter
to Turin sufficiently closed the incident, Pasteur started for Arbois.
He wanted to set up a laboratory adjoining his house. Where the father
had worked with his hands, the son would work at his great
light-emitting studies.
On April 3 a letter from M. Peter had been read at the Academy of
Medicine, declaring that he did not give up the struggle and that
nothing would be lost by waiting.
At the following sitting, another physician, M. Fauvel, while declaring
himself an admirer of Pasteur’s work and full of respect for his person,
thought it well not to accept blindly all the inductions into which
Pasteur might find himself drawn, and to oppose those which were
contradictory to acquired facts. After M. Fauvel, M. Peter violently
attacked what he called “microbicidal drugs which may become homicidal,”
he said. When reading the account of this meeting, Pasteur had an
impulse of anger. His resolutions not to return to the Academy of
Medicine gave way before the desire not to leave Bouley alone to lead
the defensive campaign; he started for Paris.
As his family was then at Arbois, and the doors of his flat at the Ecole
Normale closed, the simplest thing for Pasteur was to go to the Hôtel du
Louvre, accompanied by a member of his family. The next morning he
carefully prepared his speech, and, at three o’clock in the afternoon,
he entered the Academy of Medicine. The President, M. Hardy, welcomed
him in these words--“Allow me, before you begin to speak, to tell you
that it is with great pleasure that we see you once again among us, and
that the Academy hopes that, now that you have once more found your way
to its precincts, you will not forget it again.”
After isolating and rectifying the points of discussion, Pasteur advised
M. Peter to make a more searching inquiry into the subject of anthrax
vaccination, and to trust to Time, the only sovereign judge. Should not
the recollection of the violent hostility encountered at first by Jenner
put people on their guard against hasty judgments? There was not one of
the doctors present who could not remember what had been written at one
time against vaccination!!!
He went on to oppose the false idea that each science should restrict
itself within its own limitations. “What do I, a physician, says M.
Peter, want with the minds of the chemist, the physicist and the
physiologist?
“On hearing him speak with so much disdain of the chemists and
physiologists who touch upon questions of disease, you might verily
think that he is speaking in the name of a science whose principles are
founded on a rock! Does he want proofs of the slow progress of
therapeutics? It is now six months since, in this assembly of the
greatest medical men, the question was discussed whether it is better to
treat typhoid fever with cold lotions or with quinine, with alcohol or
salicylic acid, or even not to treat it at all.
“And, when we are perhaps on the eve of solving the question of the
etiology of that disease by a microbe, M. Peter commits the medical
blasphemy of saying, ‘What do your microbes matter to me? It will only
be one microbe the more!’”
Amazed that sarcasm should be levelled against new studies which opened
such wide horizons, he denounced the flippancy with which a professor
of the Faculty of Medicine allowed himself to speak of vaccinations by
attenuated virus.
He ended by rejoicing once more that this great discovery should have
been a French one.
* * * * *
Pasteur went back to Arbois for a few days. On his return to Paris, he
was beginning some new experiments, when he received a long letter from
the Turin professors. Instead of accepting his offer, they enumerated
their experiments, asked some questions in an offended and ironical
manner, and concluded by praising an Italian national vaccine, which
produced absolute immunity in the future--when it did not kill.
“They cannot get out of this dilemma,” said Pasteur; “either they knew
my 1877 notes, unravelling the contradictory statements of Davaine,
Jaillard and Leplat, and Paul Bert, or they did not know them. If they
did not know them on March 22, 1882, there is nothing more to say; they
were not guilty in acting as they did, but they should have owned it
freely. If they did know them, why ever did they inoculate blood taken
from a sheep twenty-four hours after its death? They say that this blood
was not septic; but how do they know? They have done nothing to find
out. They should have inoculated some guinea-pigs, by choice, and then
tried some cultures in a vacuum to compare them with cultures in contact
with air. Why will they not receive me? A meeting between truth-seeking
men would be the most natural thing in the world!”
Still hoping to persuade his adversaries to meet him at Turin and be
convinced, Pasteur wrote to them. “_Paris, May 9, 1883._ Gentlemen--Your
letter of April 30 surprises me very much. What is in question between
you and me? That I should go to Turin, if you will allow me, to
demonstrate that sheep, dead of charbon, as numerous as you like, will,
for a few hours after their death, be exclusively infected with anthrax,
and that the day after their death they will present both anthrax and
septic infection; and that therefore, when, on March 23, 1882, wishing
to inoculate blood infected with anthrax only into sheep vaccinated and
non-vaccinated, you took blood from a carcase twenty-four hours after
death, you committed a grave scientific mistake.
“Instead of answering yes or no, instead of saying to me ‘Come to
Turin,’ or ‘Do not come,’ you ask me, in a manuscript letter of
seventeen pages, to send you from Paris, in writing, preliminary
explanations of all that I should have to demonstrate in Turin.
“Really, what is the good? Would not that lead to endless discussions?
It is because of the uselessness of a written controversy that I have
placed myself at your disposal.
“I have once more the honour of asking you to inform me whether you
accept the proposal made to you on April 9, that I should go to Turin to
place before your eyes the proofs of the facts I have just mentioned.
“P.S.--In order not to complicate the debate, I do not dwell upon the
many erroneous quotations and statements contained in your letter.”
M. Roux began to prepare an interesting curriculum of experiments to be
carried out at Turin. But the Turin professors wrote a disagreeable
letter, published a little pamphlet entitled _Of the Scientific
Dogmatism of the Illustrious Professor Pasteur_, and things remained as
they were.
All these discussions, renewed on so many divers points, were not
altogether a waste of time; some of them bore fruitful results by
causing most decisive proofs to be sought for. It has also made the path
of Pasteur’s followers wider and smoother that he himself should have
borne the brunt of the first opposition.
In the meanwhile, testimonials of gratitude continued to pour in from
the agricultors and veterinary surgeons who had seen the results of two
years’ practice of the vaccination against anthrax.
In the year 1882, 613,740 sheep and 83,946 oxen had been vaccinated. The
Department of the Cantal which had before lost about 3,000,000 fr. every
year, desired in June, 1883, on the occasion of an agricultural show, to
give M. Pasteur a special acknowledgement of their gratitude. It
consisted of a cup of silver-plated bronze, ornamented with a group of
cattle. Behind the group--imitating in this the town of Aubenas, who had
made a microscope figure as an attribute of honour--was represented, in
small proportions, an instrument which found itself for the first time
raised to such an exalted position, the little syringe used for
inoculations.
Pasteur was much pressed to come himself and receive this offering from
a land which would henceforth owe its fortune to him. He allowed
himself to be persuaded, and arrived, accompanied as usual by his
family.
The Mayor, surrounded by the municipal councillors, greeted him in these
words: “Our town of Aurillac is very small, and you will not find here
the brilliant population which inhabits great cities; but you will find
minds capable of understanding the scientific and humanitarian mission
which you have so generously undertaken. You will also find hearts
capable of appreciating your benefits and of preserving the memory of
them; your name has been on all our lips for a long time.”
Pasteur, visiting that local exhibition, did not resemble the official
personages who listen wearily to the details given them by a staff of
functionaries. He thought but of acquiring knowledge, going straight to
this or that exhibitor and questioning him, not with perfunctory
politeness, but with a real desire for practical information; no detail
seemed to him insignificant. “Nothing should be neglected,” he said;
“and a remark from a rough labourer who does well what he has to do is
infinitely precious.”
After visiting the products and agricultural implements, Pasteur was met
in the street by a peasant who stopped and waved his large hat,
shouting, “Long live Pasteur!”... “You have saved my cattle,” continued
the man, coming up to shake hands with him.
Physicians in their turn desired to celebrate and to honour him who,
though not a physician, had rendered such service to medicine.
Thirty-two of them assembled to drink his health. The head physician of
the Aurillac Hospital, Dr. Fleys, said in proposing the toast: “What the
mechanism of the heavens owes to Newton, chemistry to Lavoisier, geology
to Cuvier, general anatomy to Bichat, physiology to Claude Bernard,
pathology and hygiene will owe to Pasteur. Unite with me, dear
colleagues, and let us drink to the fame of the illustrious Pasteur, the
precursor of the medicine of the future, a benefactor to humanity.”
* * * * *
This glorious title was now associated with his name. In the first rank
of his enthusiastic admirers came the scientists, who, from the point of
view of pure science, admired the achievements, within those thirty-five
years, of that great man whose perseverance equalled his penetration.
Then came the manufacturers, the sericicultors, and the agricultors, who
owed their fortune to him who had placed every process he discovered
into the public domain. Finally, France could quote the words of the
English physiologist, Huxley, in a public lecture at the London Royal
Society: “Pasteur’s discoveries alone would suffice to cover the war
indemnity of five milliards paid by France to Germany in 1870.”
To that capital was added the inestimable price of human lives saved.
Since the antiseptic method had been adopted in surgical operations, the
mortality had fallen from 50 per 100 to 5 per 100.
In the lying-in hospitals, more than decimated formerly (for the
statistics had shown a death-rate of not only 100 but 200 per 1,000),
the number of fatalities was now reduced to 3 per 1,000 and soon
afterwards fell to 1 per 1,000. And, in consequence of the principles
established by Pasteur, hygiene was growing, developing, and at last
taking its proper place in the public view. So much progress
accomplished had brought Pasteur a daily growing acknowledgment of
gratitude, his country was more than proud of him. His powerful mind,
allied with his very tender heart, had brought to French glory an
aureole of charity.
The Government of the Republic remembered that England had voted two
national rewards to Jenner, one in 1802 and one in 1807, the first of
£10,000, and the second of £20,000. It was at the time of that
deliberation that Pitt, the great orator, exclaimed, “Vote, gentlemen,
your gratitude will never reach the amount of the service rendered.”
The French Ministry proposed to augment the 12,000 fr. pension accorded
to Pasteur in 1874 as a national recompense, and to make it 25,000 fr.,
to revert first to Pasteur’s widow, and then to his children. A
Commission was formed and Paul Bert again chosen to draw up the report.
On several occasions at the meetings of the commission one of its
members, Benjamin Raspail, exalted the parasitic theory propounded in
1843 by his own father. His filial pleading went so far as to accuse
Pasteur of plagiarism. Paul Bert, whilst recognizing the share
attributed by F. V. Raspail to microscopic beings, recalled the fact
that his attempt in favour of epidemic and contagious diseases had not
been adopted by scientists. “No doubt,” he said, “the parasitic origin
of the itch was now definitely accepted, thanks in a great measure to
the efforts of Raspail; but generalizations were considered as out of
proportion to the fact they were supposed to rest on. It seemed
excessive to conclude from the existence of the acarus of itch, visible
to the naked eye or with the weakest magnifying glass, the presence of
microscopic parasites in the humours of virulent diseases.... Such
hypotheses can be considered but as a sort of intuition.”
“Hypotheses,” said Pasteur, “come into our laboratories in armfuls; they
fill our registers with projected experiments, they stimulate us to
research--and that is all.” One thing only counted for him: experimental
verification.
Paul Bert, in his very complete report, quoted Huxley’s words to the
Royal Society and Pitt’s words to the House of Commons. He stated that
since the first Bill had been voted, a new series of discoveries, no
less marvellous from a theoretical point of view and yet more important
from a practical point of view, had come to strike the world of Science
with astonishment and admiration.” Recapitulating Pasteur’s works, he
said--
“They may be classed in three series, constituting three great
discoveries.
“The first one may be formulated thus: _Each fermentation is produced by
the development of a special microbe_.
“_The second one may be given this formula: Each infectious disease_
(those at least that M. Pasteur and his immediate followers have
studied) _is produced by the development within the organism of a
special microbe_.
“The third one may be expressed in this way: _The microbe of an
infectious disease, cultivated under certain detrimental conditions, is
attenuated in its pathogenic activity; from a virus it has become a
vaccine_.
“As a practical consequence of the first discovery, M. Pasteur has given
rules for the manufacture of beer and of vinegar, and shown how beer and
wine may be preserved against secondary fermentations which would turn
them sour, bitter or slimy, and which render difficult their transport
and even their preservation on the spot.
“As a practical consequence of the second discovery, M. Pasteur has
given rules to be followed to preserve cattle from splenic fever
contamination, and silkworms from the diseases which decimated them.
Surgeons, on the other hand, have succeeded, by means of the guidance it
afforded, in effecting almost completely the disappearance of erysipelas
and of the purulent infections which formerly brought about the death
of so many patients after operations.
“As a practical consequence of the third discovery, M. Pasteur has given
rules for, and indeed has effected, the preservation of horses, oxen,
and sheep from the anthrax disease which every year kills in France
about 20,000,000 francs’ worth. Swine will also be preserved from the
rouget disease which decimates them, and poultry from the cholera which
makes such terrible havoc among them. Everything leads us to hope that
rabies will also soon be conquered.” When Paul Bert was congratulated on
his report, he said, “Admiration is such a good, wholesome thing!!”
The Bill was voted by the Chamber, and a fortnight later by the Senate,
unanimously. Pasteur heard the first news through the newspapers, for he
had just gone to the Jura. On July 14, he left Arbois for Dôle, where he
had promised to be present at a double ceremony.
* * * * *
On that national holiday, a statue of Peace was to be inaugurated, and a
memorial plate placed on the house where Pasteur was born; truly a
harmonious association of ideas. The prefect of the Jura evidently felt
it when, while unveiling the statue in the presence of Pasteur, he said:
“This is Peace, who has inspired Genius and the great services it has
rendered.” The official procession, followed by popular acclamation,
went on to the narrow Rue des Tanneurs. When Pasteur, who had not seen
his native place since his childhood, found himself before that tannery,
in the low humble rooms of which his father and mother had lived, he
felt himself the prey to a strong emotion.
The mayor quoted these words from the resolutions of the Municipal
Council: “M. Pasteur is a benefactor of Humanity, one of the great men
of France; he will remain for all Dôlois and in particular those who,
like him, have risen from the ranks of the people, an object of respect
as well as an example to follow; we consider that it is our duty to
perpetuate his name in our town.”
The Director of Fine Arts, M. Kaempfen, representing the Government at
the ceremony, pronounced these simple words: “In the name of the
Government of the Republic, I salute the inscription which commemorates
the fact that in this little house, in this little street, was born, on
December 27, 1822, he who was to become one of the greatest scientists
of this century so great in science, and who has, by his admirable
labours, increased the glory of France and deserved well of the whole of
humanity.”
The feelings in Pasteur’s heart burst forth in these terms: “Gentlemen,
I am profoundly moved by the honour done to me by the town of Dôle; but
allow me, while expressing my gratitude, to protest against this excess
of praise. By according to me a homage rendered usually but to the
illustrious dead, you anticipate too much the judgment of posterity.
Will it ratify your decision? and should not you, Mr. Mayor, have
prudently warned the Municipal Council against such a hasty resolution?
“But after protesting, gentlemen, against the brilliant testimony of an
admiration which is more than I deserve, let me tell you that I am
touched, moved to the bottom of my soul. Your sympathy has joined on
that memorial plate the two great things which have been the passion and
the delight of my life: the love of Science and the cult of the home.
“Oh! my father, my mother, dear departed ones, who lived so humbly in
this little house, it is to you that I owe everything. Thy enthusiasm,
my brave-hearted mother, thou hast instilled it into me. If I have
always associated the greatness of Science with the greatness of France,
it is because I was impregnated with the feelings that thou hadst
inspired. And thou, dearest father, whose life was as hard as thy hard
trade, thou hast shown to me what patience and protracted effort can
accomplish. It is to thee that I owe perseverance in daily work. Not
only hadst thou the qualities which go to make a useful life, but also
admiration for great men and great things. To look upwards, learn to the
utmost, to seek to rise ever higher, such was thy teaching. I can see
thee now, after a hard day’s work, reading in the evening some story of
the battles in the glorious epoch of which thou wast a witness. Whilst
teaching me to read, thy care was that I should learn the greatness of
France.
“Be ye blessed, my dear parents, for what ye have been, and may the
homage done to-day to your little house be yours!
“I thank you, gentlemen, for the opportunity of saying aloud what I have
thought for sixty years. I thank you for this fête and for your welcome,
and I thank the town of Dôle, which loses sight of none of her
children, and which has kept such a remembrance of me.”
“Nothing is more exquisite,” wrote Bouley to Pasteur, “than those
feelings of a noble heart, giving credit to the parents’ influence for
all the glory with which their son has covered their name. All your
friends recognized you, and you appeared under quite a new light to
those who may have misjudged your heart by knowing of you only the
somewhat bitter words of some of your Academy speeches, when the love of
truth has sometimes made you forgetful of gentleness.”
It might have seemed that after so much homage, especially when offered
in such a delicate way as on this last occasion, Pasteur had indeed
reached a pinnacle of fame. His ambition however was not satisfied. Was
it then boundless, in spite of the modesty which drew all hearts towards
him? What more did he wish? Two great things: to complete his studies on
hydrophobia and to establish the position of his collaborators--whose
name he ever associated with his work--as his acknowledged successors.
* * * * *
A few cases of cholera had occurred at Damietta in the month of June.
The English declared that it was but endemic cholera, and opposed the
quarantines. They had with them the majority of the Alexandria Sanitary
Council, and could easily prevent sanitary measures from being taken. If
the English, voluntarily closing their eyes to the dangers of the
epidemic, had wished to furnish a new proof of the importation of
cholera, they could not have succeeded better. The cholera spread, and
by July 14 it had reached Cairo. Between the 14th and 22nd there were
five hundred deaths per day.
Alexandria was threatened. Pasteur, before leaving Paris for Arbois,
submitted to the Consulting Committee of Public Hygiene the idea of a
French Scientific Mission to Alexandria. “Since the last epidemic in
1865,” he said, “science has made great progress on the subject of
transmissible diseases. Every one of those diseases which has been
subjected to a thorough study has been found by biologists to be
produced by a microscopic being developing within the body of man or of
animals, and causing therein ravages which are generally mortal. All the
symptoms of the disease, all the causes of death depend directly upon
the physiological properties of the microbe.... What is wanted at this
moment to satisfy the preoccupations of science is to inquire into the
primary cause of the scourge. Now the present state of knowledge demands
that attention should be drawn to the possible existence within the
blood, or within some organ, of a micro-organism whose nature and
properties would account in all probability for all the peculiarities of
cholera, both as to the morbid symptoms and the mode of its propagation.
The proved existence of such a microbe would soon take precedence over
the whole question of the measures to be taken to arrest the evil in its
course, and might perhaps suggest new methods of treatment.”
Not only did the Committee of Hygiene approve of Pasteur’s project, but
they asked him to choose some young men whose knowledge would be
equalled by their devotion. Pasteur only had to look around him. When,
on his return to the laboratory, he mentioned what had taken place at
the Committee of Hygiene, M. Roux immediately offered to start. A
professor at the Faculty of Medicine who had some hospital practice, M.
Straus, and a professor at the Alfort Veterinary School, M. Nocard, both
of whom had been authorised to work in the laboratory, asked permission
to accompany M. Roux. Thuillier had the same desire, but asked for
twenty-four hours to think over it.
The thought of his father and mother, who had made a great many
sacrifices for his education, and whose only joy was to receive him at
Amiens, where they lived, during his short holidays, made him hesitate.
But the thought of duty overcame his regrets; he put his papers and
notes in order and went to see his dear ones again. He told his father
of his intention, but his mother did not know of it. At the time when
the papers spoke of a French commission to study cholera, his elder
sister, who loved him with an almost motherly tenderness, said to him
suddenly, “You are not going to Egypt, Louis? swear that you are not!”
“I am not going to swear anything,” he answered, with absolute calm;
adding that he might some time go to Russia to proceed to some
vaccination of anthrax, as he had done at Buda-Pesth in 1881. When he
left Amiens nothing in his farewells revealed his deep emotion; it was
only from Marseilles that he wrote the truth.
Administrative difficulties retarded the departure of the Commission,
which only reached Egypt on August 15. Dr. Koch had also come to study
cholera. The head physician of the European hospital, Dr. Ardouin,
placed his wards at the entire disposal of the French savants. In a
certain number of cases, it was possible to proceed to post-mortem
examinations immediately after death, before putrefaction had begun. It
was a great thing from the point of view of the search after a
pathogenic micro-organism as well as from the anatomo-pathological point
of view.
The contents of the intestines and the characteristic stools of the
cholera patients offered a great variety of micro-organisms. But which
was really the cause of cholera? The most varied modes of culture were
attempted in vain. The same negative results followed inoculations into
divers animal species, cats, dogs, swine, monkeys, pigeons, rabbits,
guinea-pigs, etc., made with the blood of cholerics or with the contents
of their bowels. Experiments were made with twenty-four corpses. The
epidemic ceased unexpectedly. Not to waste time, while waiting for a
reappearance of the disease, the French Commission took up some
researches on cattle plague. Suddenly a telegram from M. Roux informed
Pasteur that Thuillier had succumbed to an attack of cholera.
“I have just heard the news of a great misfortune,” wrote Pasteur to J.
B. Dumas on September 19; “M. Thuillier died yesterday at Alexandria of
cholera. I have telegraphed to the Mayor of Amiens asking him to break
the news to the family.
“Science loses in Thuillier a courageous representative with a great
future before him. I lose a much-loved and devoted pupil; my laboratory
one of its principal supports.
“I can only console myself for this death by thinking of our beloved
country and all he has done for it.”
Thuillier was only twenty-six. How had this happened? Had he neglected
any of the precautions which Pasteur had written down before the
departure of the Commission, and which were so minute as to be thought
exaggerated?
Pasteur remained silent all day, absolutely overcome. The head of the
laboratory, M. Chamberland, divining his master’s grief, came to Arbois.
They exchanged their sorrowful thoughts, and Pasteur fell back into his
sad broodings.
A few days later, a letter from M. Roux related the sad story:
“_Alexandria, September 21._ Sir and dear master--Having just heard that
an Italian ship is going to start, I am writing a few lines without
waiting for the French mail. The telegraph has told you of the terrible
misfortune which has befallen us.”
M. Roux then proceeded to relate in detail the symptoms presented by the
unfortunate young man, who, after going to bed at ten o’clock,
apparently in perfect health, had suddenly been taken ill about three
o’clock in the morning of Saturday, September 15. At eight o’clock, all
the horrible symptoms of the most violent form of cholera were apparent,
and his friends gave him up for lost. They continued their desperate
endeavours however, assisted by the whole staff of French and Italian
doctors.
“By dint of all our strength, all our energy, we protracted the struggle
until seven o’clock on Wednesday morning, the 19th. The asphyxia, which
had then lasted twenty-four hours, was stronger than our efforts.
“Your own feelings will help you to imagine our grief.
“The French colony and the medical staff are thunderstruck. Splendid
funeral honours have been rendered to our poor Thuillier.
“He was buried at four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, with the finest
and most imposing manifestation Alexandria had seen for a long time.
“One very precious and affecting homage was rendered by the German
Commission with a noble simplicity which touched us all very much.
“M. Koch and his collaborators arrived when the news spread in the town.
They gave utterance to beautiful and touching words to the memory of our
dead friend. When the funeral took place, those gentlemen brought two
wreaths which they themselves nailed on the coffin. ‘They are simple,’
said M. Koch, ‘but they are of laurel, such as are given to the brave.’
“M. Koch hold one corner of the pall. We embalmed our comrade’s body; he
lies in a sealed zinc coffin. All formalities have been complied with,
so that his remains may be brought back to France when the necessary
time has expired. In Egypt the period of delay is a whole year.
“The French colony desires to erect a monument to the memory of Louis
Thuillier.
“Dear master, how much more I should like to tell you! The recital of
the sad event which happened so quickly would take pages. This blow is
altogether incomprehensible. It was more than a fortnight since we had
seen a single case of cholera; we were beginning to study cattle-plague.
“Of us all, Thuillier was the one who took most precautions; he was
irreproachably careful.
“We are writing by this post a few lines to his family, in the names of
all of us.
“Such are the blows cholera can strike at the end of an epidemic! Want
of time forces me to close this letter. Pray believe in our respectful
affection.”
The whole of the French colony, who received great marks of sympathy
from the Italians and other foreigners, wished to perpetuate the memory
of Thuillier. Pasteur wrote, on October 16, to a French physician at
Alexandria, who had informed him of this project:
“I am touched with the generous resolution of the French colony at
Alexandria to erect a monument to the memory of Louis Thuillier. That
valiant and beloved young man was deserving of every honour. I know,
perhaps better than any one, the loss inflicted on science by his cruel
death. I cannot console myself, and I am already dreading the sight of
the dear fellow’s empty place in my laboratory.”
On his return to Paris, Pasteur read a paper to the Academy of Sciences,
in his own name and in that of Thuillier, on the now well-ascertained
mode of vaccination for swine-fever. He began by recalling Thuillier’s
worth:
“Thuillier entered my laboratory after taking the first rank at the
Physical Science Agrégation competition at the Ecole Normale. His was a
deeply meditative, silent nature; his whole person breathed a virile
energy which struck all those who knew him. An indefatigable worker, he
was ever ready for self-sacrifice.”
A few days before, M. Straus had given to the Biology Society a summary
statement of the studies of the Cholera Commission, concluding thus:
“The documents collected during those two months are far from solving
the etiological problem of cholera, but will perhaps not be useless for
the orientation of future research.”
The cholera bacillus was put in evidence, later on, by Dr. Koch, who had
already suspected it during his researches in Egypt.
* * * * *
Glory, which had been seen in the battlefield at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, now seemed to elect to dwell in the laboratory,
that “temple of the future” as Pasteur called it. From every part of the
world, letters reached Pasteur, appeals, requests for consultations.
Many took him for a physician. “He does not cure individuals,” answered
Edmond About one day to a foreigner who was under that misapprehension;
“he only tries to cure humanity.” Some sceptical minds were predicting
failure to his studies on hydrophobia. This problem was complicated by
the fact that Pasteur was trying in vain to discover and isolate the
specific microbe.
He was endeavouring to evade that difficulty; the idea pursued him that
human medicine might avail itself of “the long period of incubation of
hydrophobia, by attempting to establish, during that interval before the
appearance of the first rabic symptoms, a refractory condition in the
subjects bitten.”
At the beginning of the year 1884, J. B. Dumas enjoyed following from a
distance Pasteur’s readings at the Académie des Sciences. His failing
health and advancing age (he was more than eighty years old) had forced
him to spend the winter in the South of France. On January 26, 1884, he
wrote to Pasteur for the last time, à propos of a book[32] which was a
short summary of Pasteur’s discoveries and their concatenation:
“Dear colleague and friend,--I have read with a great and sincere
emotion the picture of your scientific life drawn by a faithful and
loving hand.
“Myself a witness and a sincere admirer of your happy efforts, your
fruitful genius and your imperturbable method, I consider it a great
service rendered to Science, that the accurate and complete whole should
be put before the eyes of young people.
“It will make a wholesome impression on the public in general; to young
scientists, it will be an initiation, and to those who, like me, have
passed the age of labour it will bring happy memories of youthful
enthusiasm.
“May Providence long spare you to France, and maintain in you that
admirable equilibrium between the mind that observes, the genius that
conceives, and the hand that executes with a perfection unknown until
now.”
This was a last proof of Dumas’ affection for Pasteur. Although his life
was now fast drawing to its close, his mental faculties were in no wise
impaired, for we find him three weeks later, on February 20, using his
influence as Permanent Secretary of the Academy to obtain the Lacaze
prize for M. Cailletet, the inventor of the well-known apparatus for the
liquefaction of gases.
J. B. Dumas died on April 11, 1884. Pasteur was then about to start for
Edinburgh on the occasion of the tercentenary of the celebrated Scotch
University. The “Institut de France,” invited to take part in these
celebrations, had selected representatives from each of the five
Academies: the Académie Française was sending M. Caro; the Academy of
Sciences, Pasteur and de Lesseps; the Academy of Moral Sciences, M.
Gréard; the Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, M. Perrot; and the
Academy of Fine Arts, M. Eugène Guillaume. The Collège de France sent M.
Guillaume Guizot, and the Academy of Medicine Dr. Henry Gueneau de
Mussy.
Pasteur much wished to relinquish this official journey; the idea that
he would not be able to follow to the grave the incomparable teacher of
his youth, the counsellor and confidant of his life, was infinitely
painful to him.
He was however reconciled to it by one of his colleagues, M. Mézières,
who was going to Edinburgh on behalf of the Minister of Public
Instruction, and who pointed out to him that the best way of honouring
Dumas’ memory lay in remembering Dumas’ chief object in life--the
interests of France. Pasteur went, hoping that he would have an
opportunity of speaking of Dumas to the Edinburgh students.
In London, the French delegates had the pleasant surprise of finding
that a private saloon had been reserved to take Pasteur and his friends
to Edinburgh. This hospitality was offered to Pasteur by one of his
numerous admirers, Mr. Younger, an Edinburgh brewer, as a token of
gratitude for his discoveries in the manufacture of beer. He and his
wife and children welcomed Pasteur with the warmest cordiality, when the
train reached Edinburgh; the principal inhabitants of the great Scotch
city vied with each other in entertaining the French delegates, who were
delighted with their reception.
The next morning, they, and the various representatives from all parts
of the world, assembled in the Cathedral of St. Giles, where, with the
exalted feeling which, in the Scotch people, mingles religious with
political life, the Town Council had decided that a service should
inaugurate the rejoicings. The Rev. Robert Flint, mounting that pulpit
from which the impetuous John Knox, Calvin’s friend and disciple, had
breathed forth his violent fanaticism, preached to the immense assembly
with a full consciousness of the importance of his discourse. He spoke
of the relations between Science and Faith, of the absolute liberty of
science in the realm of facts, of the thought of God considered as a
stimulant to research, progress being but a Divine impulse.
In the afternoon, the students imparted life and merriment into the
proceedings; they had organized a dramatic performance, the members of
the orchestra, even, being undergraduates.
The French delegates took great interest in the system of this
University. Accustomed as they were to look upon the State as sole
master and dispenser, they now saw an independent institution, owing its
fortune to voluntary contributions, revealing in every point the power
of private enterprise. Unlike what takes place in France, where
administrative unity makes itself felt in the smallest village, the
British Government effaces itself, and merely endeavours to inspire
faith in political unity. Absolutely her own mistress, the University of
Edinburgh is free to confer high honorary degrees on her distinguished
visitors. However, these honorary diplomas are but of two kinds, viz.:
Doctor of Divinity (D.D.) and Doctor of Laws (LL.D.). In 1884, seventeen
degrees of D.D. and 122 degrees of LL.D. were reserved for the various
delegates. “The only laws I know,” smilingly said the learned Helmholtz,
“are the laws of Physics.”
The solemn proclamation of the University degrees took place on
Thursday, April 17. The streets and monuments of the beautiful city were
decorated with flags, and an air of rejoicing pervaded the whole
atmosphere.
The ceremony began by a special prayer, alluding to the past, looking
forward to the future, and asking for God’s blessing on the delegates
and their countries. The large assembly filled the immense hall where
the Synod of the Presbyterian Church holds its meetings. The Chancellor
and the Rector of the University were seated on a platform with a large
number of professors; those who were about to receive honorary degrees
occupied seats in the centre of the hall; about three thousand students
found seats in various parts of the hall.
The Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh had arranged that the new
graduates should be called in alphabetical order. As each of them heard
his name, he rose and mounted the platform. The students took great
pleasure in heartily cheering those savants who had had most influence
on their studies. When Pasteur’s name was pronounced, a great silence
ensued; every one was trying to obtain a sight of him as he walked
towards the platform. His appearance was the signal for a perfect
outburst of applause; five thousand men rose and cheered him. It was
indeed a splendid ovation.
In the evening, a banquet was set out in the hall, which was hung with
the blue and white colours of the University; there were a thousand
guests, seated round twenty-eight tables, one of which, the high table,
was reserved for the speakers who were to propose the toasts, which were
to last four hours. Pasteur was seated next to Virchow; they talked
together of the question of rabies, and Virchow owned that, when he saw
Pasteur in 1881 about to tackle this question, he much doubted the
possibility of a solution. This friendly chat between two such men
proves the desirability of such gatherings; intercourse between the
greatest scientists can but lead to general peace and fraternity between
nations. After having read a telegram from the Queen, congratulating the
University and welcoming the guests, a toast was drunk to the Queen and
to the Royal Family, and a few words spoken by the representative of the
Emperor of Brazil. Pasteur then rose to speak:
“My Lord Chancellor, Gentlemen, the city of Edinburgh is now offering a
sight of which she may be proud. All the great scientific institutions,
meeting here, appear as an immense Congress of hopes and
congratulations. The honour and glory of this international rendezvous
deservedly belong to you, for it is centuries since Scotland united her
destinies with those of the human mind. She was one of the first among
the nations to understand that intellect leads the world. And the world
of intellect, gladly answering your call, lays a well-merited homage at
your feet. When, yesterday, the eminent Professor Robert Flint,
addressing the Edinburgh University from the pulpit of St. Giles,
exclaimed, ‘Remember the past and look to the future,’ all the
delegates, seated like judges at a great tribunal, evoked a vision of
past centuries and joined in a unanimous wish for a yet more glorious
future.
“Amongst the illustrious delegates of all nations who bring you an
assurance of cordial good wishes, France has sent to represent her those
of her institutions which are most representative of the French spirit
and the best part of French glory. France is ready to applaud whenever a
source of light appears in the world; and when death strikes down a man
of genius, France is ready to weep as for one of her own children. This
noble spirit of solidarity was brought home to me when I heard some of
you speak feelingly of the death of the illustrious chemist, J. B.
Dumas, a celebrated member of all your Academies, and only a few years
ago an eloquent panegyrist of your great Faraday. It was a bitter grief
to me that I had to leave Paris before his funeral ceremony; but the
hope of rendering here a last and solemn homage to that revered master
helped me to conquer my affliction. Moreover, gentlemen, men may pass,
but their works remain; we all are but passing guests of these great
homes of intellect, which, like all the Universities who have come to
greet you in this solemn day, are assured of immortality.”
Pasteur, having thus rendered homage to J. B. Dumas, and having
glorified his country by his presence, his speech and the great honours
conferred on him, would have returned home at once; but the
undergraduates begged to be allowed to entertain, the next day, some of
those men whom they looked upon as examples and whom they might never
see again.
Pasteur thanked the students for this invitation, which filled him with
pride and pleasure, for he had always loved young people, he said, and
continued, in his deep, stirring voice:
“Ever since I can remember my life as a man, I do not think I have ever
spoken for the first time with a student without saying to him, ‘Work
perseveringly; work can be made into a pleasure, and alone is profitable
to man, to his city, to his country.’ It is even more natural that I
should thus speak to you. The common soul (if I may so speak) of an
assembly of young men is wholly formed of the most generous feelings,
being yet illumined with the divine spark which is in every man as he
enters this world. You have just given a proof of this assurance, and I
have felt moved to the heart in hearing you applaud, as you have just
been doing, such men as de Lesseps, Helmholtz and Virchow. Your language
has borrowed from ours the beautiful word _enthusiasm_, bequeathed to us
by the Greeks: εν θεός, an inward God. It was almost with a divine
feeling that you just now cheered those great men.
“One of those of our writers who have best made known to France and to
Europe the philosophy of Robert Reid and Dugald Stewart said, addressing
young men in the preface of one of his works:--
“‘Whatever career you may embrace, look up to an exalted goal; worship
great men and great things.’
“Great things! You have indeed seen them. Will not this centenary remain
one of Scotland’s glorious memories? As to great men, in no country is
their memory better honoured than in yours. But, if work should be the
very life of your life, if the cult for great men and great things
should be associated with your every thought, that is still not enough.
Try to bring into everything you undertake the spirit of scientific
method, founded on the immortal works of Galileo, Descartes and Newton.
“You especially, medical students of this celebrated University of
Edinburgh--who, trained as you are by eminent masters, may aspire to the
highest scientific ambition--be you inspired by the experimental method.
To its principles, Scotland owes such men as Brewster, Thomson and
Lister.”
The speaker who had to respond on behalf of the students to the foreign
delegates expressed himself thus, directly addressing Pasteur:
“Monsieur Pasteur, you have snatched from nature secrets too carefully,
almost maliciously hidden. We greet in you a benefactor of humanity, all
the more so because we know that you admit the existence of spiritual
secrets, revealed to us by what you have just called the work of God in
us.
“Representatives of France, we beg you to tell your great country that
we are following with admiration the great reforms now being introduced
into every branch of your education, reforms which we look upon as
tokens of a beneficent rivalry and of a more and more cordial
intercourse--for misunderstandings result from ignorance, a darkness
lightened by the work of scientists.”
The next morning, at ten o’clock, crowds gathered on the station
platform with waving handkerchiefs. People were showing each other a
great Edinburgh daily paper, in which Pasteur’s speech to the
undergraduates was reproduced and which also contained the following
announcement in large print:
“In memory of M. Pasteur’s visit to Edinburgh, Mr. Younger offers to the
Edinburgh University a donation of £500.”
Livingstone’s daughter, Mrs. Bruce, on whom Pasteur had called the
preceding day, came to the station a few moments before the departure
of the train, bringing him a book entitled _The Life of Livingstone_.
The saloon carriage awaited Pasteur and his friends. They departed,
delighted with the hospitality they had received, and much struck with
the prominent place given to science and the welcome accorded to
Pasteur. “This is indeed glory,” said one of them. “Believe me,” said
Pasteur, “I only look upon it as a reason for continuing to go forward
as long as my strength does not fail me.”
CHAPTER XII
1884--1885
Amidst the various researches undertaken in his laboratory, one study
was placed by Pasteur above every other, one mystery constantly haunted
his mind--that of hydrophobia. When he was received at the Académie
Française, Renan, hoping to prove himself a prophet for once, said to
him: “Humanity will owe to you deliverance from a horrible disease and
also from a sad anomaly: I mean the distrust which we cannot help
mingling with the caresses of the animal in whom we see most of nature’s
smiling benevolence.”
The two first mad dogs brought into the laboratory were given to
Pasteur, in 1880, by M. Bourrel, an old army veterinary surgeon who had
long been trying to find a remedy for hydrophobia. He had invented a
preventive measure which consisted in filing down the teeth of dogs, so
that they should not bite into the skin; in 1874, he had written that
vivisection threw no light on that disease, the laws of which were
“impenetrable to science until now.” It now occurred to him that,
perhaps, the investigators in the laboratory of the Ecole Normale might
be more successful than he had been in his kennels in the Rue
Fontaine-au-Roi.
One of the two dogs he sent was suffering from what is called _dumb
madness_: his jaw hung, half opened and paralyzed, his tongue was
covered with foam, and his eyes full of wistful anguish; the other made
ferocious darts at anything held out to him, with a rabid fury in his
bloodshot eyes, and, in the hallucinations of his delirium, gave vent to
haunting, despairing howls.
Much confusion prevailed at that time regarding this disease, its seat,
its causes, and its remedy. Three things seemed positive: firstly, that
the rabic virus was contained in the saliva of the mad animals;
secondly, that it was communicated through bites; and thirdly, that the
period of incubation might vary from a few days to several months.
Clinical observation was reduced to complete impotence; perhaps
experiments might throw some light on the subject.
Bouley had affirmed in April, 1870, that the germ of the evil was
localized in the saliva, and a new fact had seemed to support this
theory. On December 10, 1880, Pasteur was advised by Professor
Lannelongue that a five-year-old child, bitten on the face a month
before, had just been admitted into the Hôpital Trousseau. The
unfortunate little patient presented all the characteristics of
hydrophobia: spasms, restlessness, shudders at the least breath of air,
an ardent thirst, accompanied with an absolute impossibility of
swallowing, convulsive movements, fits of furious rage--not one symptom
was absent. The child died after twenty-four hours of horrible
suffering--suffocated by the mucus which filled the mouth. Pasteur
gathered some of that mucus four hours after the child’s death, and
mixed it with water; he then inoculated this into some rabbits, which
died in less than thirty-six hours, and whose saliva, injected into
other rabbits, provoked an almost equally rapid death. Dr. Maurice
Raynaud, who had already declared that hydrophobia could be transmitted
to rabbits through the human saliva, and who had also caused the death
of some rabbits with the saliva of that same child, thought himself
justified in saying that those rabbits had died of hydrophobia.
Pasteur was slower in drawing conclusions. He had examined with a
microscope the blood of those rabbits which had died in the laboratory,
and had found in it a micro-organism; he had cultivated this organism in
veal broth, inoculated it into rabbits and dogs, and, its virulence
having manifested itself in these animals, their blood had been found to
contain that same microbe. “But,” added Pasteur at the meeting of the
Academy of Medicine (January 18, 1881), “I am absolutely ignorant of the
connection there may be between this new disease and hydrophobia.” It
was indeed a singular thing that the deadly issue of this disease should
occur so early, when the incubation period of hydrophobia is usually so
long. Was there not some unknown microbe associated with the rabic
saliva? This query was followed by experiments made with the saliva of
children who had died of ordinary diseases, and even with that of
healthy adults. Thuillier, following up and studying this saliva microbe
and its special virulence with his usual patience, soon applied to it
with success the method of attenuation by the oxygen in air. “What did
we want with a new disease?” said a good many people, and yet it was
making a stop forward to clear up this preliminary confusion. Pasteur,
in the course of a long and minute study of the saliva of mad dogs--in
which it was so generally admitted that the virulent principle of rabies
had its seat, that precautions against saliva were the only ones taken
at post-mortem examinations--discovered many other mistakes. If a
healthy dog’s saliva contains many microbes, licked up by the dog in
various kinds of dirt, what must be the condition of the mouth of a
rabid dog, springing upon everything he meets, to tear it and bite it?
The rabic virus is therefore associated with many other micro-organisms,
ready to play their part and puzzle experimentalists; abscesses, morbid
complications of all sorts, may intervene before the development of the
rabic virus. Hydrophobia might evidently be developed by the inoculation
of saliva, but it could not be confidently asserted that it would.
Pasteur had made endless efforts to inoculate rabies to rabbits solely
through the saliva of a mad dog; as soon as a case of hydrophobia
occurred in Bourrel’s kennels, a telegram informed the laboratory, and a
few rabbits were immediately taken round in a cab.
One day, Pasteur having wished to collect a little saliva from the jaws
of a rabid dog, so as to obtain it directly, two of Bourrel’s assistants
undertook to drag a mad bulldog, foaming at the mouth, from its cage;
they seized it by means of a lasso, and stretched it on a table. These
two men, thus associated with Pasteur in the same danger, with the same
calm heroism, held the struggling, ferocious animal down with their
powerful hands, whilst the scientist drew, by means of a glass tube held
between his lips, a few drops of the deadly saliva.
But the same uncertainty followed the inoculation of the saliva; the
incubation was so slow that weeks and months often elapsed whilst the
result of an experiment was being anxiously awaited. Evidently the
saliva was not a sure agent for experiments, and if more knowledge was
to be obtained, some other means had to be found of obtaining it.
Magendie and Renault had both tried experimenting with rabic blood, but
with no results, and Paul Bert had been equally unsuccessful. Pasteur
tried in his turn, but also in vain. “We must try other experiments,” he
said, with his usual indefatigable perseverance.
As the number of cases observed became larger, he felt a growing
conviction that hydrophobia has its seat in the nervous system, and
particularly in the medulla oblongata. “The propagation of the virus in
a rabid dog’s nervous system can almost be observed in its every stage,”
writes M. Roux, Pasteur’s daily associate in these researches, which he
afterwards made the subject of his thesis. “The anguish and fury due to
the excitation of the grey cortex of the brain are followed by an
alteration of the voice and a difficulty in deglutition. The medulla
oblongata and the nerves starting from it are attacked in their turn;
finally, the spinal cord itself becomes invaded and paralysis closes the
scene.”
As long as the virus has not reached the nervous centres, it may sojourn
for weeks or months in some point of the body; this explains the
slowness of certain incubations, and the fortunate escapes after some
bites from rabid dogs. The _a priori_ supposition that the virus attacks
the nervous centres went very far back; it had served as a basis to a
theory enunciated by Dr. Duboué (of Pau), who had, however, not
supported it by any experiments. On the contrary, when M. Galtier, a
professor at the Lyons Veterinary School, had attempted experiments in
that direction, he had to inform the Academy of Medicine, in January,
1881, that he had only ascertained the existence of virus in rabid dogs
in the lingual glands and in the bucco-pharyngeal mucous membrane. “More
than ten times, and always unsuccessfully, have I inoculated the product
obtained by pressure of the cerebral substances of the cerebellum or of
the medulla oblongata of rabid dogs.”
Pasteur was about to prove that it was possible to succeed by operating
in a special manner, according to a rigorous technique, unknown in other
laboratories. When the post-mortem examination of a mad dog had revealed
no characteristic lesion, the brain was uncovered, and the surface of
the medulla oblongata scalded with a glass stick, so as to destroy any
external dust or dirt. Then, with a long tube, previously put through a
flame, a particle of the substance was drawn and deposited in a glass
just taken from a stove heated up to 200° C., and mixed with a little
water or sterilized broth by means of a glass agitator, also previously
put through a flame. The syringe used for inoculation on the rabbit or
dog (lying ready on the operating board) had been purified in boiling
water.
Most of the animals who received this inoculation under the skin
succumbed to hydrophobia; that virulent matter was therefore more
successful than the saliva, which was a great result obtained.
“The seat of the rabic virus,” wrote Pasteur, “is therefore not in the
saliva only: the brain contains it in a degree of virulence at least
equal to that of the saliva of rabid animals.” But, to Pasteur’s eyes,
this was but a preliminary step on the long road which stretched before
him; it was necessary that all the inoculated animals should contract
hydrophobia, and the period of incubation had to be shortened.
* * * * *
It was then that it occurred to Pasteur to inoculate the rabic virus
directly on the surface of a dog’s brain. He thought that, by placing
the virus from the beginning in its true medium, hydrophobia would more
surely supervene and the incubation might be shorter. The experiment was
attempted: a dog under chloroform was fixed to the operating board, and
a small, round portion of the cranium removed by means of a trephine (a
surgical instrument somewhat similar to a fret-saw); the tough fibrous
membrane called the dura-mater, being thus exposed, was then injected
with a small quantity of the prepared virus, which lay in readiness in a
Pravaz syringe. The wound was washed with carbolic and the skin stitched
together, the whole thing lasting but a few minutes. The dog, on
returning to consciousness, seemed quite the same as usual. But, after
fourteen days, hydrophobia appeared: rabid fury, characteristic howls,
the tearing up and devouring of his bed, delirious hallucination, and
finally, paralysis and death.
A method was therefore found by which rabies was contracted surely and
swiftly. Trephinings were again performed on chloroformed
animals--Pasteur had a great horror of useless sufferings, and always
insisted on anæsthesia. In every case, characteristic hydrophobia
occurred after inoculation on the brain. The main lines of this
complicated question were beginning to be traceable; but other obstacles
were in the way. Pasteur could not apply the method he had hitherto
used, _i.e._ to isolate, and then to cultivate in an artificial medium,
the microbe of hydrophobia, for he failed in detecting this microbe. Yet
its existence admitted of no doubt; perhaps it was beyond the limits of
human sight. “Since this unknown being is living,” thought Pasteur, “we
must cultivate it; failing an artificial medium, let us try the brain
of living rabbits; it would indeed be an experimental feat!”
As soon as a trephined and inoculated rabbit died paralyzed, a little of
his rabic medulla was inoculated to another; each inoculation succeeded
another, and the time of incubation became shorter and shorter, until,
after a hundred uninterrupted inoculations, it came to be reduced to
seven days. But the virus, having reached this degree, the virulence of
which was found to be greater than that of the virus of dogs made rabid
by an accidental bite, now became fixed; Pasteur had mastered it. He
could now predict the exact time when death should occur in each of the
inoculated animals; his predictions were verified with surprising
accuracy.
Pasteur was not yet satisfied with the immense progress marked by
infallible inoculation and the shortened incubation; he now wished to
decrease the degrees of virulence--when the attenuation of the virus was
once conquered, it might be hoped that dogs could be made refractory to
rabies. Pasteur abstracted a fragment of the medulla from a rabbit which
had just died of rabies after an inoculation of the fixed virus; this
fragment was suspended by a thread in a sterilized phial, the air in
which was kept dry by some pieces of caustic potash lying at the bottom
of the vessel and which was closed by a cotton-wool plug to prevent the
entrance of atmospheric dusts. The temperature of the room where this
desiccation took place was maintained at 23° C. As the medulla gradually
became dry, its virulence decreased, until, at the end of fourteen days,
it had become absolutely extinguished. This now inactive medulla was
crushed and mixed with pure water, and injected under the skin of some
dogs. The next day they were inoculated with medulla which had been
desiccating for thirteen days, and so on, using increased virulence
until the medulla was used of a rabbit dead the same day. These dogs
might now be bitten by rabid dogs given them as companions for a few
minutes, or submitted to the intracranial inoculations of the deadly
virus: they resisted both.
Having at last obtained this refractory condition, Pasteur was anxious
that his results should be verified by a Commission. The Minister of
Public Instruction acceded to this desire, and a Commission was
constituted in May, 1884, composed of Messrs. Béclard, Dean of the
Faculty of Medicine, Paul Bert, Bouley, Villemin, Vulpian, and
Tisserand, Director of the Agriculture Office. The Commission
immediately set to work; a rabid dog having succumbed at Alfort on June
1, its carcase was brought to the laboratory of the Ecole Normale, and a
fragment of the medulla oblongata was mixed with some sterilized broth.
Two dogs, declared by Pasteur to be refractory to rabies, were
trephined, and a few drops of the liquid injected into their brains; two
other dogs and two rabbits received inoculations at the same time, with
the same liquid and in precisely the same manner.
Bouley was taking notes for a report to be presented to the Minister:
“M. Pasteur tells us that, considering the nature of the rabic virus
used, the rabbits and the two new dogs will develop rabies within twelve
or fifteen days, and that the two refractory dogs will not develop it at
all, however long they may be detained under observation.”
On May 29, Mme. Pasteur wrote to her children:
“The Commission on rabies met to-day and elected M. Bouley as chairman.
Nothing is settled as to commencing experiments. Your father is absorbed
in his thoughts, talks little, sleeps little, rises at dawn, and, in one
word, continues the life I began with him this day thirty-five years
ago.”
On June 3, Bourrel sent word that he had a rabid dog in the kennels of
the Rue Fontaine-au-Roi; a refractory dog and a new dog were immediately
submitted to numerous bites; the latter was violently bitten on the head
in several places. The rabid dog, still living the next day and still
able to bite, was given two more dogs, one of which was refractory; this
dog, and the refractory dog bitten on the 3rd, were allowed to receive
the first bites, the Commission having thought that perhaps the saliva
might then be more abundant and more dangerous.
On June 6, the rabid dog having died, the Commission proceeded to
inoculate the medulla of the animal into six more dogs, by means of
trephining. Three of those dogs were refractory, the three others were
fresh from the kennels; there were also two rabbits.
On the 10th, Bourrel telegraphed the arrival of another rabid dog, and
the same operations were gone through.
“This rabid, furious dog,” wrote Pasteur to his son-in-law, “had spent
the night lying on his master’s bed; his appearance had been suspicious
for a day or two. On the morning of the 10th, his voice became
rabietic, and his master, who had heard the bark of a rabid dog twenty
years ago, was seized with terror, and brought the dog to M. Bourrel,
who found that he was indeed in the biting stage of rabies. Fortunately
a lingering fidelity had prevented him from attacking his master....
“This morning the rabic condition is beginning to appear on one of the
new dogs trephined on June 1, at the same time as two refractory dogs.
Let us hope that the other new dog will also develop it and that the two
refractory ones will resist.”
At the same time that the Commission examined this dog which developed
rabies within the exact time indicated by Pasteur, the two rabbits on
whom inoculation had been performed at the same time were found to
present the first symptoms of rabic paralysis. “This paralysis,” noted
Bouley, “is revealed by great weakness of the limbs, particularly of the
hind quarters; the least shock knocks them over and they experience
great difficulty in getting up again.” The second new dog on whom
inoculation had been performed on June 1 was now also rabid; the
refractory dogs were in perfect health.
During the whole of June, Pasteur found time to keep his daughter and
son-in-law informed of the progress of events. “Keep my letters,” he
wrote, “they are almost like copies of the notes taken on the
experiments.”
Towards the end of the month, dozens of dogs were submitted to
control-experiments which were continued until August. The dogs which
Pasteur declared to be refractory underwent all the various tests made
with rabic virus; bites, injections into the veins, trephining,
everything was tried before Pasteur would decide to call them
vaccinated. On June 17, Bourrel sent word that the new dog bitten on
June 3 was becoming rabic; the members of the Commission went to the Rue
Fontaine-au-Roi. The period of incubation had only lasted fourteen days,
a fact attributed by Bouley to the bites having been chiefly about the
head. The dog was destroying his kennel and biting his chain
ferociously. More new dogs developed rabies the following days. Nineteen
new dogs had been experimented upon: three died out of six bitten by a
rabid dog, six out of eight after intravenous inoculation, and five out
of five after subdural inoculation. Bouley thought that a few more
cases might occur, the period of incubation after bites being so
extremely irregular.
Bouley’s report was sent to the Minister of Public Instruction at the
beginning of August. “We submit to you to-day,” he wrote, “this report
on the first series of experiments that we have just witnessed, in order
that M. Pasteur may refer to it in the paper which he proposes to read
at the Copenhagen International Scientific Congress on these magnificent
results, which devolve so much credit on French Science and which give
it a fresh claim to the world’s gratitude.”
The Commission wished that a large kennel yard might be built, in order
that the duration of immunity in protected dogs might be timed, and that
other great problem solved, viz., whether it would be possible, through
the inoculation of attenuated virus, to defy the virus from bites.
By the Minister’s request, the Commission investigated the Meudon woods
in search of a favourable site; an excellent place was found in the
lower part of the Park, away from dwelling houses, easy to enclose and
presumably in no one’s way. But, when the inhabitants of Meudon heard of
this project, they protested vehemently, evidently terrified at the
thought of rabid dogs, however securely bound, in their peaceful
neighbourhood.
Another piece of ground was then suggested to Pasteur, near St. Cloud,
in the Park of Villeneuve l’Etang. Originally a State domain, this
property had been put up for sale, but had found no buyer, not being
suitable for parcelling out in small lots; the Bill was withdrawn which
allowed of its sale and the greater part of the domain was devoted by
the Ministry to Pasteur’s and his assistants’ experiments on the
prophylaxis of contagious diseases.
Pasteur, his mind full of ideas, started for the International Medical
Congress, which was now to take place at Copenhagen. Sixteen hundred
members arranged to attend, and nearly all of them found on arriving
that they were to be entertained in the houses of private individuals.
The Danes carry hospitality to the most generous excess; several of them
had been learning French for the last three years, the better to
entertain the French delegates. Pasteur’s son, then secretary of the
French Legation at Copenhagen, had often spoken to his father with
appreciative admiration of those Northerners, who hide deep enthusiasm
under apparent calmness, almost coldness.
The opening meeting took place on August 10 in the large hall of the
Palace of Industry; the King and Queen of Denmark and the King and Queen
of Greece were present at that impressive gathering. The President,
Professor Panum, welcomed the foreign members in the name of his
country; he proclaimed the neutrality of Science, adding that the three
official languages to be used during the Congress would be French,
English, and German. His own speech was entirely in French, “the
language which least divides us,” he said, “and which we are accustomed
to look upon as the most courteous in the world.”
The former president of the London Congress, Sir James Paget, emphasized
the scientific consequences of those triennial meetings, showing that,
thanks to them, nations may calculate the march of progress.
Virchow, in the name of Germany, developed the same idea.
Pasteur, representing France, showed again as he had done at Milan in
1878, in London in 1881, at Geneva in 1882, and quite recently in
Edinburgh, how much the scientist and the patriot were one in him.
“In the name of France,” said he, “I thank M. le Président for his words
of welcome.... By our presence in this Congress, we affirm the
neutrality of Science ... Science is of no country.... But if Science
has no country, the scientist must keep in mind all that may work
towards the glory of his country. In every great scientist will be found
a great patriot. The thought of adding to the greatness of his country
sustains him in his long efforts, and throws him into the difficult but
glorious scientific enterprises which bring about real and durable
conquests. Humanity then profits by those labours coming from various
directions....”
At the end of the meeting Pasteur was presented to the King. The Queen
of Denmark and the Queen of Greece, regardless of etiquette, walked
towards him, “a signal proof,” wrote a French contemporary, “of the
esteem in which our illustrious countryman is held at the Danish Court.”
Five general meetings were to give some of the scientists an opportunity
of expounding their views on subjects of universal interest. Pasteur was
asked to read the first paper; his audience consisted, besides the
members of the Congress, of many other men interested in scientific
things, who had come to hear him describe the steps by which he had made
such secure progress in the arduous question of hydrophobia. He began by
a declaration of war against the prejudice by which so many people
believe that rabies can occur spontaneously. Whatever the pathological,
physiological, or other conditions may be under which a dog or another
animal is placed, rabies never appears if the animal has not been bitten
or licked by another rabid animal; this is so truly the case that
hydrophobia is unknown in certain countries. In order to preserve a
whole land from the disease, it is sufficient that a law should, as in
Australia, compel every imported dog to be in quarantine for several
months; he would then, if bitten by a mad dog before his departure, have
ample time to die before infecting other animals. Norway and Lapland are
equally free from rabies, a few good prophylactic measures being
sufficient to avert the scourge.
It will be objected that there must have been a first rabid dog
originally. “That,” said Pasteur, “is a problem which cannot be solved
in the present state of knowledge, for it partakes of the great and
unknown mystery of the origin of life.”
The audience followed with an impassioned curiosity the history of the
stages followed by Pasteur on the road to his great discovery: the
preliminary experiments, the demonstration of the fact that the rabic
virus invades the nervous centres, the culture of the virus within
living animals, the attenuation of the rabic virus when passed from dogs
to monkeys, and simultaneously with this graduated attenuation, a
converse process by successive passages from rabbit to rabbit, the
possibility of obtaining in this way all the degrees of virulence, and
finally the acquired certainty of having obtained a preventive vaccine
against canine hydrophobia.
“Enthusiastic applause,” wrote the reporter of the _Journal des Débats_,
“greeted the conclusion of the indefatigable worker.”
In the course of one of the excursions arranged for the members of the
Congress, Pasteur had the pleasure of seeing his methods applied on a
large scale, not as in Italy to the progress of sericiculture, but to
that of the manufacture of beer. J. C. Jacobsen, a Danish citizen, whose
name was celebrated in the whole of Europe by his munificent donations
to science, had founded in 1847 the Carlsberg Brewery, now one of the
most important in the world; at least 200,000 hectolitres were now
produced every year by the Carlsberg Brewery and the Ny Carlsberg branch
of it, which was under the direction of Jacobsen’s son.
In 1879, Jacobsen, who was unknown to Pasteur, wrote to him, “I should
be very much obliged if you would allow me to order from M. Paul Dubois,
one of the great artists who do France so much credit, a marble bust of
yourself, which I desire to place in the Carlsberg laboratory in token
of the services rendered to chemistry, physiology, and beer-manufacture,
by your studies on fermentation, a foundation to all future progress in
the brewer’s trade.” Paul Dubois’ bust is a masterpiece: it is most
characteristic of Pasteur--the deep thoughtful far-away look in his
eyes, a somewhat stern expression on his powerful features.
Actuated, like his father, by a feeling of gratitude, the younger
Jacobsen had placed a bronze reproduction of this bust in a niche in the
wall of the brewery, at the entrance of the Pasteur Street, leading to
Ny Carlsberg.
This visit to the brewery was an object lesson to the members of the
Congress, who were magnificently entertained by Jacobsen and his son; no
better demonstration was ever made of the services which industry may
receive from science. In the great laboratory, the physiologist Hansen
had succeeded in finding differences in yeast; he had just separated
from each other three kinds of yeast, each producing beer with a
different flavour.
The French scientists were delighted with the practical sense and
delicate feelings of the Danish people. Though they had gone through
bitter trials in 1864, though France, England, and Russia had
countenanced the unrighteous invasion, in the face of the old treaties
which guaranteed to Denmark the possession of Schleswig, the diminished
and impoverished nation had not given vent to barren recriminations or
declamatory protests. Proudly and silently sorrowing, the Danes had
preserved their respect for the past, faith in justice and the cult of
their great men. It is a strange thing that Shakespeare should have
chosen that land of good sense and well-balanced reason for the
surroundings of his mysterious hero, of all men the most haunted by the
maddening enigma of destiny.
Elsinore is but a short distance from Copenhagen, and no member of the
Congress, especially among the English section, could have made up his
mind to leave Denmark without visiting Hamlet’s home.
A Transport Company organized the visit to Elsinore for a day when the
Congress had arranged to have a complete holiday. Five steamers, gay
with flags, were provided for the thousand medical men and their
families, and accomplished the two hours’ crossing to Elsinore on a
lovely, clear day, with an absolutely calm sea. The scientific tourists
landed at the foot of the old Kronborg Castle, ready for the lunch which
was served out to them and which proved barely sufficient for their
appetites; there was not quite enough bread for the Frenchmen,
proverbially bread-eaters, and the water, running a little short, had to
be supplemented with champagne.
Some of the visitors returned from a neighbouring wood, where they had
been to see the stones of the supposed tomb of Hamlet, disappointed at
having looked in vain for Ophelia’s stream and for the willow tree which
heard her sing her last song, her hands full of flowers. Evidently this
place was but an imaginary scenery given by Shakespeare to the drama
which stands like a point of interrogation before the mystery of human
life; but his life-giving art has for ever made of Elsinore the place
where Hamlet lived and suffered.
Pasteur, to whom the Danish character, in its strength and simplicity,
proved singularly attractive, remained in Copenhagen for some time after
the Congress was over. He had much pleasure in visiting the Thorwaldsen
Museum. Copenhagen, after showering honours on the great artist during
his lifetime, has continued to worship him after his death. Every
statue, every plaster cast, is preserved in that Museum with
extraordinary care. Thorwaldsen himself lies in the midst of his
works--his simple stone grave, covered with graceful ivy, is in one of
the courtyards of the Museum.
* * * * *
Pasteur went on to Arbois from Copenhagen. The laboratory he had built
there not being large enough to take in rabid dogs, he dictated from his
study the experiments to be carried out in Paris; his carefully kept
notebooks enabled him to know exactly how things were going on. His
nephew, Adrien Loir, now a curator in the laboratory of Rue d’Ulm, had
gladly given up his holidays and remained in Paris with the faithful
Eugène Viala. This excellent assistant had come to Paris from Alais in
1871, at the request of Pasteur, who knew his family. Viala was then
only twelve years old and could barely read and write. Pasteur sent him
to an evening school and himself helped him with his studies; the boy
was very intelligent and willing to learn. He became most useful to
Pasteur, who, in 1885, was glad to let him undertake a great deal of the
laboratory work, under the guidance of M. Roux; he was ultimately
entrusted with all the trephining operations on dogs, rabbits, and
guinea-pigs.
The letters written to him by Pasteur in 1884 show the exact point
reached at that moment by the investigations on hydrophobia. Many people
already thought those studies advanced enough to allow the method of
treatment to be applied to man.
Pasteur wrote to Viala on September 19, “Tell M. Adrien (Loir) to send
the following telegram: ‘Surgeon Symonds, Oxford, England. Operation on
man still impossible. No possibility at present of sending attenuated
virus.’ See MM. Bourrel and Béraud, procure a dog which has died of
street-rabies, and use its medulla to inoculate a new monkey, two
guinea-pigs and two rabbits.... I am afraid Nocard’s dog cannot have
been rabid; even if you were sure that he was, you had better try those
tests again.
“Since M. Bourrel says he has several mad dogs at present, you might
take two couple of new dogs to his kennels; when he has a good biting
dog, he can have a pair of our dogs bitten, after which you will treat
one of them so as to make him refractory (carefully taking note of the
time elapsed between the bites and the beginning of the treatment). Mind
you keep notes of every new experiment undertaken, and write to me every
other day at least.”
Pasteur pondered on the means of extinguishing hydrophobia or of merely
diminishing its frequency. Could dogs be vaccinated? There are 100,000
dogs in Paris, about 2,500,000 more in the provinces: vaccination
necessitates several preventive inoculations; innumerable kennels would
have to be built for the purpose, to say nothing of the expense of
keeping the dogs and of providing a trained staff capable of performing
the difficult and dangerous operations. And, as M. Nocard truly
remarked, where were rabbits to be found in sufficient number for the
vaccine emulsions?
Optional vaccination did not seem more practicable; it could only be
worked on a very restricted scale and was therefore of very little use
in a general way.
The main question was the possibility of preventing hydrophobia from
occurring in a human being, previously bitten by a rabid dog.
The Emperor of Brazil, who took the greatest interest in the doings of
the Ecole Normale laboratory, having written to Pasteur asking when the
preventive treatment could be applied to man, Pasteur answered as
follows--
“_September 22._
“SIRE--Baron Itajuba, the Minister for Brazil, has handed me the letter
which Your Majesty has done me the honour of writing on August 21. The
Academy welcomed with unanimous sympathy your tribute to the memory of
our illustrious colleague, M. Dumas; it will listen with similar
pleasure to the words of regret which you desire me to express on the
subject of M. Wurtz’s premature death.
“Your Majesty is kind enough to mention my studies on hydrophobia; they
are making good and uninterrupted progress. I consider, however, that it
will take me nearly two years more to bring them to a happy issue....
“What I want to do is to obtain prophylaxis of rabies _after_ bites.
“Until now I have not dared to attempt anything on men, in spite of my
own confidence in the result and the numerous opportunities afforded to
me since my last reading at the Academy of Sciences. I fear too much
that a failure might compromise the future, and I want first to
accumulate successful cases on animals. Things in that direction are
going very well indeed; I already have several examples of dogs made
refractory after a rabietic bite. I take two dogs, cause them both to be
bitten by a mad dog; I vaccinate the one and leave the other without any
treatment: the latter dies and the first remains perfectly well.
“But even when I shall have multiplied examples of the prophylaxis of
rabies in dogs, I think my hand will tremble when I go on to Mankind. It
is here that the high and powerful initiative of the head of a State
might intervene for the good of humanity. If I were a King, an Emperor,
or even the President of a Republic, this is how I should exercise my
right of pardoning criminals condemned to death. I should invite the
counsel of a condemned man, on the eve of the day fixed for his
execution, to choose between certain death and an experiment which would
consist in several preventive inoculations of rabic virus, in order to
make the subject’s constitution refractory to rabies. If he survived
this experiment--and I am convinced that he would--his life would be
saved and his punishment commuted to a lifelong surveillance, as a
guarantee towards that society which had condemned him.
“All condemned men would accept these conditions, death being their only
terror.
“This brings me to the question of cholera, of which Your Majesty also
has the kindness to speak to me. Neither Dr. Koch nor Drs. Straus and
Roux have succeeded in giving cholera to animals, and therefore great
uncertainty prevails regarding the bacillus to which Dr. Koch attributes
the causation of cholera. It ought to be possible to try and communicate
cholera to criminals condemned to death, by the injection of cultures of
that bacillus. When the disease declared itself, a test could be made of
the remedies which are counselled as apparently most efficacious.
“I attach so much importance to these measures, that, if Your Majesty
shared my views, I should willingly come to Rio Janeiro, notwithstanding
my age and the state of my health, in order to undertake such studies on
the prophylaxis of hydrophobia and the contagion of cholera and its
remedies.
“I am, with profound respect, Your Majesty’s humble and obedient
servant.”
In other times, the right of pardon could be exercised in the form of a
chance of life offered to a criminal lending himself to an experiment.
Louis XVI, having admired a fire balloon rising above Versailles,
thought of proposing to two condemned men that they should attempt to go
up in one. But Pilâtre des Roziers, whose ambition it was to be the
first aëronaut, was indignant at the thought that “vile criminals should
be the first to rise up in the air.” He won his cause, and in November,
1783, he organized an ascent at the Muette which lasted twenty minutes.
In England, in the eighteenth century, before Jenner’s discovery,
successful attempts had been made at the direct inoculation of
small-pox. In some historical and medical _Researches on Vaccine_,
published in 1803, Husson relates that the King of England, wishing to
have the members of his family inoculated, began by having the method
tried on six criminals condemned to death; they were all saved, and the
Royal Family submitted to inoculation.
There is undoubtedly a beautiful aspect of that idea of utilizing the
fate of a criminal for the cause of Humanity. But in our modern laws no
such liberty is left to Justice, which has no power to invent new
punishments, or to enter into a bargain with a condemned criminal.
Before his departure from Arbois, Pasteur encountered fresh and
unforeseen obstacles. The successful opposition of the inhabitants of
Meudon had inspired those of St. Cloud, Ville d’Avray, Vaucresson,
Marnes, and Garches with the idea of resisting in their turn the
installation of Pasteur’s kennels at Villeneuve l’Etang. People spoke of
public danger, of children exposed to meet ferocious rabid dogs
wandering loose about the park, of popular Sundays spoilt, picnickers
disturbed, etc., etc.
A former pupil of Pasteur’s at the Strasburg Faculty, M. Christen, now a
Town Councillor at Vaucresson, warned Pasteur of all this excitement,
adding that he personally was ready to do his best to calm the terrors
of his townspeople.
Pasteur answered, thanking him for his efforts. “...I shall be back in
Paris on October 24, and on the morning of the twenty-fifth and
following days I shall be pleased to see any one desiring information on
the subject.... But you may at once assure your frightened neighbours,
Sir, that there will be no mad dogs at Villeneuve l’Etang, but only dogs
made refractory to rabies. Not having enough room in my laboratory, I am
actually obliged to quarter on various veterinary surgeons those dogs,
which I should like to enclose in covered kennels, quite safely secured,
you may be sure.”
Pasteur, writing about this to his son, could not help saying, “Months
of fine weather have been wasted! This will keep my plans back almost a
year.”
Little by little, in spite of the opposition which burst out now and
again, calm was again re-established. French good sense and appreciation
of great things got the better of the struggle; in January, 1885,
Pasteur was able to go to Villeneuve l’Etang to superintend the
arrangements. The old stables were turned into an immense kennel, paved
with asphalte. A wide passage went from one end to the other, on each
side of which accommodation for sixty dogs was arranged behind a double
barrier of wire netting.
The subject of hydrophobia goes back to the remotest antiquity; one of
Homer’s warriors calls Hector a mad dog. The supposed allusions to it to
be found in Hippocrates are of the vaguest, but Aristotle is quite
explicit when speaking of canine rabies and of its transmission from one
animal to the other through bites. He gives expression, however, to the
singular opinion that man is not subject to it. More than three hundred
years later we come to Celsus, who describes this disease, unknown or
unnoticed until then. “The patient,” said Celsus, “is tortured at the
same time by thirst and by an invincible repulsion towards water.” He
counselled cauterization of the wound with a red-hot iron and also with
various caustics and corrosives.
Pliny the Elder, a worthy precursor of village quacks, recommended the
livers of mad dogs as a cure; it was not a successful one. Galen, who
opposed this, had a no less singular recipe, a compound of cray-fish
eyes. Later, the shrine of St. Hubert in Belgium was credited with
miraculous cures; this superstition is still extant.
Sea bathing, unknown in France until the reign of Louis XIV, became a
fashionable cure for hydrophobia, Dieppe sands being supposed to offer
wonderful curing properties.
In 1780 a prize was offered for the best method of treating hydrophobia,
and won by a pamphlet entitled _Dissertation sur la Rage_, written by a
surgeon-major of the name of Le Roux.
This very sensible treatise concluded by recommending cauterization, now
long forgotten, instead of the various quack remedies which had so long
been in vogue, and the use of butter of antimony.
Le Roux did not allude in his paper to certain tenacious and cruel
prejudices, which had caused several hydrophobic persons, or persons
merely suspected of hydroprobia, to be killed like wild beasts, shot,
poisoned, strangled, or suffocated.
It was supposed in some places that hydrophobia could be transmitted
through the mere contact of the saliva or even by the breath of the
victims; people who had been bitten were in terror of what might be done
to them. A girl, bitten by a mad dog and taken to the Hôtel Dieu
Hospital on May 8, 1780, begged that she might not be suffocated!
Those dreadful occurrences must have been only too frequent, for, in
1810, a philosopher asked the Government to enact a Bill in the
following terms: “It is forbidden, under pain of death, to strangle,
suffocate, bleed to death, or in any other way murder individuals
suffering from rabies, hydrophobia, or any disease causing fits,
convulsions, furious and dangerous madness; all necessary precautions
against them being taken by families or public authorities.”
In 1819, newspapers related the death of an unfortunate hydrophobe,
smothered between two mattresses; it was said à propos of this murder
that “it is the doctor’s duty to repeat that this disease cannot be
transmitted from man to man, and that there is therefore no danger in
nursing hydrophobia patients.” Though old and fantastic remedies were
still in vogue in remote country places, cauterization was the most
frequently employed; if the wounds were somewhat deep, it was
recommended to use long, sharp and pointed needles, and to push them
well in, even if the wound was on the face.
One of Pasteur’s childish recollections (it happened in October, 1831)
was the impression of terror produced throughout the Jura by the advent
of a rabid wolf who went biting men and beasts on his way. Pasteur had
seen an Arboisian of the name of Nicole being cauterized with a red-hot
iron at the smithy near his father’s house. The persons who had been
bitten on the hands and head succumbed to hydrophobia, some of them
amidst horrible sufferings; there were eight victims in the immediate
neighbourhood. Nicole was saved. For years the whole region remained in
dread of that mad wolf.
The long period of incubation encouraged people to hope that some
preventive means might be found, instead of the painful operation of
cauterization; some doctors attempted inoculating another poison, a
viper’s venom for instance, to neutralize the rabic virus--needless to
say with fatal results. In 1852 a reward was promised by the Government
to the finder of a remedy against hydrophobia; all the old quackeries
came to light again, even Galen’s remedy of cray-fish eyes!
Bouchardat, who had to report to the Academy on these remedies,
considered them of no value whatever; his conclusion was that
cauterization was the only prophylactic treatment of hydrophobia.
Such was also Bouley’s opinion, eighteen years later, when he wrote that
the object to keep in view was the quickest possible destruction of the
tissues touched by rabietic saliva. Failing an iron heated to a light
red heat, or the sprinkling of gunpowder over the wound and setting a
match to it, he recommended caustics, such as nitric acid, sulphuric
acid, hydrochloric acid, potassa fusa, butter of antimony, corrosive
sublimate, and nitrate of silver.
Thus, after centuries had passed, and numberless remedies had been
tried, no progress had been made, and nothing better had been found than
cauterization, as indicated by Celsus in the first century.
* * * * *
As to the origin of rabies, it remained unknown and was erroneously
attributed to divers causes. Spontaneity was still believed in. Bouley
himself did not absolutely reject the idea of it, for he said in 1870:
“In the immense majority of cases, this disease proceeds from contagion;
out of 1,000 rabid dogs, 999 at least owe their condition to inoculation
by a bite.”
Pasteur was anxious to uproot this fallacy, as also another very serious
error, vigorously opposed by Bouley, by M. Nocard, and by another
veterinary surgeon in a _Manual on Rabies_, published in 1882, and still
as tenacious as most prejudices, viz., that the word hydrophobia is
synonymous with rabies. The rabid dog is _not_ hydrophobe, he does _not_
abhor water. The word is applicable to rabid human beings, but is false
concerning rabid dogs.
Many people in the country, constantly seeing Pasteur’s name associated
with the word rabies, fancied that he was a consulting veterinary
surgeon, and pestered him with letters full of questions. What was to be
done to a dog whose manner seemed strange, though there was no evidence
of a suspicious bite? Should he be shot? “No,” answered Pasteur, “shut
him up securely, and he will soon die if he is really mad.” Some dog
owners hesitated to destroy a dog manifestly bitten by a mad dog. “It is
such a good dog!” “The law is absolute,” answered Pasteur; “every dog
bitten by a mad dog must be destroyed at once.” And it irritated him
that village mayors should close their eyes to the non-observance of the
law, and thus contribute to a recrudescence of rabies.
Pasteur wasted his precious time answering all those letters. On March
28, 1885, he wrote to his friend Jules Vercel--
“Alas! we shall not be able to go to Arbois for Easter; I shall be busy
for some time settling down, or rather settling my dogs down at
Villeneuve l’Etang. I also have some new experiments on rabies on hand
which will take some months. I am demonstrating this year that dogs can
be vaccinated, or made refractory to rabies _after_ they have been
bitten by mad dogs.
“I have not yet dared to treat human beings after bites from rabid dogs;
but the time is not far off, and I am much inclined to begin by
myself--inoculating myself with rabies, and then arresting the
consequences; for I am beginning to feel very sure of my results.”
Pasteur gave more details three days later, in a letter to his son, then
Secretary of the French Embassy at the Quirinal--
“The experiments before the Rabies Commission were resumed on March 10;
they are now being carried out, and the Commission has already held six
sittings; the seventh will take place to-day.
“As I only submit to it results which I look upon as acquired, this
gives me a surplus of work to do; for those control experiments are
added to those I am now carrying out. For I am continuing my researches,
trying to discover new principles, and hardening myself by habit and by
increased conviction in order to attempt preventive inoculations on man
after a bite.
“The Commission’s experiments have led to no result so far, for, as you
know, weeks have to pass before any results occur. But no untoward
incident has occurred up to now; and if all continues equally well, the
Commission’s second report will be as favorable as that of last year,
which left nothing to be desired.
“I am equally satisfied with my new experiments in this difficult study.
Perhaps practical application on a large scale may not be far off....”
In May, everything at Villeneuve l’Etang was ready for the reception of
sixty dogs. Fifty of them, already made refractory to bites or rabic
inoculation, were successively accommodated in the immense kennel, where
each had his cell and his experiment number. They had been made
refractory by being inoculated with fragments of medulla, which had hung
for a fortnight in a phial, and of which the virulence was extinguished,
after which further inoculations had been made, gradually increasing in
virulence until the highest degree of it had again been reached.
All those dogs, which were to be periodically taken back to Paris for
inoculations or bite tests, in order to see what was the duration of
the immunity conferred, were stray dogs picked up by the police. They
were of various breeds, and showed every variety of character, some of
them gentle and affectionate, others vicious and growling, some
confiding, some shrinking, as if the recollection of chloroform and the
laboratory was disagreeable to them. They showed some natural impatience
of their enforced captivity, only interrupted by a short daily run. One
of them, however, was promoted to the post of house-dog, and loosened
every night; he excited much envy among his congeners. The dogs were
very well cared for by a retired _gendarme_, an excellent man of the
name of Pernin.
A lover of animals might have drawn an interesting contrast between the
fate of those laboratory dogs, living and dying for the good of
humanity, and that of the dogs buried in the neighbouring dogs’ cemetery
at Bagatelle, founded by Sir Richard Wallace, the great English
philanthropist. Here lay toy dogs, lap dogs, drawing-room dogs,
cherished and coddled during their useless lives, and luxuriously buried
after their useless deaths, while the dead bodies of the others went to
the knacker’s yard.
Rabbit hutches and guinea-pig cages leaned against the dogs’ palace.
Pasteur, having seen to the comfort of his animals, now thought of
himself; it was frequently necessary that he should come to spend two or
three days at Villeneuve l’Etang. The official architect thought of
repairing part of the little palace of Villeneuve, which was in a very
bad state of decay. But Pasteur preferred to have some rooms near the
stables put into repair, which had formerly been used for
non-commissioned officers of the Cent Gardes; there was less to do to
them, and the position was convenient. The roof, windows, and doors were
renovated, and some cheap paper hung on the walls inside. “This is
certainly not luxurious!” exclaimed an astonished millionaire, who came
to see Pasteur one day on his way to his own splendid villa at Marly.
On May 29 Pasteur wrote to his son--
“I thought I should have done with rabies by the end of April; I must
postpone my hopes till the end of July. Yet I have not remained
stationary; but, in these difficult studies, one is far from the goal as
long as the last word, the last decisive proof is not acquired. What I
aspire to is the possibility of treating a man after a bite with no fear
of accidents.
“I have never had so many subjects of experiment on hand--sixty dogs at
Villeneuve l’Etang, forty at Rollin, ten at Frégis’, fifteen at
Bourrel’s, and I deplore having no more kennels at my disposal.
“What do you say of the Rue Pasteur in the large city of Lille? The news
has given me very great pleasure.”
What Pasteur briefly called “Rollin” in this letter was the former
_Lycée Rollin_, the old buildings of which had been transformed into
outhouses for his laboratory. Large cages had been set up in the old
courtyard, and the place was like a farm, with its population of hens,
rabbits, and guinea-pigs.
Two series of experiments were being carried out on those 125 dogs. The
first consisted in making dogs refractory to rabies by preventive
inoculations; the second in preventing the onset of rabies in dogs
bitten or subjected to inoculation.
CHAPTER XIII
1885--1888
Pasteur had the power of concentrating his thoughts to such a degree
that he often, when absorbed in one idea, became absolutely unconscious
of what took place around him. At one of the meetings of the Académie
Française, whilst the Dictionary was being discussed, he scribbled the
following note on a stray sheet of paper--
“I do not know how to hide my ideas from those who work with me; still,
I wish I could have kept those I am going to express a little longer to
myself. The experiments have already begun which will decide them.
“It concerns rabies, but the results might be general.
“I am inclined to think that the virus which is considered rabic may be
accompanied by a substance which, by impregnating the nervous system,
would make it unsuitable for the culture of the microbe. Thence vaccinal
immunity. If that is so, the theory might be a general one: it would be
a stupendous discovery.
“I have just met Chamberland in the Rue Gay-Lussac, and explained to him
this view and my experiments. He was much struck, and asked my
permission to make at once on anthrax the experiment I am about to make
on rabies as soon as the dog and the culture rabbits are dead. Roux, the
day before yesterday, was equally struck.
“_Académie Française, Thursday, January 29, 1885._”
Could that vaccinal substance associated with the rabic virus be
isolated? In the meanwhile a main fact was acquired, that of preventive
inoculation, since Pasteur was sure of his series of dogs rendered
refractory to rabies after a bite. Months were going by without bringing
an answer to the question “Why?” of the antirabic vaccination, as
mysterious as the “Why?” of Jennerian vaccination.
On Monday, July 6, Pasteur saw a little Alsatian boy, Joseph Meister,
enter his laboratory, accompanied by his mother. He was only nine years
old, and had been bitten two days before by a mad dog at Meissengott,
near Schlestadt.
The child, going alone to school by a little by-road, had been attacked
by a furious dog and thrown to the ground. Too small to defend himself,
he had only thought of covering his face with his hands. A bricklayer,
seeing the scene from a distance, arrived, and succeeded in beating the
dog off with an iron bar; he picked up the boy, covered with blood and
saliva. The dog went back to his master, Théodore Vone, a grocer at
Meissengott, whom he bit on the arm. Vone seized a gun and shot the
animal, whose stomach was found to be full of hay, straw, pieces of
wood, etc. When little Meister’s parents heard all these details they
went, full of anxiety, to consult Dr. Weber, at Villé, that same
evening. After cauterizing the wounds with carbolic, Dr. Weber advised
Mme. Meister to start for Paris, where she could relate the facts to one
who was not a physician, but who would be the best judge of what could
be done in such a serious case. Théodore Vone, anxious on his own and on
the child’s account, decided to come also.
Pasteur reassured him; his clothes had wiped off the dog’s saliva, and
his shirt-sleeve was intact. He might safely go back to Alsace, and he
promptly did so.
Pasteur’s emotion was great at the sight of the fourteen wounds of the
little boy, who suffered so much that he could hardly walk. What should
he do for this child? could he risk the preventive treatment which had
been constantly successful on his dogs? Pasteur was divided between his
hopes and his scruples, painful in their acuteness. Before deciding on a
course of action, he made arrangements for the comfort of this poor
woman and her child, alone in Paris, and gave them an appointment for 5
o’clock, after the Institute meeting. He did not wish to attempt
anything without having seen Vulpian and talked it over with him. Since
the Rabies Commission had been constituted, Pasteur had formed a growing
esteem for the great judgment of Vulpian, who, in his lectures on the
general and comparative physiology of the nervous system, had already
mentioned the profit to human clinics to be drawn from experimenting on
animals.
His was a most prudent mind, always seeing all the aspects of a problem.
The man was worthy of the scientist: he was absolutely straightforward,
and of a discreet and active kindness. He was passionately fond of work,
and had recourse to it when smitten by a deep sorrow.
Vulpian expressed the opinion that Pasteur’s experiments on dogs were
sufficiently conclusive to authorize him to foresee the same success in
human pathology. Why not try this treatment? added the professor,
usually so reserved. Was there any other efficacious treatment against
hydrophobia? If at least the cauterizations had been made with a red-hot
iron! but what was the good of carbolic acid twelve hours after the
accident. If the almost certain danger which threatened the boy were
weighed against the chances of snatching him from death, Pasteur would
see that it was more than a right, that it was a duty to apply antirabic
inoculation to little Meister.
This was also the opinion of Dr. Grancher, whom Pasteur consulted. M.
Grancher worked at the laboratory; he and Dr. Straus might claim to be
the two first French physicians who took up the study of bacteriology;
these novel studies fascinated him, and he was drawn to Pasteur by the
deepest admiration and by a strong affection, which Pasteur thoroughly
reciprocated.
Vulpian and M. Grancher examined little Meister in the evening, and,
seeing the number of bites, some of which, on one hand especially, were
very deep, they decided on performing the first inoculation immediately;
the substance chosen was fourteen days old and had quite lost its
virulence: it was to be followed by further inoculations gradually
increasing in strength.
It was a very slight operation, a mere injection into the side (by means
of a Pravaz syringe) of a few drops of a liquid prepared with some
fragments of medulla oblongata. The child, who cried very much before
the operation, soon dried his tears when he found the slight prick was
all that he had to undergo.
Pasteur had had a bedroom comfortably arranged for the mother and child
in the old Rollin College, and the little boy was very happy amidst the
various animals--chickens, rabbits, white mice, guinea-pigs, etc.; he
begged and easily obtained of Pasteur the life of several of the
youngest of them.
“All is going well,” Pasteur wrote to his son-in-law on July 11: “the
child sleeps well, has a good appetite, and the inoculated matter is
absorbed into the system from one day to another without leaving a
trace. It is true that I have not yet come to the test inoculations,
which will take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. If the lad
keeps well during the three following weeks, I think the experiment will
be safe to succeed. I shall send the child and his mother back to
Meissengott (near Schlestadt) in any case on August 1, giving these good
people detailed instruction as to the observations they are to record
for me. I shall make no statement before the end of the vacation.”
But, as the inoculations were becoming more virulent, Pasteur became a
prey to anxiety: “My dear children,” wrote Mme. Pasteur, “your father
has had another bad night; he is dreading the last inoculations on the
child. And yet there can be no drawing back now! The boy continues in
perfect health.”
Renewed hopes were expressed in the following letter from Pasteur--
“My dear René, I think great things are coming to pass. Joseph Meister
has just left the laboratory. The three last inoculations have left some
pink marks under the skin, gradually widening and not at all tender.
There is some action, which is becoming more intense as we approach the
final inoculation, which will take place on Thursday, July 16. The lad
is very well this morning, and has slept well, though slightly restless;
he has a good appetite and no feverishness. He had a slight hysterical
attack yesterday.”
The letter ended with an affectionate invitation. “Perhaps one of the
great medical facts of the century is going to take place; you would
regret not having seen it!”
Pasteur was going through a succession of hopes, fears, anguish, and an
ardent yearning to snatch little Meister from death; he could no longer
work. At nights, feverish visions came to him of this child whom he had
seen playing in the garden, suffocating in the mad struggles of
hydrophobia, like the dying child he had seen at the Hôpital Trousseau
in 1880. Vainly his experimental genius assured him that the virus of
that most terrible of diseases was about to be vanquished, that humanity
was about to be delivered from this dread horror--his human tenderness
was stronger than all, his accustomed ready sympathy for the sufferings
and anxieties of others was for the nonce centred in “the dear lad.”
The treatment lasted ten days; Meister was inoculated twelve times. The
virulence of the medulla used was tested by trephinings on rabbits, and
proved to be gradually stronger. Pasteur even inoculated on July 16, at
11 a.m., some medulla only one day old, bound to give hydrophobia to
rabbits after only seven days’ incubation; it was the surest test of the
immunity and preservation due to the treatment.
Cured from his wounds, delighted with all he saw, gaily running about as
if he had been in his own Alsatian farm, little Meister, whose blue eyes
now showed neither fear nor shyness, merrily received the last
inoculation; in the evening, after claiming a kiss from “Dear Monsieur
Pasteur,” as he called him, he went to bed and slept peacefully. Pasteur
spent a terrible night of insomnia; in those slow dark hours of night
when all vision is distorted, Pasteur, losing sight of the accumulation
of experiments which guaranteed his success, imagined that the little
boy would die.
The treatment being now completed, Pasteur left little Meister to the
care of Dr. Grancher (the lad was not to return to Alsace until July 27)
and consented to take a few days’ rest. He spent them with his daughter
in a quiet, almost deserted country place in Burgundy, but without
however finding much restfulness in the beautiful peaceful scenery; he
lived in constant expectation of Dr. Grancher’s daily telegram or letter
containing news of Joseph Meister.
By the time he went to the Jura, Pasteur’s fears had almost disappeared.
He wrote from Arbois to his son August 3, 1885: “Very good news last
night of the bitten lad. I am looking forward with great hopes to the
time when I can draw a conclusion. It will be thirty-one days to-morrow
since he was bitten.”
* * * * *
On August 20, six weeks before the new elections of Deputies, Léon Say,
Pasteur’s colleague at the Académie Française, wrote to him that many
Beauce agricultors were anxious to put his name down on the list of
candidates, as a recognition of the services rendered by science. A few
months before, Jules Simon had thought Pasteur might be elected as a
Life Senator, but Pasteur had refused to be convinced. He now replied to
Léon Say--
“Your proposal touches me very much and it would be agreeable to me to
owe a Deputy’s mandate to electors, several of whom have applied the
results of my investigations. But politics frighten me and I have
already refused a candidature in the Jura and a seat in the Senate in
the course of this year.
“I might be tempted perhaps, if I no longer felt active enough for my
laboratory work. But I still feel equal to further researches, and on my
return to Paris, I shall be organizing a ‘service’ against rabies which
will absorb all my energies. I now possess a very perfect method of
prophylaxis against that terrible disease, a method equally adapted to
human beings and to dogs, and by which your much afflicted Department
will be one of the first to benefit.
“Before my departure for Jura I dared to treat a poor little
nine-year-old lad whose mother brought him to me from Alsace, where he
had been attacked on the 4th ult., and bitten on the thighs, legs, and
hand in such a manner that hydrophobia would have been inevitable. He
remains in perfect health.”
Whilst many political speeches were being prepared, Pasteur was thinking
over a literary speech. He had been requested by the Académie Française
to welcome Joseph Bertrand, elected in place of J. B. Dumas--the
eulogium of a scientist, spoken by one scientist, himself welcomed by
another scientist. This was an unusual programme for the Académie
Française, perhaps too unusual in the eyes of Pasteur, who did not think
himself worthy of speaking in the name of the Académie. Such was his
modesty; he forgot that amongst the savants who had been members of the
Académie, several, such as Fontenelle, Cuvier, J. B. Dumas, etc., had
published immortal pages, and that some extracts from his own works
would one day become classical.
The vacation gave him time to read over the writings of his beloved
teacher, and also to study the life and works of Joseph Bertrand,
already his colleague at the Académie des Sciences.
Bertrand’s election had been simple and easy, like everything he had
undertaken since his birth. It seemed as if a good fairy had leant over
his cradle and whispered to him, “Thou shalt know many things, without
having had to learn them.” It is a fact that he could read without
having held a book in his hands. He was ill and in bed whilst his
brother Alexander was being taught to read; he listened to the lessons
and kept the various combinations of letters in his mind. When he became
convalescent, his parents brought him a book of Natural History so that
he might look at the pictures. He took the volume and read from it
fluently; he was not five years old. He learnt the elements of geometry
very much in the same way.
Pasteur in his speech thus described Joseph Bertrand’s childhood: “At
ten years old you were already celebrated, and it was prophesied that
you would pass at the head of the list into the Ecole Polytechnique and
become a member of the Academy of Sciences? No one doubted this, not
even yourself. You were indeed a child prodigy. Sometimes it amused you
to hide in a class of higher mathematics, and when the Professor
propounded a difficult problem that no one could solve, one of the
students would triumphantly lift you in his arms, stand you on a chair
so that you might reach the board, and you would then give the required
solution with a calm assurance, in the midst of applause from the
professors and pupils.”
Pasteur, whose every progress had been painfully acquired, admired the
ease with which Bertrand had passed through the first stages of his
career. At an age when marbles and india-rubber balls are usually an
important interest, Bertrand walked merrily to the _Jardin des Plantes_
to attend a course of lectures by Gay-Lussac. A few hours later, he
might be seen at the Sorbonne, listening with interest to Saint Marc
Girardin, the literary moralist. The next day, he would go to a lecture
on Comparative Legislation; never was so young a child seen in such
serious places. He borrowed as many books from the Institute library as
Biot himself; he learnt whole passages by heart, merely by glancing at
them. He became a _doctor ès sciences_ at sixteen, and a Member of the
Institute at thirty-four.
Besides his personal works--such as those on Analytic Mechanics, which
place him in the very first rank--his teaching had been brought to bear
during forty years on all branches of mathematics. Bertrand’s life,
apparently so happy, had been saddened by the irreparable loss, during
the Commune, of a great many precious notes, letters, and manuscripts,
which had been burnt with the house where he had left them. Discouraged
by this ruin of ten years’ work, he had given way to a tendency to
writing slight popular articles, of high literary merit, instead of
continuing his deeper scientific work. His eulogy of J. B. Dumas was not
quite seriously enthusiastic enough to please Pasteur, who had a
veritable cult for the memory of his old teacher, and who eagerly
grasped this opportunity of speaking again of J. B. Dumas’ influence on
himself, of his admirable scientific discoveries, and of his political
duties, undertaken in the hope of being useful to Science, but often
proving a source of disappointment.
Pasteur enjoyed looking back on the beloved memory of J. B. Dumas, as he
sat preparing his speech in his study at Arbois, looking out on the
familiar landscape of his childhood, where the progress of practical
science was evidenced by the occasional passing, through the distant
pine woods, of the white smoke of the Switzerland express.
When in his laboratory in Paris, Pasteur hated to be disturbed whilst
making experiments or writing out notes of his work. Any visitor was
unwelcome; one day that some one was attempting to force his way in, M.
Roux was amused at seeing Pasteur--vexed at being disturbed and anxious
not to pain the visitor--come out to say imploringly, “Oh! not now,
please! I am too busy!”
“When Chamberland and I,” writes Dr. Roux, “were engaged in an
interesting occupation, he mounted guard before us, and when, through
the glazed doors, he saw people coming, he himself would go and meet
them in order to send them away. He showed so artlessly that his sole
thought was for the work, that no one ever could be offended.”
But, at Arbois, where he only spent his holidays, he did not exercise so
much severity; any one could come in who liked. He received in the
morning a constant stream of visitors, begging for advice,
recommendations, interviews, etc.
“It is both comical and touching,” wrote M. Girard, a local journalist,
“to see the opinion the vineyard labourers have of him. These good
people have heard M. Pasteur’s name in connection with the diseases of
wine, and they look upon him as a sort of wine doctor. If they notice a
barrel of wine getting sour, they knock at the savant’s door, bottle in
hand; this door is never closed to them. Peasants are not precise in
their language; they do not know how to begin their explanations or how
to finish them. M. Pasteur, ever calm and serious, listens to the very
end, takes the bottle and studies it at his leisure. A week later, the
wine is ‘cured.’”
He was consulted also on many other subjects--virus, silkworms, rabies,
cholera, swine-fever, etc.; many took him for a physician. Whilst
telling them of their mistake, he yet did everything he could for them.
During this summer of 1885, he had the melancholy joy of seeing a bust
erected in the village of Monay to the memory of a beloved friend of
his, J. J. Perraud, a great and inspired sculptor, who had died in 1876.
Perraud, whose magnificent statue of Despair is now at the Louvre, had
had a sad life, and, on his lonely death-bed (he was a widower, with no
children), Pasteur’s tender sympathy had been an unspeakable comfort.
Pasteur now took a leading part in the celebration of his friend’s fame,
and was glad to speak to the assembled villagers at Monay of the great
and disinterested artist who had been born in their midst.
* * * * *
On his return to Paris, Pasteur found himself obliged to hasten the
organization of a “service” for the preventive treatment of hydrophobia
after a bite. The Mayors of Villers-Farlay, in the Jura, wrote to him
that, on October 14, a shepherd had been cruelly bitten by a rabid dog.
Six little shepherd boys were watching over their sheep in a meadow;
suddenly they saw a large dog passing along the road, with hanging,
foaming jaws.
“A mad dog!” they exclaimed. The dog, seeing the children, left the road
and charged them; they ran away shrieking, but the eldest of them, J. B.
Jupille, fourteen years of age, bravely turned back in order to protect
the flight of his comrades. Armed with his whip, he confronted the
infuriated animal, who flew at him and seized his left hand. Jupille,
wrestling with the dog, succeeded in kneeling on him, and forcing its
jaws open in order to disengage his left hand; in so doing, his right
hand was seriously bitten in its turn; finally, having been able to get
hold of the animal by the neck, Jupille called to his little brother to
pick up his whip, which had fallen during the struggle, and securely
fastened the dog’s jaws with the lash. He then took his wooden _sabot_,
with which he battered the dog’s head, after which, in order to be sure
that it could do no further harm, he dragged the body down to a little
stream in the meadow, and held the head under water for several minutes.
Death being now certain, and all danger removed from his comrades,
Jupille returned to Villers-Farlay.
Whilst the boy’s wounds were being bandaged, the dog’s carcase was
fetched, and a necropsy took place the next day. The two veterinary
surgeons who examined the body had not the slightest hesitation in
declaring that the dog was rabid.
The Mayor of Villers-Farlay, who had been to see Pasteur during the
summer, wrote to tell him that this lad would die a victim of his own
courage unless the new treatment intervened. The answer came
immediately: Pasteur declared that, after five years’ study, he had
succeeded in making dogs refractory to rabies, even six or eight days
after being bitten; that he had only once yet applied his method to a
human being, but that once with success, in the case of little Meister,
and that, if Jupille’s family consented, the boy might be sent to him.
“I shall keep him near me in a room of my laboratory; he will be watched
and need not go to bed; he will merely receive a daily prick, not more
painful than a pin-prick.”
The family, on hearing this letter, came to an immediate decision; but,
between the day when he was bitten and Jupille’s arrival in Paris, six
whole days had elapsed, whilst in Meister’s case there had only been two
and a half!
Yet, however great were Pasteur’s fears for the life of this tall lad,
who seemed quite surprised when congratulated on his courageous conduct,
they were not what they had been in the first instance--he felt much
greater confidence.
A few days later, on October 26, Pasteur in a statement at the Academy
of Sciences described the treatment followed for Meister. Three months
and three days had passed, and the child remained perfectly well. Then
he spoke of his new attempt. Vulpian rose--
“The Academy will not be surprised,” he said, “if, as a member of the
Medical and Surgical Section, I ask to be allowed to express the
feelings of admiration inspired in me by M. Pasteur’s statement. I feel
certain that those feelings will be shared by the whole of the medical
profession.
“Hydrophobia, that dread disease against which all therapeutic measures
had hitherto failed, has at last found a remedy. M. Pasteur, who has
been preceded by no one in this path, has been led by a series of
investigations unceasingly carried on for several years, to create a
method of treatment, by means of which the development of hydrophobia
can _infallibly_ be prevented in a patient recently bitten by a rabid
dog. I say infallibly, because, after what I have seen in M. Pasteur’s
laboratory, I do not doubt the constant success of this treatment when
it is put into full practice a few days only after a rabic bite.
“It is now necessary to see about organizing an installation for the
treatment of hydrophobia by M. Pasteur’s method. Every person bitten by
a rabid dog must be given the opportunity of benefiting by this great
discovery, which will seal the fame of our illustrious colleague and
bring glory to our whole country.”
Pasteur had ended his reading by a touching description of Jupille’s
action, leaving the Assembly under the impression of that boy of
fourteen, sacrificing himself to save his companions. An Academician,
Baron Larrey, whose authority was rendered all the greater by his
calmness, dignity, and moderation, rose to speak. After acknowledging
the importance of Pasteur’s discovery, Larrey continued, “The sudden
inspiration, agility and courage, with which the ferocious dog was
muzzled, and thus made incapable of committing further injury to
bystanders, ... such an act of bravery deserves to be rewarded. I
therefore have the honour of begging the Académie des Sciences to
recommend to the Académie Française this young shepherd, who, by giving
such a generous example of courage and devotion, has well deserved a
Montyon prize.”
Bouley, then chairman of the Academy, rose to speak in his turn--
“We are entitled to say that the date of the present meeting will remain
for ever memorable in the history of medicine, and glorious for French
science; for it is that of one of the greatest steps ever accomplished
in the medical order of things--a progress realized by the discovery of
an efficacious means of preventive treatment for a disease, the
incurable nature of which was a legacy handed down by one century to
another. From this day, humanity is armed with a means of fighting the
fatal disease of hydrophobia and of preventing its onset. It is to M.
Pasteur that we owe this, and we could not feel too much admiration or
too much gratitude for the efforts on his part which have led to such a
magnificent result....”
Five years previously, Bouley, in the annual combined public meeting of
the five Academies, had proclaimed his enthusiasm for the discovery of
the vaccination of anthrax. But on hearing him again on this October
day, in 1885, his colleagues could not but be painfully struck by the
change in him; his voice was weak, his face thin and pale. He was dying
of an affection of the heart, and quite aware of it, but he was
sustained by a wonderful energy, and ready to forget his sufferings in
his joy at the thought that the sum of human sorrows would be diminished
by Pasteur’s victory. He went to the Académie de Médecine the next day
to enjoy the echo of the great sitting of the Académie des Sciences. He
died on November 29.
The chairman of the Academy of Medicine, M. Jules Bergeron, applauded
Pasteur’s statement all the more that he too had publicly deplored (in
1862) the impotence of medical science in the presence of this cruel
disease.
But while M. Bergeron shared the admiration felt by Vulpian and Dr.
Grancher for the experiments which had transformed the rabic virus into
its own vaccine, other medical men were divided into several categories:
some were full of enthusiasm, others reserved their opinion, many were
sceptical, and a few even positively hostile.
As soon as Pasteur’s paper was published, people bitten by rabid dogs
began to arrive from all sides to the laboratory. The “service” of
hydrophobia became the chief business of the day. Every morning was
spent by Eugène Viala in preparing the fragments of marrow used for
inoculations: in a little room permanently kept at a temperature of 20°
to 23° C., stood rows of sterilized flasks, their tubular openings
closed by plugs of cotton-wool. Each flask contained a rabic marrow,
hanging from the stopper by a thread and gradually drying up by the
action of some fragments of caustic potash lying at the bottom of the
flask. Viala cut those marrows into small pieces by means of scissors
previously put through a flame, and placed them in small sterilized
glasses; he then added a few drops of veal broth and pounded the mixture
with a glass rod. The vaccinal liquid was now ready; each glass was
covered with a paper cover, and bore the date of the medulla used, the
earliest of which was fourteen days old. For each patient under
treatment from a certain date, there was a whole series of little
glasses. Pasteur always attended these operations personally.
In the large hall of the laboratory, Pasteur’s collaborators, Messrs.
Chamberland and Roux, carried on investigations into contagious diseases
under the master’s directions; the place was full of flasks, pipets,
phials, containing culture broths. Etienne Wasserzug, another curator,
hardly more than a boy, fresh from the Ecole Normale, where his bright
intelligence and affectionate heart had made him very popular,
translated (for he knew the English, German, Italian, Hungarian and
Spanish languages, and was awaiting a favourable opportunity of learning
Russian) the letters which arrived from all parts of the world; he also
entertained foreign scientists. Pasteur had in him a most valuable
interpreter. Physicians came from all parts of the world asking to be
allowed to study the details of the method. One morning, Dr. Grancher
found Pasteur listening to a physician who was gravely and solemnly
holding forth his objections to microbian doctrines, and in particular
to the treatment of hydrophobia. Pasteur having heard this long
monologue, rose and said, “Sir, your language is not very intelligible
to me. I am not a physician and do not desire to be one. Never speak to
me of your dogma of morbid spontaneity. I am a chemist; I carry out
experiments and I try to understand what they teach me. What do you
think, doctor?” he added, turning to M. Grancher. The latter smilingly
answered that the hour for inoculations had struck. They took place at
eleven, in Pasteur’s study; he, standing by the open door, called out
the names of the patients. The date and circumstances of the bites and
the veterinary surgeon’s certificate were entered in a register, and the
patients were divided into series according to the degree of virulence
which was to be inoculated on each day of the period of treatment.
Pasteur took a personal interest in each of his patients, helping those
who were poor and illiterate to find suitable lodgings in the great
capital. Children especially inspired him with a loving solicitude. But
his pity was mingled with terror, when, on November 9, a little girl of
ten was brought to him who had been severely bitten on the head by a
mountain dog, on October 3, thirty-seven days before!! The wound was
still suppurating. He said to himself, “This is a hopeless case:
hydrophobia is no doubt about to appear immediately; it is much too late
for the preventive treatment to have the least chance of success. Should
I not, in the scientific interest of the method, refuse to treat this
child? If the issue is fatal, all those who have already been treated
will be frightened, and many bitten persons, discouraged from coming to
the laboratory, may succumb to the disease!” These thoughts rapidly
crossed Pasteur’s mind. But he found himself unable to resist his
compassion for the father and mother, begging him to try and save their
child.
After the treatment was over, Louise Pelletier had returned to school,
when fits of breathlessness appeared, soon followed by convulsive
spasms; she could swallow nothing. Pasteur hastened to her side when
these symptoms began, and new inoculations were attempted. On December
2, there was a respite of a few hours, moments of calm which inspired
Pasteur with the vain hope that she might yet be saved. This delusion
was a short-lived one. After attending Bouley’s funeral, his heart full
of sorrow, Pasteur spent the day by little Louise’s bedside, in her
parents’ rooms in the Rue Dauphine. He could not tear himself away; she
herself, full of affection for him, gasped out a desire that he should
not go away, that he should stay with her! She felt for his hand between
two spasms. Pasteur shared the grief of the father and mother. When all
hope had to be abandoned: “I did so wish I could have saved your little
one!” he said. And as he came down the staircase, he burst into tears.
He was obliged, a few days later, to preside at the reception of Joseph
Bertrand at the Académie Française; his sad feelings little in harmony
with the occasion. He read in a mournful and troubled voice the speech
he had prepared during his peaceful and happy holidays at Arbois. Henry
Houssaye, reporting on this ceremony in the _Journal des Débats_, wrote,
“M. Pasteur ended his speech amidst a torrent of applause, he received a
veritable ovation. He seemed unaccountably moved. How can M. Pasteur,
who has received every mark of admiration, every supreme honour, whose
name is consecrated by universal renown, still be touched by anything
save the discoveries of his powerful genius?” People did not realize
that Pasteur’s thoughts were far away from himself and from his
brilliant discovery. He was thinking of Dumas, his master, of Bouley,
his faithful friend and colleague, and of the child he had been unable
to snatch from the jaws of death; his mind was not with the living, but
with the dead.
A telegram from New York having announced that four children, bitten by
rabid dogs, were starting for Paris, many adversaries who had heard of
Louise Pelletier’s death were saying triumphantly that, if those
children’s parents had known of her fate, they would have spared them so
long and useless a journey.
The four little Americans belonged to workmen’s families and were sent
to Paris by means of a public subscription opened in the columns of the
_New York Herald_; they were accompanied by a doctor and by the mother
of the youngest of them, a boy only five years old. After the first
inoculation, this little boy, astonished at the insignificant prick,
could not help saying, “Is this all we have come such a long journey
for?” The children were received with enthusiasm on their return to New
York, and were asked “many questions about the great man who had taken
such care of them.”
A letter dated from that time (January 14, 1886) shows that Pasteur yet
found time for kindness, in the midst of his world-famed occupations.
“My dear Jupille, I have received your letters, and I am much pleased
with the news you give me of your health. Mme. Pasteur thanks you for
remembering her. She, and every one at the laboratory, join with me in
wishing that you may keep well and improve as much as possible in
reading, writing and arithmetic. Your writing is already much better
than it was, but you should take some pains with your spelling. Where do
you go to school? Who teaches you? Do you work at home as much as you
might? You know that Joseph Meister, who was first to be vaccinated,
often writes to me; well, I think he is improving more quickly than you
are, though he is only ten years old. So, mind you take pains, do not
waste your time with other boys, and listen to the advice of your
teachers, and of your father and mother. Remember me to M. Perrot, the
Mayor of Villers-Farlay. Perhaps, without him, you would have become
ill, and to be ill of hydrophobia means inevitable death; therefore you
owe him much gratitude. Good-bye. Keep well.”
Pasteur’s solicitude did not confine itself to his two first patients,
Joseph Meister and the fearless Jupille, but was extended to all those
who had come under his care; his kindness was like a living flame. The
very little ones who then only saw in him a “kind gentleman” bending
over them understood later in life, when recalling the sweet smile
lighting up his serious face, that Science, thus understood, unites
moral with intellectual grandeur.
* * * * *
Good, like evil, is infectious; Pasteur’s science and devotion inspired
an act of generosity which was to be followed by many others. He
received a visit from one of his colleagues at the Académie Française,
Edouard Hervé, who looked upon journalism as a great responsibility and
as a school of mutual respect between adversaries. He was bringing to
Pasteur, from the Comte de Laubespin, a generous philanthropist, a sum
of 40,000 fr. destined to meet the expenses necessitated by the
organization of the hydrophobia treatment. Pasteur, when questioned by
Hervé, answered that his intention was to found a model establishment in
Paris, supported by donations and international subscriptions, without
having recourse to the State. But he added that he wanted to wait a
little longer until the success of the treatment was undoubted.
Statistics came to support it; Bouley, who had been entrusted with an
official inquiry on the subject under the Empire, had found that the
proportion of deaths after bites from rabid dogs had been 40 per 100,
320 cases having been watched. The proportion often was greater still:
whilst Joseph Meister was under Pasteur’s care, five persons were bitten
by a rabid dog on the Pantin Road, near Paris, and every one of them
succumbed to hydrophobia.
Pasteur, instead of referring to Bouley’s statistics, preferred to adopt
those of M. Leblanc, a veterinary surgeon and a member of the Academy of
Medicine, who had for a long time been head of the sanitary department
of the _Préfecture de Police_. These statistics only gave a proportion
of deaths of 16 per 100, and had been carefully and accurately kept.
On March 1, he was able to affirm, before the Academy, that the new
method had given proofs of its merit, for, out of 350 persons treated,
only one death had taken place, that of the little Pelletier. He
concluded thus--
“It may be seen, by comparison with the most rigorous statistics, that a
very large number of persons have already been saved from death.
“The prophylaxis of hydrophobia after a bite is established.
“It is advisable to create a vaccinal institute against hydrophobia.”
The Academy of Sciences appointed a Commission who unanimously adopted
the suggestion that an establishment for the preventive treatment of
hydrophobia after a bite should be created in Paris, under the name of
_Institut Pasteur_. A subscription was about to be opened in France and
abroad. The spending of the funds would be directed by a special
Committee.
A great wave of enthusiasm and generosity swept from one end of France
to another and reached foreign countries. A newspaper of Milan, the
_Perseveranza_, which had opened a subscription, collected 6,000 fr. in
its first list. The _Journal d’Alsace_ headed a propaganda in favour of
this work, “sprung from Science and Charity.” It reminded its readers
that Pasteur had occupied a professor’s chair in the former brilliant
Faculty of Science of Strasburg, and that his first inoculation was made
on an Alsatian boy, Joseph Meister. The newspaper intended to send the
subscriptions to Pasteur with these words: “Offerings from
Alsace-Lorraine to the Pasteur Institute.”
The war of 1870 still darkened the memories of nations. Amongst eager
and numerous inventions of instruments of death and destruction,
humanity breathed when fresh news came from the laboratory, where a
continued struggle was taking place against diseases. The most
mysterious, the most cruel of all was going to be reduced to impotence.
Yet the method was about to meet with a few more cases like Louise
Pelletier’s; accidents would result, either from delay or from
exceptionally serious wounds. Happy days were still in store for those
who sowed doubt and hatred.
* * * * *
During the early part of March, Pasteur received nineteen Russians,
coming from the province of Smolensk. They had been attacked by a rabid
wolf and most of them had terrible wounds: one of them, a priest, had
been surprised by the infuriated beast as he was going into church, his
upper lip and right cheek had been torn off, his face was one gaping
wound. Another, the youngest of them, had had the skin of his forehead
torn off by the wolf’s teeth; other bites were like knife cuts. Five of
these unhappy wretches were in such a condition that they had to be
carried to the Hôtel Dieu Hospital as soon as they arrived.
The Russian doctor who had accompanied these mujiks related how the wolf
had wandered for two days and two nights, tearing to pieces every one he
met, and how he had finally been struck down with an axe by one of those
he had bitten most severely.
Because of the gravity of the wounds, and in order to make up for the
time lost by the Russians before they started, Pasteur decided on making
two inoculations every day, one in the morning and one in the evening;
the patients at the Hôtel Dieu could be inoculated upon at the hospital.
The fourteen others came every morning in their _touloupes_ and fur
caps, with their wounds bandaged, and joined without a word the motley
groups awaiting treatment at the laboratory--an English family, a Basque
peasant, a Hungarian in his national costume, etc., etc.
In the evening, the dumb and resigned band of mujiks came again to the
laboratory door. They seemed led by Fate, heedless of the struggle
between life and death of which they were the prize. “Pasteur” was the
only French word they knew, and their set and melancholy faces
brightened in his presence as with a ray of hope and gratitude.
Their condition was the more alarming that a whole fortnight had elapsed
between their being bitten and the date of the first inoculations.
Statistics were terrifying as to the results of wolf-bites, the average
proportion of deaths being 82 per 100. General anxiety and excitement
prevailed concerning the hapless Russians, and the news of the death of
three of them produced an intense emotion.
Pasteur had unceasingly continued his visits to the Hôtel Dieu. He was
overwhelmed with grief. His confidence in his method was in no wise
shaken, the general results would not allow it. But questions of
statistics were of little account in his eyes when he was the witness of
a misfortune; his charity was not of that kind which is exhausted by
collective generalities: each individual appealed to his heart. As he
passed through the wards at the Hôtel Dieu, each patient in his bed
inspired him with deep compassion. And that is why so many who only saw
him pass, heard his voice, met his pitiful eyes resting on them, have
preserved of him a memory such as the poor had of St. Vincent de Paul.
“The other Russians are keeping well so far,” declared Pasteur at the
Academy sitting of April 12, 1886. Whilst certain opponents in France
continued to discuss the three deaths and apparently saw nought but
those failures, the return of the sixteen survivors was greeted with an
almost religious emotion. Other Russians had come before them and were
saved, and the Tsar, knowing these things, desired his brother, the
Grand Duke Vladimir, to bring to Pasteur an imperial gift, the Cross of
the Order of St. Anne of Russia, in diamonds. He did more, he gave
100,000 fr. in aid of the proposed Pasteur Institute.
In April, 1886, the English Government, seeing the practical results of
the method for the prophylaxis of hydrophobia, appointed a Commission to
study and verify the facts. Sir James Paget was the president of it, and
the other members were:--Dr. Lauder-Brunton, Mr. Fleming, Sir Joseph
Lister, Dr. Quain, Sir Henry Roscoe, Professor Burdon Sanderson, and
Mr. Victor Horsley, secretary. The _résumé_ of the programme was as
follows--
Development of the rabic virus in the medulla oblongata of animals dying
of rabies.
Transmission of this virus by subdural or subcutaneous inoculation.
Intensification of this virus by successive passages from rabbit to
rabbit.
Possibility either of protecting healthy animals from ulterior bites
from rabid animals, or of preventing the onset of rabies in animals
already bitten, by means of vaccinal inoculations.
Applications of this method to man and value of its results.
Burdon Sanderson and Horsley came to Paris, and two rabbits, inoculated
on by Pasteur, were taken to England; a series of experiments was to be
begun on them, and an inquiry was to take place afterwards concerning
patients treated both in France and in England. Pasteur, who lost his
temper at prejudices and ill-timed levity, approved and solicited
inquiry and careful examination.
Long lists of subscribers appeared in the _Journal
Officiel_--millionaires, poor workmen, students, women, etc. A great
festival was organized at the Trocadéro in favour of the Pasteur
Institute; the greatest artistes offered their services. Coquelin
recited verses written for the occasion which excited loud applause from
the immense audience. Gounod, who had conducted his _Ave Maria_, turned
round after the closing bars, and, in an impulse of heartfelt
enthusiasm, kissed both his hands to the savant.
In the evening at a banquet, Pasteur thanked his colleagues and the
organizers of this incomparable performance. “Was it not,” he said, “a
touching sight, that of those immortal composers, those great charmers
of fortunate humanity coming to the assistance of those who wish to
study and to serve suffering humanity? And you too come, great artistes,
great actors, like so many generals re-entering the ranks to give
greater vigour to a common feeling. I cannot easily describe what I
felt. Dare I confess that I was hearing most of you for the first time?
I do not think I have spent more than ten evenings of my whole life at a
theatre. But I can have no regrets now that you have given me, in a few
hours’ interval, as in an exquisite synthesis, the feelings that so many
others scatter over several months, or rather several years.”
A few days later, the subscription from Alsace-Lorraine brought in
43,000 fr. Pasteur received it with grateful emotion, and was pleased
and touched to find the name of little Joseph Meister among the list of
private subscribers. It was now eleven months since he had been bitten
so cruelly by the dog, whose rabic condition had immediately been
recognized by the German authorities. Pasteur ever kept a corner of his
heart for the boy who had caused him such anxiety.
* * * * *
Pasteur’s name was now familiar to all those who were trying to benefit
humanity; his presence at charitable gatherings was considered as a
happy omen, and he was asked to preside on many such occasions. He was
ever ready with his help and sympathy, speaking in public, answering
letters from private individuals, giving wholesome advice to young
people who came to him for it, and doing nothing by halves. If he found
the time, even during that period when the study of rabies was absorbing
him, to undertake so many things and to achieve so many tasks, he owed
it to Mme. Pasteur, who watched over his peace, keeping him safe from
intrusions and interruptions. This retired, almost recluse life, enabled
him to complete many works, a few of which would have sufficed to make
several scientists celebrated.
Every morning, between ten and eleven o’clock, Pasteur walked down the
Rue Claude-Bernard to the Rue Vauquelin, where a few temporary buildings
had been erected to facilitate the treatment of hydrophobia, close to
the rabbit hutches, hencoops, and dog kennels which occupied the yard of
the old Collège Rollin. The patients under treatment walked about
cheerfully amidst these surroundings, looking like holiday makers in a
Zoological Garden. Children, whose tears were already dried at the
second inoculation, ran about merrily. Pasteur, who loved the little
ones, always kept sweets or new copper coins for them in his drawer. One
little girl amused herself by having holes bored in those coins, and
hung them round her neck like a necklace; she was wearing this ornament
on the day of her departure, when she ran to kiss the great man as she
would have kissed her grandfather.
Drs. Grancher, Roux, Chantemesse, and Charrin came by turns to perform
the inoculations. A surgery ward had been installed to treat the
numerous wounds of the patients, and entrusted to the young and
energetic Dr. Terrillon.
In August, 1886, while staying at Arbois, Pasteur spent much time over
his notes and registers; he was sometimes tempted to read over certain
articles of passionate criticism. “How difficult it is to obtain the
triumph of truth!” he would say. “Opposition is a useful stimulant, but
bad faith is such a pitiable thing. How is it that they are not struck
with the results as shown by statistics? From 1880 to 1885, sixty
persons are stated to have died of hydrophobia in the Paris hospitals;
well, since November 1, 1885, when the prophylactic method was started
in my laboratory, only three deaths have occurred in those hospitals,
two of which were cases which had not been treated. It is evident that
very few people who had been bitten did not come to be treated. In
France, out of that unknown but very restricted number, seventeen cases
of death have been noted, whilst out of the 1,726 French and Algerians
who came to the laboratory only ten died after the treatment.”
But Pasteur was not yet satisfied with this proportion, already so low;
he was trying to forestall the outburst of hydrophobia by a greater
rapidity and intensity of the treatment. He read a paper on the subject
to the Academy of Sciences on November 2, 1886. Admiral Jurien de la
Gravière, who was in the chair, said to him, “All great discoveries have
gone through a time of trial. May your health withstand the troubles and
difficulties in your way.”
Pasteur’s health had indeed suffered from so much work and anxiety, and
there were symptoms of some heart trouble. Drs. Villemin and Grancher
persuaded him to interrupt his work and to think of spending a restful
winter in the south of France. M. Raphael Bischoffsheim, a great lover
of science, placed at Pasteur’s disposal his beautiful villa at
Bordighera, close to the French frontier, which he had on divers
occasions lent to other distinguished guests, the Queen of Italy, Henri
Sainte-Claire Deville, Gambetta, etc.
Pasteur consented to leave his work at the end of November, and started
one evening from the Gare de Lyon with his wife, his daughter and her
husband, and his two grandchildren; eighteen friends came to the station
to see him off, including his pupils, M. Bischoffsheim, and some foreign
physicians who were staying in Paris to study the prophylactic treatment
of hydrophobia.
The bright dawn and the sunshine already appearing at Avignon
contrasted with the foggy November weather left behind in Paris and
brought a feeling of comfort, almost of returning health; a delegation
of doctors met the train at Nice, bringing Pasteur their good wishes.
The travelling party drove from Vintimille to Bordighera under the deep
blue sky reflected in a sea of a yet deeper blue, along a road bordered
with cacti, palms and other tropical plants. The sight of the lovely
gardens of the Villa Bischoffsheim gave Pasteur a delicious feeling of
rest.
His health soon improved sufficiently for him to be able to take some
short walks. But his thoughts constantly recurred to the laboratory. M.
Duclaux was then thinking of starting a monthly periodical entitled
_Annals of the Pasteur Institute_. Pasteur, writing to him on December
27, 1887, to express his approbation, suggested various experiments to
be attempted. He attributed the action of the preventive inoculations to
a vaccinal matter associated with the rabic microbe. Pasteur had thought
at first that the first development of the pathogenic microbe caused the
disappearance from the organism of an element necessary to the life of
that microbe. It was, in other words, a theory of exhaustion. But since
1885, he adopted the other idea, supported indeed by biologists, that
immunity was due to a substance left in the body by the culture of the
microbe and which opposed the invasion--a theory of addition.
“I am happy to learn,” wrote Villemin, his friend and his medical
adviser, “that your health is improving; continue to rest in that
beautiful country, you have well deserved it, and rest is _absolutely_
necessary to you. You have overtaxed yourself beyond all reason and you
must make up for it. Repairs to the nervous system are worked chiefly by
relaxation from the mental storms and moral anxieties which your _rabid_
work has occasioned in you. Give the Bordighera sun a chance!”
But Pasteur was not allowed the rest he so much needed; on January 4,
1887, referring to a death which had occurred after treatment in the
preceding December, M. Peter declared that the antirabic cure was
useless; at the following meeting he called it dangerous when applied in
the “intensive” form. Dujardin-Beaumetz, Chauveau and Verneuil
immediately intervened, declaring that the alleged fact was “devoid of
any scientific character.” A week later, MM. Grancher and Brouardel bore
the brunt of the discussion. Grancher, Pasteur’s representative on this
occasion, disproved certain allegations, and added: “The medical men
who have been chosen by M. Pasteur to assist him in his work have not
hesitated to practise the antirabic inoculation on themselves, as a
safeguard against an accidental inoculation of the virus which they are
constantly handling. What greater proof can they give of their bonâ fide
convictions?” He showed that the mortality amongst the cases treated
remained below 1 per 100. “M. Pasteur will soon publish foreign
statistics from Samara, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Warsaw and
Vienna: they are all absolutely favourable.”
As it was insinuated that the laboratory of the Ecole Normale kept its
failures a secret, it was decided that the _Annals of the Pasteur
Institute_ would publish a monthly list and bulletin of patients under
treatment.
Vulpian, at another meeting (it was almost the last time he was heard at
the Académie de Médecine), said, à propos of what he called an
inexcusable opposition, “This new benefit adds to the number of those
which our illustrious Pasteur has already rendered to humanity.... Our
works and our names will soon be buried under the rising tide of
oblivion: the name and the works of M. Pasteur will continue to stand on
heights too great to be reached by its sullen waves.” Pasteur was much
disturbed by the noise of these discussions; every post increased his
feverishness, and he spoke every morning of returning to Paris to answer
his opponents.
It was a pitiful thing to note on his worn countenance the visible signs
of the necessity of the peace and rest offered by this beautiful land of
serene sunshine; and to hear at the same time a constant echo of those
angry debates. Anonymous letters were sent to him, insulting newspaper
articles--all that envy and hatred can invent; the seamy side of human
nature was being revealed to him. “I did not know I had so many
enemies,” he said mournfully. He was consoled to some extent by the
ardent support of the greatest medical men in France.
Vulpian, in a statement to the Académie des Sciences, constituted
himself Pasteur’s champion. Pasteur indeed was safe from attacks in that
centre, but certain low slanderers who attended the public meetings of
the Académie continued to accuse Pasteur of concealing the failures of
his method. Vulpian--who was furiously angry at such an insinuation
against “a man like M. Pasteur, whose good faith, loyalty and scientific
integrity should be an example to his adversaries as they are to his
friends”--thought that it was in the interest both of science and of
humanity to state once more the facts recently confirmed by new
statistics; the public is so impressionable and so mobile in its
opinions that one article is often enough to shake general confidence.
He was therefore anxious to reassure all those who had been inoculated
on and who might be induced by those discussions to wonder with anguish
whether they really were saved. The Academy of Sciences decided that
Vulpian’s statement should be inserted _in extenso_ in all the reports
and a copy of it sent to every village in France. Vulpian wrote to
Pasteur at the same time, “All your admirers hope that those interested
attacks will merely excite your contempt. Fine weather is no doubt
reigning at Bordighera: you must take advantage of it and become quite
well.... The Academy of Medicine is almost entirely on your side; there
are at the most but four or five exceptions.”
* * * * *
Pasteur had a few calm days after these debates. Whilst planning out new
investigations, he was much interested in the plans for his Institute
which were now submitted to him. His thoughts were always away from
Bordighera, which he seemed to look upon as a sort of exile. This
impression was partly due to the situation of the town, so close to the
frontier, and the haunt of so many homeless wanderers. He once met a
sad-faced, still beautiful woman, in mourning robes, and recognized the
Empress Eugénie.
Shortly afterwards, he received a visit from Prince Napoleon, who
dragged his haughty _ennui_ from town to town. He presented himself at
the Villa Bischoffsheim under the name of Count Moncalieri, coming, he
said, to greet his colleague of the Institute. Rabies formed the subject
of their conversation. The next day, Pasteur called on the Prince, in
his commonplace hotel rooms, a mere temporary resting place for the
exiled Bonaparte, whose mysterious, uncompleted destiny was made more
enigmatical by his startling resemblance to the great Emperor.
On February 23, the day after the carnival, early in the morning, a
violent earthquake cast terror over that peaceful land where nature
hides with flowers the spectre of death. At 6.20 a.m. a low and distant
rumbling sound was heard, coming from the depths of the earth and
resembling the noise of a train passing in an underground tunnel; houses
began to rock and ominous cracks were heard. This first shock lasted
more than a minute, during which the sense of solidity disappeared
altogether, to be succeeded by a feeling of absolute, hopeless,
impotence. No doubt, in every household, families gathered together,
with a sudden yearning not to be divided. Pasteur’s wife, children and
grandchildren had barely had time to come to him when another shock took
place, more terrible than the first; everything seemed about to be
engulfed in an abyss. Never had morning been more radiant; there was not
a breath of wind, the air was absolutely transparent.
An early departure was necessary: the broken ceilings were dropping to
pieces, shaken off by an incessant vibration of the ground which
continued after the second shock, and of which Pasteur observed the
effect on glass windows with much interest. Pasteur and his family dove
off to Vintimille in a carriage, along a road lined with ruined houses,
crowded with sick people in quest of carriages and peasants coming down
from their mountain dwellings, destroyed by the shock, leading donkeys
loaded with bedding, the women followed by little children hastily wrapt
in blankets and odd clothes. At Vintimille station, terrified travellers
were trying to leave France for Italy or Italy for France, fancying that
the danger would cease on the other side of the frontier.
“We have resolved to go to Arbois,” wrote Mme. Pasteur to her son from
Marseilles; “your father will be better able there than anywhere else to
recover from this shock to his heart.”
After a few weeks’ stay at Arbois, Pasteur seemed quite well again. He
was received with respect and veneration on his return to the Academies
of Sciences and of Medicine. His best and greatest colleagues had
realized what the loss of him would mean to France and to the world, and
surrounded him with an anxious solicitude.
At the beginning of July, Pasteur received the report presented to the
House of Commons by the English Commission after a fourteen months’
study of the prophylactic method against hydrophobia. The English
scientists had verified every one of the facts upon which the method was
founded, but they had not been satisfied with their experimental
researches in Mr. Horsley’s laboratory, and had carried out a long and
minute inquiry in France. After noting on Pasteur’s registers the names
of ninety persons treated, who had come from the same neighbourhood,
they had interviewed each one of them in their own homes. “It may
therefore be considered as certain”--thus ran the report--“that M.
Pasteur has discovered a prophylactic method against hydrophobia which
may be compared with that of vaccination against small-pox. It would be
difficult to overestimate the utility of this discovery, both from the
point of view of its practical side and of its application to general
pathology. We have here a new method of inoculation, or vaccination, as
M. Pasteur sometimes calls it, and similar means might be employed to
protect man and domestic animals against other virus as active as that
of hydrophobia.”
Pasteur laid this report on the desk of the Academy of Sciences on July
4. He spoke of its spirit of entire and unanimous confidence, and
added--
“Thus fall to the ground the contradictions which have been published. I
leave on one side the passionate attacks which were not justified by the
least attempt at experiment, the slightest observation of facts in my
laboratory, or even an exchange of words and ideas with the Director of
the Hydrophobia Clinic, Professor Grancher, and his medical assistants.
“But, however deep is my satisfaction as a Frenchman, I cannot but feel
a sense of deepest sadness at the thought that this high testimony from
a commission of illustrious scientists was not known by him who, at the
very beginning of the application of this method, supported me by his
counsels and his authority, and who later on, when I was ill and absent,
knew so well how to champion truth and justice; I mean our beloved
colleague Vulpian.”
Vulpian had succumbed to a few days’ illness. His speech in favour of
Pasteur was almost the farewell to the Academy of this great-hearted
scientist.
The discussion threatened to revive. Other colleagues defended Pasteur
at the Academy of Medicine on July 12. Professor Brouardel spoke, also
M. Villemin, and then Charcot, who insisted on quoting word for word
Vulpian’s true and simple phrase: “The discovery of the preventive
treatment of hydrophobia after a bite, entirely due to M. Pasteur’s
experimental genius, is one of the finest discoveries ever made, both
from the scientific and the humanitarian point of view.” And Charcot
continued: “I am persuaded that I express in these words the opinion of
all the medical men who have studied the question with an open mind,
free from prejudice; the inventor of antirabic vaccination may, now
more than ever, hold his head high and continue to accomplish his
glorious task, heedless of the clamour of systematic contradiction or of
the insidious murmurs of slander.”
The Academy of Sciences begged Pasteur to become its Life Secretary in
Vulpian’s place. Pasteur did not reply at once to this offer, but went
to see M. Berthelot: “This high position,” he said, “would be more
suitable to you than to me.” M. Berthelot, much touched, refused
unconditionally, and Pasteur accepted. He was elected on July 18. He
said, in thanking his colleagues, “I would now spend what time remains
before me, on the one hand in encouraging to research and in training
for scientific studies,--the future of which seems to me most
promising,--pupils worthy of French science; and, on the other hand, in
following attentively the work incited and encouraged by this Academy.
“Our only consolation, as we feel our own strength failing us, is to
feel that we may help those who come after us to do more and to do
better than ourselves, fixing their eyes as they can on the great
horizons of which we only had a glimpse.”
He did not long fulfil his new duties. On October 23, Sunday morning,
after writing a letter in his room, he tried to speak to Mme. Pasteur
and could not pronounce a word; his tongue was paralyzed. He had
promised to lunch with his daughter on that day, and, fearing that she
might be alarmed, he drove to her house. After spending a few hours in
an easy chair, he consented to remain at her house with Mme. Pasteur. In
the evening his speech returned, and two days later, when he went back
to the Ecole Normale, no one would have noticed any change in him. But,
on the following Saturday morning, he had another almost similar attack,
without any premonitory symptoms. His speech remained somewhat
difficult, and his deep powerful voice completely lost its strength. In
January, 1888, he was obliged to resign his secretaryship.
Ill-health had emaciated his features. A portrait of him by Carolus
Duran represents him looking ill and weary, a sad look in his eyes. But
goodness predominates in those worn features, revealing that lovable
soul, full of pity for all human sufferings, and of which the painter
has rendered the unspeakable thrill.
Pasteur’s various portraits, compared with one another, show us
different aspects of his physiognomy. A luminous profile, painted by
Henner ten years before, brings out the powerful harmony of the
forehead. In 1886, Bonnat painted, for the brewer Jacobsen, who wished
to present it to Mme. Pasteur, a large portrait which may be called an
official one. Pasteur is standing in rather an artificial attitude,
which might be imperious, if his left hand was not resting on the
shoulder of his granddaughter, a child of six, with clear pensive eyes.
In that same year, Edelfeldt, the Finnish painter, begged to be allowed
to come into the laboratory for a few sketches. Pasteur came and went,
attending to his work and taking no notice of the painter. One day that
Edelfeldt was watching him thus, deep in observation, his forehead lined
with almost painful thoughts, he undertook to portray the savant in his
meditative attitude. Pasteur is standing clad in a short brown coat, an
experimental card in his left hand, in his right, a phial containing a
fragment of rabic marrow, the expression in his eyes entirely
concentrated on the scientific problem.
During the year 1888, Pasteur, after spending the morning with his
patients, used to go and watch the buildings for the Pasteur Institute
which were being erected in the Rue Dutot. 11,000 square yards of ground
had been acquired in the midst of some market gardens. Instead of rows
of hand-lights and young lettuces, a stone building, with a Louis XIII
façade, was now being constructed. An interior gallery connected the
main building with the large wings. The Pasteur Institute was to be at
the same time a great dispensary for the treatment of hydrophobia, a
centre of research on virulent and contagious diseases, and also a
teaching centre. M. Duclaux’s class of biological chemistry, held at the
Sorbonne, was about to be transferred to the Pasteur Institute, where
Dr. Roux would also give a course of lectures on technical microbia. The
“service” of vaccinations against anthrax was entrusted to M.
Chamberland. (The statistics of 1882--1887 gave a total of 1,600,000
sheep and nearly 200,000 oxen.) There would also be, under M.
Metchnikoff’s direction, some private laboratories, the monkish cells of
the Pastorians.
At the end of October, the work was almost completed; Pasteur invited
the President of the Republic to come and inaugurate the Institute. “I
shall certainly not fail to do so,” answered Carnot; “your Institute is
a credit to France.”
On November 14, politicians, colleagues, friends, collaborators, pupils
assembled in the large library of the new Institute. Pasteur had the
pleasure of seeing before him, in the first rank, Duruy and Jules
Simon; it was a great day for these former Ministers of Public
Instruction. Like them, Pasteur had all his life been deeply interested
in higher education. “If that teaching is but for a small number,” he
said, “it is with this small number, this élite that the prosperity,
glory and supremacy of a nation rest.”
Joseph Bertrand, chairman of the Institute Committee, knowing that by so
doing he responded to Pasteur’s dearest wishes, spoke of the past and
recalled the memories of Biot, Senarmont, Claude Bernard, Balard, and J.
B. Dumas.
Professor Grancher, Secretary of the Committee, alluded to the way in
which not only Vulpian but Breuardel, Charcot, Verneuil, Chauveau and
Villemin had recently honoured themselves by supporting the cause of
progress and preparing its triumph. These memories of early friends,
associated with that of recent champions, brought before the audience a
vision of the procession of years. After speaking of the obstacles
Pasteur had so often encountered amongst the medical world--
“You know,” said M. Grancher, “that M. Pasteur is an innovator, and that
his creative imagination, kept in check by rigorous observation of
facts, has overturned many errors and built up in their place an
entirely new science. His discoveries on ferments, on the generation of
the infinitesimally small, on microbes, the cause of contagious
diseases, and on the vaccination of those diseases, have been for
biological chemistry, for the veterinary art and for medicine, not a
regular progress, but a complete revolution. Now, revolutions, even
those imposed by scientific demonstration, ever leave behind them
vanquished ones who do not easily forgive. M. Pasteur has therefore many
adversaries in the world, without counting those Athenian French who do
not like to see one man always right or always fortunate. And, as if he
had not enough adversaries, M. Pasteur makes himself new ones by the
rigorous implacability of his dialectics and the absolute form he
sometimes gives to his thought.”
Going on to the most recently acquired results, M. Grancher stated that
the mortality amongst persons treated after bites from rabid dogs
remained under 1 per 100.
“If those figures are indeed eloquent,” said M. Christophle, the
treasurer, who spoke after M. Grancher, “other figures are touching. I
would advise those who only see the dark side of humanity,” he remarked,
before entering upon the statement of accounts--“those who go about
repeating that everything here below is for the worst, that there is no
disinterestedness, no devotion in this world--to cast their eyes over
the ‘human documents’ of the Pasteur Institute. They would learn
therein, beginning at the beginning, that Academies contain colleagues
who are not offended, but proud and happy in the fame of another; that
politicians and journalists often have a passion for what is good and
true; that at no former epoch have great men been more beloved in
France; that justice is already rendered to them during their lifetime,
which is very much the best way of doing so; that we have cheered Victor
Hugo’s birthday, Chevreul’s centenary, and the inauguration of the
Pasteur Institute. When a Frenchman runs himself down, said one of M.
Pasteur’s colleagues, do not believe him; he is boasting! Reversing a
celebrated and pessimistic phrase, it might be said that in this public
subscription all the virtues flow into unselfishness like rivers into
the sea.”
M. Christophle went on to show how rich and poor had joined in this
subscription and raised an amount of 2,586,680 fr. The French Chambers
had voted 200,000 fr., to which had been added international gifts from
the Tsar, the Emperor of Brazil, and the Sultan. The total expenses
would probably reach 1,563,786 fr., leaving a little more than a million
to form an endowment for the Pasteur Institute, a fund which was to be
increased every year by the product of the sale of vaccines from the
laboratory, which Pasteur and Messrs. Chamberland and Roux agreed to
give up to the Institute.
“It is thus, Sir,” concluded the treasurer, directly addressing Pasteur,
“that public generosity, practical help from the Government, and your
own disinterestedness have founded and consolidated the establishment
which we are to-day inaugurating.” And, persuaded that the solicitude of
the public would never fail to support this great work, “This is for
you, Sir, a rare and almost unhoped for happiness; let it console you
for the passionate struggles, the terrible anxiety and the many emotions
you have gone through.”
Pasteur, overcome by his feelings, had to ask his son to read his
speech. It began by a rapid summary of what France had done for
education in all its degrees. “From village schools to laboratories,
everything has been founded or renovated.” After acknowledging the help
given him in later years by the public authorities, he continued--
“And when the day came that, foreseeing the future which would be opened
by the discovery of the attenuation of virus, I appealed to my country,
so that we should be allowed, through the strength and impulse of
private initiative, to build laboratories to be devoted, not only to the
prophylactic treatment of hydrophobia, but also to the study of virulent
and contagious diseases--on that day again, France gave in handfuls....
It is now finished, this great building, of which it might be said that
there is not a stone but what is the material sign of a generous
thought. All the virtues have subscribed to build this dwelling place
for work.
“Alas! mine is the bitter grief that I enter it, a man ‘vanquished by
Time,’ deprived of my masters, even of my companions in the struggle,
Dumas, Bouley, Paul Bert, and lastly Vulpian, who, after having been
with you, my dear Grancher, my counsellor at the very first, became the
most energetic, the most convinced champion of this method.
“However, if I have the sorrow of thinking that they are no more, after
having valiantly taken their part in discussions which I have never
provoked but have had to endure; if they cannot hear me proclaim all
that I owe to their counsels and support; if I feel their absence as
deeply as on the morrow of their death, I have at least the consolation
of believing that all that we struggled for together will not perish.
The collaborators and pupils who are now here share our scientific
faith....” He continued, as in a sort of testament: “Keep your early
enthusiasm, dear collaborators, but let it ever be regulated by rigorous
examinations and tests. Never advance anything which cannot be proved in
a simple and decisive fashion.
“Worship the spirit of criticism. If reduced to itself, it is not an
awakener of ideas or a stimulant to great things, but, without it,
everything is fallible; it always has the last word. What I am now
asking you, and you will ask of your pupils later on, is what is most
difficult to an inventor.
“It is indeed a hard task, when you believe you have found an important
scientific fact and are feverishly anxious to publish it, to constrain
yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, to fight with yourself, to
try and ruin your own experiments and only to proclaim your discovery
after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses.
“But when, after so many efforts, you have at last arrived at a
certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human
soul, and the thought that you will have contributed to the honour of
your country renders that joy still deeper.
“If science has no country, the scientist should have one, and ascribe
to it the influence which his works may have in this world. If I might
be allowed, M. le Président, to conclude by a philosophical remark
inspired by your presence in this Home of Work, I should say that two
contrary laws seem to be wrestling with each other nowadays; the one, a
law of blood and of death, ever imagining new means of destruction and
forcing nations to be constantly ready for the battlefield--the other, a
law of peace, work and health, ever evolving new means of delivering man
from the scourges which beset him.
“The one seeks violent conquests, the other the relief of humanity. The
latter places one human life above any victory; while the former would
sacrifice hundreds and thousands of lives to the ambition of one. The
law of which we are the instruments seeks, even in the midst of carnage,
to cure the sanguinary ills of the law of war; the treatment inspired by
our antiseptic methods may preserve thousands of soldiers. Which of
those two laws will ultimately prevail, God alone knows. But we may
assert that French Science will have tried, by obeying the law of
Humanity, to extend the frontiers of Life.”
CHAPTER XIV
1889--1895
In this Institute, which Pasteur entered ill and weary, he contemplated
with joy those large laboratories, which would enable his pupils to work
with ease and to attract around them investigators from all countries.
He was happy to think that the material difficulties which had hampered
him would be spared those who came after him. He believed in the
realization of his wishes for peace, work, mutual help among men.
Whatever the obstacles, he was persuaded that science would continue its
civilizing progress and that its benefits would spread from domain to
domain. Differing from those old men who are ever praising the past, he
had an enthusiastic confidence in the future; he foresaw great
developments of his studies, some of which were already apparent. His
first researches on crystallography and molecular dissymmetry had served
as a basis to stereo-chemistry. But, while he followed the studies on
that subject of Le Bel and Van t’Hoff, he continued to regret that he
had not been able to revert to the studies of his youth, enslaved as he
had been by the inflexible logical sequence of his works. “Every time we
have had the privilege of hearing Pasteur speak of his early
researches,” writes M. Chamberland, in an article in the _Revue
Scientifique_, “we have seen the revival in him of a smouldering fire,
and we have thought that his countenance showed a vague regret at having
forsaken them. Who can now say what discoveries he might have made in
that direction?” “One day,” said Dr. Héricourt--who spent the summer
near Villeneuve l’Etang, and who often came into the Park with his two
sons--“he favoured me with an admirable, captivating discourse on this
subject, the like of which I have never heard.”
Pasteur, instead of feeling regret, might have looked back with calm
pride on the progress he had made in other directions.
In what obscurity were fermentation and infection enveloped before his
time, and with what light he had penetrated them! When he had discovered
the all-powerful rôle of the infinitesimally small, he had actually
mastered some of those living germs, causes of disease; he had
transformed them from destructive to preservative agents. Not only had
he renovated medicine and surgery, but hygiene, misunderstood and
neglected until then, was benefiting by the experimental method. Light
was being thrown on preventive measures.
M. Henri Monod, Director of Hygiene and Public Charities, one day
quoted, à propos of sanitary measures, these words of the great English
Minister, Disraeli--
“Public health is the foundation upon which rest the happiness of the
people and the power of the State. Take the most beautiful kingdom, give
it intelligent and laborious citizens, prosperous manufactures,
productive agriculture; let arts flourish, let architects cover the land
with temples and palaces; in order to defend all these riches, have
first-rate weapons, fleets of torpedo boats--if the population remains
stationary, if it decreases yearly in vigour and in stature, the nation
must perish. And that is why I consider that the first duty of a
statesman is the care of Public Health.”
In 1889, when the International Congress of Hygiene met in Paris, M.
Brouardel was able to say--
“If echoes from this meeting could reach them ... our ancestors would
learn that a revolution, the most formidable for thirty centuries, has
shaken medical science to its very foundations, and that it is the work
of a stranger to their corporation; and their sons do not cry Anathema,
they admire him, bow to his laws.... We all proclaim ourselves disciples
of Pasteur.”
On the very day after those words were pronounced, Pasteur saw the
realization of one of his most ardent wishes, the inauguration of the
new Sorbonne. At the sight of the wonderful facilities for work offered
by this palace, he remembered Claude Bernard’s cellar, his own garret at
the Ecole Normale, and felt a movement of patriotic pride.
In October, 1889, though his health remained shaken, he insisted on
going to Alais, where a statue was being raised to J. B. Dumas. Many of
his colleagues tried to dissuade him from this long and fatiguing
journey, but he said: “I am alive, I shall go.” At the foot of the
statue, he spoke of his master, one of those men who are “the tutelary
spirits of a nation.”
The sericicultors, desiring to thank him for the five years he had spent
in studying the silkworm disease, offered him an artistic souvenir: a
silver heather twig laden with gold cocoons.
Pasteur did not fail to remind them that it was at the request of their
fellow citizen that he had studied pébrine. He said, “In the expression
of your gratitude, by which I am deeply touched, do not forget that the
initiative was due to M. Dumas.”
Thus his character revealed itself on every occasion. Every morning,
with a step rendered heavy by age and ill-health, he went from his rooms
to the Hydrophobia Clinic, arriving there long before the patients. He
superintended the preparation of the vaccinal marrows; no detail escaped
him. When the time came for inoculations, he was already informed of
each patient’s name, sometimes of his poor circumstances; he had a kind
word for every one, often substantial help for the very poor. The
children interested him most; whether severely bitten, or frightened at
the inoculation, he dried their tears and consoled them. How many
children have thus kept a memory of him! “When I see a child,” he used
to say, “he inspires me with two feelings: tenderness for what he is
now, respect for what he may become hereafter.”
* * * * *
Already in May, 1892, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway had formed various
Committees of scientists and pupils of Pasteur to celebrate his
seventieth birthday. In France, it was in November that the Medical and
Surgical Section of the Academy of Sciences constituted a Subscription
Committee to offer Pasteur an affectionate homage. Roty, the celebrated
engraver, was desired to finish a medal he had already begun,
representing Pasteur in profile, a skull cap on his broad forehead, the
brow strongly prominent, the whole face full of energy and meditation.
His shoulders are covered with the cape he usually wore in the morning
in the passages of his Institute. Roty had not time to design a
satisfactory reverse side; he surrounded with laurels and roses the
following inscription: “To Pasteur, on his seventieth birthday. France
and Humanity grateful.”
On the morning of December 27, 1892, the great theatre of the Sorbonne
was filled. The seats of honour held the French and foreign delegates
from Scientific Societies, the members of the Institute, and the
Professors of Faculties. In the amphitheatre were the deputations from
the Ecoles Normale, Polytechnique, Centrale, of Pharmacy, Vétérinaires,
and of Agriculture--deep masses of students. People pointed out to each
other Pasteur’s pupils, Messrs. Duclaux, Roux, Chamberland, Metchnikoff,
in their places; M. Perdrix, a former Normalien, now an
_Agrégé-préparateur_; M. Edouard Calmette, a former student of the Ecole
Centrale, who had taken part in the studies on beer; and M. Denys
Cochin, who, thirteen years before, had studied alcoholic fermentation
in the laboratory of the Rue d’Ulm. The first gallery was full of those
who had subscribed towards the presentation about to be made to Pasteur.
In the second gallery, boys from _lycées_ crowned the immense assembly
with a youthful garland.
At half past 10 o’clock, whilst the band of the Republican Guard played
a triumphal march, Pasteur entered, leaning on the arm of the President
of the Republic. Carnot led him to a little table, whereon the addresses
from the various delegates were to be laid. The Presidents of the Senate
and of the Chamber, the Ministers and Ambassadors, took their seats on
the platform. Behind the President of the Republic stood, in their
uniform, the official delegates of the five Academies which form the
Institut de France. The Academy of Medicine and the great Scientific
Societies were represented by their presidents and life-secretaries.
M. Charles Dupuy, Minister of Public Instruction, rose to speak, and
said, after retracing Pasteur’s great works--
“Who can now say how much human life owes to you and how much more it
will owe to you in the future! The day will come when another Lucretius
will sing, in a new poem on Nature, the immortal Master whose genius
engendered such benefits.
“He will not describe him as a solitary, unfeeling man, like the hero of
the Latin poet; but he will show him mingling with the life of his time,
with the joys and trials of his country, dividing his life between the
stern enjoyment of scientific research and the sweet communion of family
intercourse; going from the laboratory to his hearth, finding in his
dear ones, particularly in the helpmeet who has understood him so well
and loved him all the better for it, that comforting encouragement of
every hour and each moment, without which so many struggles might have
exhausted his ardour, arrested his perseverance, and enervated his
genius....
“May France keep you for many more years, and show you to the world as
the worthy object of her love, of her gratitude and pride.”
The President of the Academy of Sciences, M. d’Abbadie, was chosen to
present to Pasteur the commemorative medal of this great day.
Joseph Bertrand said that the same science, wide, accurate, and solid,
had been a foundation to all Pasteur’s works, each of them shining “with
such a dazzling light, that, in looking at either, one is inclined to
think that it eclipses all others.”
After a few words from M. Daubrée, senior member of the Mineralogical
Section and formerly a colleague of Pasteur’s at the Strasburg Faculty,
the great Lister, who represented the Royal Societies of London and
Edinburgh, brought to Pasteur the homage of medicine and surgery. “You
have,” said he, “raised the veil which for centuries had covered
infectious diseases; you have discovered and demonstrated their
microbian nature.”
When Pasteur rose to embrace Lister, the sight of those two men gave the
impression of a brotherhood of science labouring to diminish the sorrows
of humanity.
After a speech from M. Bergeron, Life-Secretary of the Academy of
Medicine, and another from M. Sauton, President of the Paris Municipal
Council, the various delegates presented the addresses they had brought.
Each of the large cities of Europe had its representative. The national
delegates were called in their turn. A student from the Alfort
Veterinary School brought a medal offered by the united Veterinary
Schools of France. Amongst other offerings, Pasteur was given an album
containing the signatures of the inhabitants of Arbois, and another
coming from Dôle, in which were reproduced a facsimile of his
birth-certificate and a photograph of the house in which he was born.
The sight of his father’s signature at the end of the certificate moved
him more than anything else.
The Paris Faculty of Medicine was represented by its Dean, Professor
Brouardel. “More fortunate than Harvey and than Jenner,” he said, “you
have been able to see the triumph of your doctrines, and what a
triumph!...”
The last word of homage was pronounced by M. Devise, President of the
Students’ Association, who said to Pasteur, “You have been very great
and very good; you have given a beautiful example to students.”
Pasteur’s voice, made weaken than usual by his emotion, could not have
been heard all over the large theatre; his thanks were read out by his
son--
“Monsieur le Président de la République, your presence transforms an
intimate fête into a great ceremony, and makes of the simple birthday of
a savant a special date for French science.
“M. le Ministre, Gentlemen--In the midst of all this magnificence, my
first thought takes me back to the melancholy memory of so many men of
science who have known but trials. In the past, they had to struggle,
against the prejudices which hampered their ideas. After those
prejudices were vanquished, they encountered obstacles and difficulties
of all kinds.
“Very few years ago, before the public authorities and the town councils
had endowed science with splendid dwellings, a man whom I loved and
admired, Claude Bernard, had, for a laboratory, a wretched cellar not
far from here, low and damp. Perhaps it was there that he contracted the
disease of which he died. When I heard what you were preparing for me
here, the thought of him arose in my mind; I hail his great memory.
“Gentlemen, by an ingenious and delicate thought, you seem to make the
whole of my life pass before my eyes. One of my Jura compatriots, the
Mayor of Dôle, has brought me a photograph of the very humble home where
my father and mother lived such a hard life. The presence of the
students of the Ecole Normale brings back to me the glamour of my first
scientific enthusiasms. The representatives of the Lille Faculty evoke
memories of my first studies on crystallography and fermentation, which
opened to me a new world. What hopes seized upon me when I realized that
there must be laws behind so many obscure phenomena! You, my dear
colleagues, have witnessed by what series of deductions it was given to
me, a disciple of the experimental method, to reach physiological
studies. If I have sometimes disturbed the calm of our Academies by
somewhat violent discussions, it was because I was passionately
defending truth.
“And you, delegates from foreign nations, who have come from so far to
give to France a proof of sympathy, you bring me the deepest joy that
can be felt by a man whose invincible belief is that Science and Peace
will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will unite, not to
destroy, but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will
have done most for suffering humanity. I appeal to you, my dear Lister,
and to you all, illustrious representatives of medicine and surgery.
“Young men, have confidence in those powerful and safe methods, of which
we do not yet know all the secrets. And, whatever your career may be, do
not let yourselves become tainted by a deprecating and barren
scepticism, do not let yourselves be discouraged by the sadness of
certain hours which pass over nations. Live in the serene peace of
laboratories and libraries. Say to yourselves first: ‘What have I done
for my instruction?’ and, as you gradually advance, ‘What have I done
for my country?’ until the time comes when you may have the immense
happiness of thinking that you have contributed in some way to the
progress and to the good of humanity. But, whether our efforts are or
not favoured by life, let us be able to say, when we come near the great
goal, ‘I have done what I could.’
“Gentlemen, I would express to you my deep emotion and hearty gratitude.
In the same way as Roty, the great artist, has, on the back of this
medal, hidden under roses the heavy number of years which weigh on my
life, you have, my dear colleagues, given to my old age the most
delightful sight of all this living and loving youth.”
The shouts “Vive Pasteur!” resounded throughout the building. The
President of the Republic rose, went towards Pasteur to congratulate
him, and embraced him with effusion.
* * * * *
Hearts went out to Pasteur even from distant countries. The Canadian
Government, acting on the suggestion of the deputies of the province of
Quebec, gave the name of Pasteur to a district on the borders of the
state of Maine.
A few weeks after the fête, the Governor-General of Algeria, M. Cambon,
wrote to Pasteur as follows--
“Sir--Desirous of showing to you the special gratitude which Algeria
bears you for the immense services you have rendered to science and to
humanity by your great and fruitful discoveries, I have decided that
your name should be given to the village of Sériana, situated in the
_arrondissement_ of Batna, department of Constantine. I am happy that I
have been able to render this slight homage to your illustrious person.”
“I feel a deep emotion,” replied Pasteur, “in thinking that, thanks to
you, my name will remain attached to that corner of the world. When a
child of this village asks what was the origin of this denomination, I
should like the schoolmaster to tell him simply that it is the name of a
Frenchman who loved France very much, and who, by serving her,
contributed to the good of humanity. My heart is thrilled at the thought
that my name might one day awaken the first feelings of patriotism in a
child’s soul. I shall owe to you this great joy in my old age; I thank
you more than I can say.” The origin of Sériana is very ancient. M.
Stéphane Gsell relates that this village was occupied long before the
coming of the Romans, by a tribe which became Christian, as is seen by
ruins of chapels and basilicas. It is situated on the slope of a
mountain covered with oaks and cedars, and giving rise to springs of
fresh water. A bust of Pasteur was soon after erected in this village,
at the request of the inhabitants.
Enthusiasm for Pasteur was spreading everywhere. Women understood that
science was entering their domain, since it served charity. They gave
magnificent gifts; clauses in wills bore these words: “To Pasteur, to
help in his humanitarian task.” In November, 1893, Pasteur saw an
unknown lady enter his study in the Rue Dutot, and heard her speak thus:
“There must be some students who love science and who, having to earn
their living, cannot give themselves up to disinterested work. I should
like to place at your disposal four scholarships, for four young men
chosen by you. Each scholarship would be of 3,000 fr.; 2,400 for the men
themselves, and 600 fr. for the expenses they would incur in your
laboratories. Their lives would be rendered easier. You could find
amongst them, either an immediate collaborator for your Institute or a
missionary whom you might send far away; and if a medical career tempted
them, they would be enabled by their momentary independence to prepare
themselves all the better for their profession. I only ask one thing,
which is that my name should not be mentioned.”
Pasteur was infinitely touched by the scheme of this mysterious lady.
The scholarship foundation was for one year only, but other years were
about to follow and to resemble this one.
Many letters brought to Pasteur requested that he should study or order
the study of such and such a disease. Some of these letters responded to
preoccupations which had long been in the mind of Pasteur and his
disciples. One day he received these lines:
“You have done all the good a man could do on earth. If you will, you
can surely find a remedy for the horrible disease called diphtheria. Our
children, to whom we teach your name as that of a great benefactor, will
owe their lives to you.--A MOTHER.”
* * * * *
Pasteur, in spite of his failing strength, had hopes that he would yet
live to see the defeat of the foe so dreaded by mothers. In the
laboratory of the Pasteur Institute, Dr. Roux and Dr. Yersin were
obstinately pursuing the study of this disease. In their first paper on
the subject, modestly entitled _A Contribution to the Study of
Diphtheria_, they said: “Ever since Bretonneau, diphtheria has been
looked upon as a specific and contagious disease; its study has
therefore been undertaken of late years with the help of the microbian
methods which have already been the means of finding the cause of many
other infectious diseases.”
In spite of the convictions of Bretonneau, who had, in 1818, witnessed a
violent epidemic of croup in the centre of France, his view was far from
being generally adopted. Velpeau, then a young student, wrote to him in
1820 that all the members, save two, of the Faculty of Medicine were
agreed in opposing or blaming his opinions. Another brilliant pupil of
Bretonneau’s, Dr. Trousseau, who never ceased to correspond with his old
master, wrote to him in 1854: “It remains to be proved that diphtheria
always comes from a germ. I hardly doubt this with regard to small-pox;
to be consistent, I ought not to doubt it either with regard to
diphtheria. I was thinking so this morning, as I was performing
tracheotomy on a poor child twenty-eight months old; opposite the bed,
there was a picture of his five-year-old brother, painted on his
death-bed. He had succumbed five years ago, to malignant angina.”
Knowing Bretonneau’s ideas on contagion, Trousseau wrote further down:
“I shall have the beds and bedding burnt, the paper hangings also, for
they have a velvety and attractive surface; I shall tell the mother to
purify herself like a Hindoo--else what would you say to me!”
A German of the name of Klebs discovered the bacillus of diphtheria in
1883, by studying the characteristic membranes; it was afterwards
isolated by Loeffler, another German.
Pure cultures of this bacillus, injected on the surface of the
excoriated fauces of rabbits, guinea-pigs, and pigeons, produce the
diphtheritic membranes: Messrs. Roux and Yersin demonstrated this fact
and ascertained the method of its deadly action.
Dr. Roux, in a lecture to the London Royal Society, in 1889, said:
“Microbes are chiefly dangerous on account of the toxic matters which
they produce.” He recalled that Pasteur had been the first to
investigate the action of the toxic products elaborated by the microbe
of chicken-cholera. By filtering the culture, Pasteur had obtained a
liquid which contained no microbes. Hens inoculated with this liquid
presented all the symptoms of cholera. “This experiment shows us,”
continued M. Roux, “that the chemical products contained in the culture
are capable by themselves of provoking the symptoms of the disease; it
is therefore very probable that the same products are prepared within
the body itself of a hen attacked with cholera. It has been shown since
then that many pathogenic microbes manufactured these toxic products.
The microbes of typhoid fever, of cholera, of blue pus, of acute
experimental septicæmia, of diphtheria, are great poison-producers. The
cultures of the diphtheria bacillus particularly are, after a certain
time, so full of the toxin that, without microbes, and in infinitesimal
doses, they cause the death of the animals with all the signs observed
after inoculation with the microbe itself. The picture of the disease is
complete, even presenting the ensuing paralysis if the injected dose is
too weak to bring about a rapid death. Death in infectious diseases is
therefore caused by intoxication.”
This bacillus, like that of tetanus, secretes a poison which reaches the
kidneys, attacks the nervous system, and acts on the heart, the beats of
which are accelerated or suddenly arrested. Sheltered in the membrane
like a foe in an ambush, the microbe manufactures its deadly poison.
Diphtheria, as defined by M. Roux, is an intoxication caused by a very
active poison formed by the microbe within the restricted area wherein
it develops.
It was sufficient to examine a portion of diphtheritic membrane to
distinguish the diphtheritic bacilli, tiny rods resembling short needles
laid across each other. Other microbes were frequently associated with
these bacilli, and it became necessary to study microbian associations
in diphtheria. The Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, disseminated in broth, gave
within a month or three weeks a richly toxic culture; the bottom of the
vessel was covered with a thick deposit of microbes, and a film of
younger bacilli floated on the surface. By filtering this broth and
freeing it from microbes, Messrs. Roux and Yersin made a great
discovery: they obtained pure toxin, capable of killing, in forty-eight
hours, a guinea-pig inoculated with one-tenth of a cubic centimetre of
it.
Now that the toxin was found, the remedy, the antitoxin, could be
discovered. This was done by Behring, a German scientist, and by
Kitasato, a Japanese physician. Drs. Richet and Héricourt had already
opened the way in 1888, while studying another disease.
M. Roux inoculated a horse with diphtheritic toxin mitigated by the
addition of iodine, in doses, very weak at first, but gradually
stronger; the horse grew by degrees capable of resisting strong doses of
pure toxin. It was then bled by means of a large trocar introduced into
the jugular vein, the blood received in a bowl was allowed to coagulate,
and the liquid part of it, the serum, was then collected; this serum was
antitoxic, antidiphtheritic--in one word, the long-desired cure.
At the beginning of 1894, M. Roux had several horses rendered immune by
the above process. He desired to prove the efficiency of the serum in
the treatment of diphtheria, with the collaboration of MM. Martin and
Chaillou, who had, both clinically and bacteriologically, studied more
than 400 cases of diphtheria.
There are in Paris two hospitals where diphtheritic children are taken
in. It was decided that the new treatment should be applied at the
hospital of the _Enfants Malades_, whilst the old system should be
continued at the Hôpital Trousseau.
From February 1, MM. Roux, Martin, and Chaillou paid a daily visit to
the _Enfants Malades_; they treated all the little diphtheria patients
by injection, in the side, of a dose of twenty cubic centimetres of
serum, followed, twenty-four hours later, by another dose of twenty, or
only of ten cubic centimetres. Almost invariably, not only did the
membranes cease to increase during the twenty-four hours following the
first injection, but they began to come away within thirty-six or
forty-eight hours, the third day at the latest; the livid, leaden
paleness of the face disappeared; the child was saved.
From 1890 to 1893 there had been 3,971 cases of diphtheria, fatal in
2,029 cases, the average mortality being therefore 51 per 100. The serum
treatment, applied to hundreds of children, brought it down to less than
24 per 100 in four months. At the Trousseau Hospital, where the serum
was not employed, the mortality during the same period was 60 per 100.
In May, M. Roux gave a lecture on diphtheria at Lille, at the request of
the Provident Society of the Friends of Science, which held its general
meeting in that town. Pasteur, who was president of the Society, came to
Lille to thank its inhabitants for the support they had afforded for
forty years to the Society.
The master and his disciple were received in the Hall of the Industrial
Society. Pasteur listened with an admiring emotion to his pupil, whose
rigorous experimentation, together with the beauty of the object in
view, filled him with enthusiasm. He who had said, “Exhaust every
combination, until the mind can conceive no others possible,” was
delighted to hear the methodical exposition of the manner in which this
great problem had been attacked and solved.
At the Hygiene and Demography Congress at Buda-Pesth, M. Roux, repeating
and enlarging his lecture, made a communication on the serotherapy of
diphtheria which created a great sensation in Europe.
In France, prefects asked the Minister of the Interior how local
physicians might obtain this antidiphtheritic serum. The _Figaro_
newspaper opened a subscription towards preserving children from croup;
it soon reached more than a million francs. The Pasteur Institute was
now able to build stables, buy a hundred horses, render them immune, and
constitute a permanent organization for serotherapy. In three months,
50,000 doses of serum were about to be given away.
Pasteur, who was then at Arbois, followed every detail with passionate
interest. Sitting under the old quinces in his little garden, he read
the lists of subscribers, names of little children, offering charitable
gifts as they entered this life, and names of sorrowing parents, giving
in the names of dear lost ones.
When he started again for Paris, October 4, 1894, Pasteur was seized
again with the melancholy feeling which had attended his first departure
from his home, when he was sixteen years old. He saw the same grey sky,
the same fine rain and misty horizon, as he looked for the last time
upon the distant hills and wide plains he loved, perhaps conscious that
it was so. But he remained silent, as was his wont when troubled by his
thoughts, his sadness only revealing itself to those who lovingly
watched every movement of his countenance.
On October 6, the Pasteur Institute was invaded by a crowd of medical
men; M. Martin gave a special lecture in compliance with the desire of
many practitioners unaccustomed to laboratory work, who desired to
understand the diagnosis of diphtheria and the mode in which the serum
should be used. Pasteur, from his study window, was watching all this
coming and going in his Institute. A twofold feeling was visible on his
worn features: a sorrowing regret that his age now disarmed him for
work, but also the satisfaction of feeling that his work was growing day
by day, and that other investigators would, in a similar spirit, pursue
the many researches which remained to be undertaken. About that time, M.
Yersin, now a physician in the colonies, communicated to the _Annals of
the Pasteur Institute_ the discovery of the plague bacillus. He had been
desired to go to China in order to study the nature of the scourge, its
conditions of propagation, and the most efficient means of preventing it
from attacking the French possessions. Pasteur had long recognized very
great qualities in this pupil whose habits of silent labour were almost
those of an ascete. M. Yersin started with a missionary’s zeal. When he
reached Hong-Kong, three hundred Chinese had already succumbed, and the
hospitals of the colony were full; he immediately recognized the
symptoms of the bubonic plague, which had ravaged Europe on many
occasions. He noticed that the epidemic raged principally in the slums
occupied by Chinese of the poorer classes, and that in the infected
quarters there were a great many rats which had died of the plague.
Pasteur read with the greatest interest the following lines, so exactly
in accordance with his own method of observation: “The peculiar aptitude
to contract plague possessed by certain animals,” wrote M. Yersin,
“enabled me to undertake an experimental study of the disease under very
favourable circumstances; it was obvious that the first thing to do was
to look for a microbe in the blood of the patients and in the bubonic
pulp.” When M. Yersin inoculated rats, mice, or guinea-pigs with this
pulp, the animals died, and he found several bacilli in the ganglions,
spleen, and blood. After some attempts at cultures and inoculations, he
concluded thus: “The plague is a contagious and inoculable disease. It
seems likely that rats constitute its principal vehicle, but I have also
ascertained that flies can contract the disease and die of it, and may
therefore become agents for its transmission.”
At the very time when M. Yersin was discovering the specific bacillus of
the plague in the bubonic pulp, Kitasato was making similar
investigations. The foe now being recognized, hopes of vanquishing it
might be entertained.
And whilst those good tidings were arriving, Pasteur was reading a new
work by M. Metchnikoff, a Russian scientist, who had elected to come to
France for the privilege of working by the side of Pasteur. M.
Metchnikoff explained by the action of the white corpuscles of the
blood, named “leucocytes,” the immunity or resistance, either natural or
acquired, of the organism against a defined disease. These corpuscles
may be considered as soldiers entrusted with the defence of the organism
against foreign invasions. If microbes penetrate into the tissues, the
defenders gather all their forces together and a free fight ensues. The
organism resists or succumbs according to the power or inferiority of
the white blood-cells. If the invading microbe is surrounded, eaten up,
and ingested by the victorious white corpuscles (also named
_phagocytes_), the latter find in their victory itself fresh reserve
forces against a renewed invasion.
* * * * *
On November 1, in the midst of all this laborious activity and daily
progress, Pasteur was about to pay his daily visit to his grandchildren,
when he was seized by a violent attack of uræmia. He was laid on his
bed, and remained nearly unconscious for four hours; the sweat of agony
bathed his forehead and his whole body, and his eyes remained closed.
The evening brought with it a ray of hope; he was able to speak, and
asked not to be left alone. Immediate danger seemed avoided, but great
anxiety continued to be felt.
It was easy to organize a series of devoted nurses; all Pasteur’s
disciples were eager to watch by his bedside. Every evening, two persons
took their seats in his room: one a member of the family, and one a
“Pastorian.” About one a.m. they were replaced by another Pastorian and
another member of the family. From November 1 to December 25, the
laboratory workers continued this watching, regulated by Dr. Roux as
follows:--
Sunday night, Roux and Chantemesse; Monday, Queyrat and Marmier;
Tuesday, Borrel and Martin; Wednesday, Mesnil and Pottevin; Thursday,
Marchoux and Viala; Friday, Calmette and Veillon; Saturday, Renon and
Morax. A few alterations were made in this order; Dr. Marie claimed the
privilege. M. Metchnikoff, full of anxiety, came and went continually
from the laboratory to the master’s room. After the day’s work, each
faithful watcher came in, bringing books or notes, to go on with the
work begun, if the patient should be able to sleep. In the middle of the
night, Mme. Pasteur would come in and send away with a sweet authority
one of the two volunteer nurses. Pasteur’s loving and faithful wife was
straining every faculty of her valiant and tender soul to conjure the
vision of death which seemed so near. In spite of all her courage, there
were hours of weakness, at early dawn, when life was beginning to revive
in the quiet neighbourhood, when she could not keep her tears from
flowing silently. Would they succeed in saving him whose life was so
precious, so useful to others? In the morning, Pasteur’s two
grandchildren came into the bedroom. The little girl of fourteen, fully
realizing the prevailing anxiety, and rendered serious by the sorrow she
struggled to hide, talked quietly with him. The little boy, only eight
years old, climbed on to his grandfather’s bed, kissing him
affectionately and gazing on the loved face which always found enough
strength to smile at him.
Dr. Chantemesse attended Pasteur with an incomparable devotion. Dr.
Gille, who had often been sent for by Pasteur when staying at Villeneuve
l’Etang, came to Paris from Garches to see him. Professor Guyon showed
his colleague the most affectionate solicitude. Professor Dieulafoy was
brought in one morning by M. Metchnikoff; Professor Grancher, who was
ill and away from Paris, hurried back to his master’s side.
How often did they hang over him, anxiously following the respiratory
rhythm due to the uræmic intoxication! movements slow at first, then
rapid, accelerated, gasping, slackening again, and arrested in a long
pause of several seconds, during which all seemed suspended.
* * * * *
At the end of December, a marked improvement took place. On January 1,
after seeing all his collaborators, down to the youngest laboratory
attendant, Pasteur received the visit of one of his colleagues of the
Académie Française. It was Alexandre Dumas, carrying a bunch of roses,
and accompanied by one of his daughters. “I want to begin the year
well,” he said: “I am bringing you my good wishes.” Pasteur and
Alexandre Dumas, meeting at the Academy every Thursday for twelve years,
felt much attraction towards each other. Pasteur, charmed from the first
by this dazzling and witty intellect, had been surprised and touched by
the delicate attentions of a heart which only opened to a chosen few.
Dumas, who had observed many men, loved and admired Pasteur, a modest
and kindly genius; for this dramatic author hid a man thirsting for
moral action, his realism was lined with mysticism, and he placed the
desire to be useful above the hunger for fame. His blue eyes, usually
keen and cold, easily detecting secret thoughts and looking on them with
irony, were full of an expression of affectionate veneration when they
rested on “our dear and great Pasteur,” as he called him. Alexandre
Dumas’ visit gave Pasteur very great pleasure; he compared it to a ray
of sunshine.
As he could not go out, those who did not come to see him thought him
worse than he really was. It was therefore with great surprise that
people heard that he would be pleased to receive the old Normaliens, who
were about to celebrate the centenary of their school, and who, after
putting up a memorial plate on the small laboratory of the Rue d’Ulm,
desired to visit the Pasteur Institute. They filed one after another
into the drawing-room on the first floor. Pasteur, seated by the fire,
seemed to revive the old times when he used to welcome young men into
his home circle on Sunday evenings. He had an affectionate word or a
smile for each of those who now passed before him, bowing low. Every one
was struck with the keen expression of his eyes; never had the strength
of his intellect seemed more independent of the weakness of his body.
Many believed in a speedy recovery and rejoiced. “Your health,” said
some one, “is not only national but universal property.”
On that day, Dr. Roux had arranged on tables, in the large laboratory,
the little flasks which Pasteur had used in his experiments on so-called
spontaneous generation, which had been religiously preserved; also rows
of little tubes used for studies on wines; various preparations in
various culture media; microbes and bacilli, so numerous that it was
difficult to know which to see first. The bacteria of diphtheria and
bubonic plague completed this museum.
Pasteur was carried into the laboratory about twelve o’clock, and Dr.
Roux showed his master the plague bacillus through a microscope.
Pasteur, looking at these things, souvenirs of his own work and results
of his pupils’ researches, thought of those disciples who were
continuing his task in various parts of the world. In France, he had
just sent Dr. Calmette to Lille, where he soon afterwards created a new
and admirable Pasteur Institute. Dr. Yersin was continuing his
investigations in China. A Normalien, M. Le Dantec, who had entered the
Ecole at sixteen at the head of the list, and who had afterwards become
a curator at the laboratory, was in Brazil, studying yellow fever, of
which he very nearly died. Dr. Adrien Loir, after a protracted mission
in Australia, was head of a Pasteur Institute at Tunis. Dr. Nicolle was
setting up a laboratory of bacteriology at Constantinople. “There is
still a great deal to do!” sighed Pasteur as he affectionately pressed
Dr. Roux’ hand.
He was more than ever full of a desire to allay human suffering, of a
humanitarian sentiment which made of him a citizen of the world. But his
love for France was in no wise diminished, and the permanence of his
patriotic feelings was, soon after this, revealed by an incident. The
Berlin Academy of Sciences was preparing a list of illustrious
contemporary scientists to be submitted to the Kaiser with a view to
conferring on them the badge of the Order of Merit. As Pasteur’s protest
and return of his diploma to the Bonn University had not been forgotten,
the Berlin Academy, before placing his name on the list, desired to know
whether he would accept this distinction at the hands of the German
Emperor. Pasteur, while acknowledging with courteous thanks the honour
done to him as a scientist, declared that he could not accept it.
For him, as for Victor Hugo, the question of Alsace-Lorraine was a
question of humanity; the right of peoples to dispose of themselves was
in question. And by a bitter irony of Fate, France, which had proclaimed
this principle all over Europe, saw Alsace tom away from her. And by
whom? by the very nation whom she had looked upon as the most
idealistic, with whom she had desired an alliance in a noble hope of
pacific civilization, a hope shared by Humboldt, the great German
scientist.
* * * * *
It was obvious to those who came near Pasteur that, in spite of the
regret caused in him by the decrease of his physical strength, his moral
energy remained unimpaired. He never complained of the state of his
health, and usually avoided speaking of himself. A little tent had been
put up for him in the new garden of the Pasteur Institute, under the
young chestnuts, the flowers of which were now beginning to fall, and he
often spent his afternoons there. One or other of those who had watched
over him through the long winter nights frequently came to talk with
him, and he would inquire, with all his old interest, into every detail
of the work going on.
His old friend Chappuis, now Honorary Rector of the Academy of Dijon,
often came to sit with him under this tent. Their friendship remained
unchanged though it had lasted more than fifty years. Their conversation
now took a yet more exalted turn than in the days of their youth and
middle age. The dignity of Chappuis’ life was almost austere, though
tempered by a smiling philosophy.
Pasteur, less preoccupied than Chappuis by philosophical discussions,
soared without an effort into the domain of spiritual things. Absolute
faith in God and in Eternity, and a conviction that the power for good
given to us in this world will be continued beyond it, were feelings
which pervaded his whole life; the virtues of the Gospel had ever been
present to him. Full of respect for the form of religion which had been
that of his forefathers, he came to it simply and naturally for
spiritual help in these last weeks of his life.
On June 13, he came, for the last time, down the steps of the Pasteur
Institute, and entered the carriage which was to take him to Villeneuve
l’Etang. Every one spoke to him of this stay as if it were sure to bring
him back to health. Did he believe it? Did he try, in his tenderness for
those around him, to share their hopes? His face almost bore the same
expression as when he used to go to Villeneuve l’Etang to continue his
studies. When the carriage passed through Saint Cloud, some of the
inhabitants, who had seen him pass in former years, saluted him with a
mixture of emotion and respectful interest.
At Villeneuve l’Etang, the old stables of the Cent Gardes had reverted
to their former purpose and were used for the preparation of the
diphtheria antitoxin. There were about one hundred horses there; old
chargers, sold by the military authorities as unfit for further work;
racehorses thus ending their days; a few, presents from their owners,
such as Marshal Canrobert’s old horse.
Pasteur spent those summer weeks in his room or under the trees on the
lawns of the Park. A few horses had been put out to grass, the stables
being quite full, and occasionally came near, looking over their hurdles
towards him. Pasteur felt a deep thankfulness in watching the busy
comings and goings of Dr. Roux and his curator, M. Martin, and of the
veterinary surgeon, M. Prévôt, who was entrusted with the bleeding
operations and the distribution of the flasks of serum. He thought of
all that would survive him and felt that his weakened hand might now
drop the torch which had set so many others alight. And, more than
resigned, he sat peacefully under a beautiful group of pines and purple
beeches, listening to the readings of Mme. Pasteur and of his daughter.
They smiled on him with that valiant smile which women know how to keep
through deepest anguish.
Biographies interested him as of yore. There was at that time a renewal
of interest in memories of the First Empire; old letters, memoirs, war
anecdotes were being published every day. Pasteur never tired of those
great souvenirs. Many of those stories brought him back to the emotions
of his youth, but he no longer looked with the same eyes on the glory of
conquerors. The true guides of humanity now seemed to him to be those
who gave devoted service, not those who ruled by might. After enjoying
pages full of the thrill of battlefields, Pasteur admired the life of a
great and good man, St. Vincent de Paul. He loved this son of poor
peasants, proud to own his humble birth before a vainglorious society;
this tutor of a future cardinal, who desired to become the chaplain of
some unhappy convicts; this priest, who founded the work of the _Enfants
Trouvés_, and who established lay and religious alliance over the vast
domain of charity.
Pasteur himself exerted a great and charitable influence. The unknown
lady who had put at his disposal four scholarships for young men
without means came to him in August and offered him the funds for a
Pasteur Hospital, the natural outcome, she said, of the Pastorian
discoveries.
Pasteur’s strength diminished day by day, he now could hardly walk. When
he was seated in the Park, his grandchildren around him suggested young
rose trees climbing around the trunk of a dying oak. The paralysis was
increasing, and speech was becoming more and more difficult. The eyes
alone remained bright and clear; Pasteur was witnessing the ruin of what
in him was perishable.
How willingly they would have given a moment of their lives to prolong
his, those thousands of human beings whose existence had been saved by
his methods: sick children, women in lying-in hospitals, patients
operated upon in surgical wards, victims of rabid dogs saved from
hydrophobia, and so many others protected against the infinitesimally
small! But, whilst visions of those living beings passed through the
minds of his family, it seemed as if Pasteur already saw those dead ones
who, like him, had preserved absolute faith in the Future Life.
The last week in September he was no longer strong enough to leave his
bed, his weakness was extreme. On September 27, as he was offered a cup
of milk: “I cannot,” he murmured; his eyes looked around him with an
unspeakable expression of resignation, love and farewell. His head fell
back on the pillows, and he slept; but, after this delusive rest,
suddenly came the gaspings of agony. For twenty-four hours he remained
motionless, his eyes closed, his body almost entirely paralyzed; one of
his hands rested in that of Mme. Pasteur, the other held a crucifix.
Thus, surrounded by his family and disciples, in this room of almost
monastic simplicity, on Saturday, September 28, 1895, at 4.40 in the
afternoon, very peacefully, he passed away.
THE END.
INDEX
A
Abbadie, d’, presents medals to Pasteur, 449
Abdul Aziz, Sultan, 141
About, Edmond:
On Pasteur, 383
On Pasteur’s lecture at Sorbonne, 122
Pamphlet quoted, 177
Académie des Sciences, 29 _note_, 81
During siege of Paris, 186
Académie Française, Pasteur’s reception at, 345
Aërobes, 99
_Agrégation_, 31 _note_
Alais:
Pasteur goes to, 115, 117, 129, 138, 155, 166
Statue to J. B. Dumas at, 446
Alexandria, French mission to, 377
Alfort, experiments on sheep at, 306
Alsace-Lorraine question, 461
Amat, Mlle., 170
Anaërobes, 99, 220
Andral, Dr., 160
Advice to Pasteur, 247
Anglada, work “On Contagion” quoted, 80
_Anguillulæ_, 150
_Anthrax_ (splenic fever, charbon), 257 _seqq._, 292
Hens and, 267, 277
Commission on, 278
Vaccination against, 311, 312
Experiment, 315, 317, 318, 320, 328, 367, 368
Results, 325, 367, 368
Antirabic inoculation on man, 414
Discussion on, 434
Anti-vivisection, Virchow on, 332
Aosta, Duke and Duchess of, 141
Arago, 27, 356
On Monge, 195
Speech before Chamber of Deputies, 245
Arbois:
Pasteur at, 6, 7, 180, 420, 437
Presentation to Pasteur from, 449
Prussians at, 202
Arboisian characteristics, 8
Arcis-sur-Aube, battle of, 4
Ardèche, 32
Ardouin, Dr., 380
Aristotle, allusions to hydrophobia, 407
Arsonval, M. d’, 280
Aselli, discoveries through vivisection, 336
Aspartic acid, 57, 70
_Aspergillus niger_, 204
Aubenas, tribute to Pasteur, 350, 351
Augier, Emile, 174
Aurillac, testimonial to Pasteur, 373
B
“Baccalauréat,” 10 _and note_
Baciocchi, Princess, leaves Villa Vicentina to Prince Imperial, 173
Bagnères-de-Luchon, 104
Balard, lecturer at Ecole Normale, 29, 31, 56, 59, 100, 106
Advice to Pasteur, 217
Appeal to Pasteur, 217
Discovers bromin, 32
Inspector-General of Higher Education, 145
On Pasteur’s discovery, 40
Bar-sur-Aube, 3rd Regiment at, 3
Barbet Boarding School, 10, 12, 21
Barbet, M., 10, 22
Barbier, Captain, 10
Barrnel, Dumas’ Curator, 25
Bastian, Dr., attacks Pasteur, 253 _seqq._
Baudry, Paul, 127
Bazaine at Metz, 186
Beauce, 147 _note_
Splenic fever in, 257, 276, 284, 314
Béchamp, theory of fermentation, 241
Béclard, Permanent Secretary of Académie de Médecine, 309
On Commission on hydrophobia, 395
Beer, Pasteur studies manufacture of, 207 _seqq._
Béhier, Dr., 233
Behring discovers antitoxin for diphtheria, 455
Bellaguet, M., 137
Belle, Jeanne, wife of Claude Pasteur, 2
Bellevue, Château, Napoleon and William of Prussia meet at, 182
Belotti, M., 206
Berchon, sanitary director, Bordeaux, 340
Bergeron, Jules:
Annual Secretary of Académie de Médecine, 309
On Pasteur’s treatment of hydrophobia, 424
Speech at Pasteur Jubilee, 449
Bernard, Claude, 42
At Académie de Médecine, 225
At Tuileries, 154
Discoveries, 135
Experiment on dog, 335
Experiments on fermentation, 280
Illness, 134
Joins in Pasteur’s experiments, 104
Letter to Deville, 137
Letter to Pasteur, 136
On fermentation, 80
-- Medicine, 226
-- Pasteur’s researches, 72, 87
-- Primary causes, 244
-- Vivisection, 336
Posthumous notes, 280, 287
Senator, 174
Studies cholera, 126
Bersot, Ernest, quoted on spontaneous generation, 92
Bert, Paul, 279, 374
Classifies Pasteur’s work, 375
Experiments, 263, 392
On Commission on hydrophobia, 395
Speech on Pasteur’s discoveries, 245, 246
Berthelot, M.:
Consulted by Pasteur, 439
On alcoholic fermentation, 286
Berthollet, M., 248, 356
Discoveries, 195
Bertillon, candidate for Académie de Médecine, 225
Bertin, M., 354
At Ecole Normale, 19, 145, 161, 180, 188
Character, 45, 145
Professor of Physics, Strasburg, 45
Welcomes Pasteur to Paris, 212
Bertrand, Joseph:
Letters to Pasteur, 138
Sketch of, 419
Speech at inauguration of Pasteur Institute, 441
Speech at Pasteur Jubilee, 449
Berzelius, 195
Studies paratartaric acid, 25
Theories of fermentation, 80, 241
Besançon, Jean Henri Pasteur at, 2, 4
Besson, candidature for Senate, 249
Beust, Baron von, superintendent of factories, 65
Bigo manufactures beetroot alcohol, 79
Biot, J. J., 27, 42, 55, 59, 204
Attitude towards spontaneous generation, 89, 100
Death, 101, 102
Interview with Pasteur, 41
Last letter, 103
Letters to Joseph Pasteur, 57, 58, 71, 81
Letter to Louis Pasteur, 59
Oldest member of Institute, 81
Passion for reading, 89
Praises Pasteur, 55
Biot, M., veterinary surgeon, at Pouilly le Fort experiment, 316, 320
Bischoffsheim, Raphael, lends villa to Pasteur, 433
Bismarck, Prince:
Armistice with France, 193
Interview with Jules Favre, 184
On Napoleon III, 182
Blondeau, registrar of mortgages, 13
Bollène, Pasteur at, 360
Bonaparte, Elisa, at Villa Vicentina, 173
Bonn, _sous-préfecture_, 189
University, 189
Bonnat, portrait of Pasteur, 440
Bordeaux, Pasteur at, 338
Bordighera:
Earthquake at, 436
Pasteur at, 434
Borrel attends on Pasteur, 459
Bouchardat, M.:
On Commission of Hygiene, 186
Report on remedies for hydrophobia, 408
Bouillaud, Dr., 229, 262, 294
Bouillier, M. F., Director of Ecole Normale, 145, 180
Bouley, H., 264, 278, 323, 354
At experiment on earthworms, 304
Chairman of Commission on hydrophobia, 395, 396, 397, 398
Report, 398
Death, 424
Letters to Pasteur, 324, 329
-- on Colin, 320
-- germ of hydrophobia, 398
-- methods of Delafond and Pasteur, 275
-- microbes, 365, 367
-- Pasteur’s treatment of hydrophobia, 423
-- remedies for hydrophobia, 408
-- virulence of bacteridia, 311
Sketch of, 262
Statistics of death from hydrophobia, 428
Vaccinates sheep against anthrax, 306
Bourbaki, General:
Death, 193
Retreat of Army Corps, 192
Bourboulon, Commandant, gives Pasteur news of his son, 193
Bourgeois, Philibert, 3
Bourrel sends dogs to laboratory, 390, 396
Boussingault, M., 354
Boutet, veterinary surgeon, 261, 283, 329
On splenic fever, 276
Report of vaccinated sheep, 363
Boutroux, curator in Pasteur’s laboratory, 255
Boyle, Robert, on fermentation, 223
Brand, Dr., treatment of typhoid, 364
Breithaupt, Professor of Mineralogy, 65
Bretonneau, on diphtheria, 453
Brie cattle suffer from anthrax, 257, 314
Brochin, candidate for Académie de Médecine, 225
Brongniart, Alexandre, 42
On Commission on spontaneous generation, 106
Brouardel, Professor:
On antirabic cure, 434, 437
Speech at Congress of Hygiene, 446
Speech at Pasteur Jubilee, 449
Broussais, surgery under, 235
Bruce, Mrs., presents Pasteur with _Life of Livingstone_, 389
Buda-Pesth, Hygiene and Demography Congress at, 456
Budberg, M. de, Russian Ambassador, 127
Budin and antisepsis, 290
Buffon, theory of spontaneous generation, 90
Buonanni, recipe for producing worms, 89
Butyric fermentation, 99
C
Cagniard-Latour studies yeast, 80, 81
Cailletet invents apparatus for liquefaction of gases, 384
Cairo, cholera at, 377
Calmette, Edouard:
At Lille, 461
At Pasteur Jubilee, 447
Attends on Pasteur, 459
Cambon, Governor-General of Algeria, letter to Pasteur, 451
Cardaillac, M. de, 163
Cardinal cultivates silkworms, 139
Carnot, President, 248
At inauguration of Pasteur Institute, 440
At Pasteur Jubilee, 448
Caro, deputy to Edinburgh, 384
Casabianca, Comte de, 168, 169
Celsus on hydrophobia, 407, 409
Chaffois, 192, 193
Chaillou collaborates with Roux, 455
Chamalières brewery, 207
Chamberland, M.:
At Pasteur Jubilee, 447
Collaborates with Pasteur, 260, 269, 271, 283,
289, 303, 305, 306, 308, 311, 317, 319, 321, 359, 420, 424
Cross of Legion of Honour, 326
On Pasteur’s early researches, 445
Vaccinations against anthrax, 440
Chambéry, Pasteur at, 131
Chamecin, wood merchant, 3
Chamonix, Pasteur at, 97
Chantemesse, Dr.:
Attends on Pasteur, 459, 460
On antirabic cure, 434
Performs inoculations, 432
Chanzy, General, open letter, 190
Chappuis, Charles, 33
Letter to Pasteur, 20
On national testimonial to Pasteur, 246
Sketch of, 18
Visits Pasteur, 462
Chaptal, discoveries of, 195
Charbon. (_See Anthrax_)
Charcot on Pasteur’s antirabic cure, 438
Charrière, schoolfellow of Louis Pasteur, 7, 37
Charrin, Dr., performs inoculations, 432
Chartres:
Experiment on vaccination against anthrax near, 328
Pasteur at, 284, 303
Scientific congress at, 276
Chassaignac, Dr., on “laboratory surgery,” 228
Chauveau on contagion, 366
Chemists and Physicians, 224, 233
Chevreul, M., 59
On siege of Paris, 188, 189
Chicken cholera, 297 _seqq._
Chiozza, letter to Pasteur, 200
Cholera, 126
At Damietta and Cairo, 378
Christen, town councillor at Vaucresson, 406
Christophle, speech at inauguration of Pasteur Institute, 441
Clermont Ferrand, Pasteur at, 206
Clouet invents system of manufacturing steel, 195
Coblentz, _préfecture_, 189
Cochin, Denys, at Pasteur Jubilee, 448
Colin, Professor G., 277, 278
Advice to Biot, 319
Experiments on anthrax, 264, 267, 268
Collège de France, 40 _note_, 146
Compiègne, Pasteur at, 127
Comte, Auguste, 124, 125
Doctrine, 342
Conseil-Général de département, 78 _note_
Contagious diseases, problem of, 223 _seqq._
Conti, Napoleon III’s secretary, 153
Copenhagen Medical Congress, Pasteur at, 398
Coquelin:
Acts in _Plaideurs_, 128
Recites at Trocadéro fête, 431
Cornil, on acarus of itch, 366
Coulon, schoolfellow of Louis Pasteur, 7, 36
Cribier, Mme., 161
Cuisance River, 6, 7, 181
Cuvier, 356
D
Daguerre, national testimonial to, 245
Dalimier, Paul, Pasteur’s advice to, 109
Dalloz, editor of _Moniteur_, 158
Damietta, cholera at, 378
Darboux, “doyen” of Faculty of Science, 31
Daremberg, Dr., on Pasteur at
Medical Congress, 332
Darlay as science master, 14
Darwin:
On earthworms, 304
On vivisection, 337
Dastre, M., 279
Daubrée, speech at Pasteur Jubilee, 449
Daunas, sketch of, 14
David, Jeanne, wife of Denis Pasteur, 1
Davaine, Dr. C., 272, 278, 354
At experiment on earthworms, 304
Experiments on septicæmia, 229, 265
On butyric ferment, 228, 258
Davy, Sir H., 195
Debray, M., 327
Déclat, Dr., on Pasteur’s experiments, 223
Prescribes carbolic solution for wounds, 239
Delafond, Dr.:
On charbon blood, 258
Studies anthrax, 275
Delafosse, Professor of Mineralogy, 33, 36
Delaunay acts in _Plaideurs_, 128
Delesse, Professor of Science at Besançon, 45
Delort, General Baron, 30
Native of Arbois, 202
Demarquay, Dr., prescribes carbolic solution for wounds, 239
Denmark, King and Queen of, at Medical Congress, 399
Denonvilliers, surgery under, 235
_Départements_, 52 _note_
Descartes in Holland, 200
Despeyroux, Professor of Chemistry, 171
Dessaignes, chemist, 70
Deville, Henri Sainte Claire, 42, 45, 137, 160
Admiration for Pasteur’s precision, 287
At Compiègne, 162
At Tuileries, 154
Character, 146
Congratulates Pasteur on Testimonial, 246
Death, 327
Laboratory, 84
Letter to Mme. Pasteur, 174
On Académie and Science, 196
On Commission of Hygiene, 186
Scientific mission in Germany, 179
Studies cholera, 126
Devise, speech at Pasteur Jubilee, 449
Diabetes, 135
Diderot on spontaneous generation, 90
Didon, gratitude to Pasteur, 144, 161
Dieffenbach, M., 335
Dieulafoy, Professor, attends Pasteur, 459
Diphtheria, 453
Statistics of mortality, 456
Disraeli quoted on public health, 446
Dôle:
Jean Joseph Pasteur settles at, 5
Memorial plate on Pasteur’s house at, 376
Presentation to Pasteur from, 450
Douay village, 1
Doucet, Camille, on Pasteur’s speech, 345
Dresden, Pasteur at, 65
Droz, Joseph, his moral doctrine, 16
Dubois, Alphée, engraves medal for Pasteur, 354
Dubois, Paul, 127
Bust of Pasteur, 401
Duboué, Dr., theory on hydrophobia, 393
Duc, Viollet le, 127, 128
Du Camp, Maxime, 346
Duchartre elected member of Académie, 100
Duclaux, M., 102, 103, 104, 131, 138, 169, 170, 204, 205
Accompanies Pasteur to Milan, 250
Advice to Pasteur, 217
_Annals of Pasteur Institute_, 434
At Pasteur Jubilee, 448
Class of biological chemistry, 440
Congratulates Pasteur on testimonial, 246
On Bastian, 253
On heating liquids, 255
Professor of Chemistry at Clermont Ferrand, 206
Ducret, Antoine and Charles, shot, 202
Ducrot, General, 155
Dujardin-Beaumetz, on antirabic cure, 434
Dumas, Alexandre, 106, 107
Pasteur and, 341
Visits Pasteur, 460
Dumas, J. B., 418
Académie sponsor for Pasteur, 344
Advice to Pasteur, 89, 103
Appreciation of Pasteur, 252
At Alais, 170
Death, 384
Interest in sericiculture, 117
_La Vie d’un Savant_, 383 _note_;
letter on, 383
Laboratory, 42
Letter to Bouley, 312
Letters to Pasteur, 60, 166, 169
On Académie and Science, 196
-- Commission on spontaneous generation, 106
-- _Critical Examination_, 287
-- Destruction of Regnault’s instruments, 191
-- Fermentation, 79, 80
Presents Pasteur to Napoleon III, 104
President of Monetary Commission, 145
Requests Pasteur for article on
Lavoisier, 121, 122
Senator, 174
Sketch of, 356
Sorbonne lecturer, 21, 25, 40, 44, 55, 59
Speech at Péclet’s tomb, 328
Speech to Pasteur, 354
Statue at Alais to, 446
Dumont, Dr., 8
Dupuy, Charles, speech at Pasteur Jubilee, 448
Duran, Carolus, portrait of Pasteur, 439
Duruy, M., 106
At inauguration of Pasteur Institute, 441
At Tuileries, 154
Attitude towards Germany, 178
Letter to Pasteur, 139
Minister of Public Instruction, 130
System of National Education, 140
Visits Pasteur, 165
E
Earthworms, pathogenic action of, 304
Eastern Army Corps, 192, 193
_Ecole Normale_, 10 _and note_, 154
An ambulance, 180, 188
Disturbances at, 143
_Scientific Annals of_, 110
Students enlist, 180
Ecole Polytechnique, 43 _note_, 154
Edelfeldt, portrait of Pasteur, 440
Eggs, researches on alteration of, 231
Ehrenberg, discoveries on infusories, 214
Electric telegraph, birth of, 76
Elsinore, congress visit, 402
Emperor of Brazil, interest in Pasteur’s experiments, 403
Empress Eugénie:
At Bordighera, 436
Interview with Pasteur, 127, 128
Regent, 182
_Enfants Malades_ hospital: diphtheritic treatment at, 455
English commission on inoculation for hydrophobia, 430
Report, 437
Erdmann, M., 64
Exhibition reward distribution, 141
F
_Facultés_, 31 _note_
Falloux, attitude towards liberty of teaching, 52
Fauvel, on Pasteur’s inductions, 369
Favé, General, 133, 147, 162, 163
Favre, Jules, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 182
Armistice, 193
Interview with Bismarck, 184
“February days,” 37 _note_
Feltz on puerperal fever, 292
Fermentation, teaching on, 80, 101, 222, 240
Alcoholic, 85, 104, 113, 286
Butyric, 99, 220, 228, 258
Lactic, 83, 215
of tan, 186
Virus, 223 _seqq._
Ferrières Château, interview between Bismarck and Favre at, 184
Fikentscher, obtains racemic acid, 62
Fleming, Mr., 430
On commission on inoculation for hydrophobia, 430
Flesschutt, Dr., 131
Fleys, Dr., proposes toast of Pasteur, 373
Flourens, on spontaneous generation, 105, 106
Fontainebleau, Napoleon at, 4
Formate of strontian crystals, 50
Fortoul, Minister of Public Instruction, 75
Fouqué, M., 327
Fourcroy, M., 248
Discoveries of, 195
Foy, General, works of, 183
Franco-German War, 177 _seqq._
Franklin on scientific discovery, 76
Frederic III, sketch of, 330
Frémy, M.:
On origin of ferments, 216, 218
Theory of fermentation, 241
French character, 207
G
Gaidot, Father, 12
Gaillard, M. de, 361
Galen:
Discoveries through vivisection, 336
Remedy for hydrophobia, 407
Galtier, experiments on hydrophobia, 393
_Garde Nationale_, 37 _note_
Gardette, M. de la, 361
Gautier, Théophile, 125
Gay-Lussac, 356
Lectures at _Jardin des Plantes_, 419
Speech before Chamber of Peers, 245
Studies racemic acid, 26
Gayon, researches on alteration of eggs, 231
Geneva Congress of Hygiene, 357
Germs, Pasteur’s theory of, 187
Gernez, M., 104, 161, 166, 169, 170, 327
_Centenary of Ecole Normale_, 110
Collaborates with Pasteur, 130, 138, 156, 204
Gérôme, Knight of Legion of Honour, 142
Gille, Dr., attends Pasteur, 459
Girard on vineyard labourers and Pasteur, 420
Girardin, St. Marc, 82
Girod, Henry, Royal Notary of Salins, 1
Glénard adopts Brand’s treatment of typhoid, 364
Godélier, Dr., 160
Goltz, M. de, Prussian Ambassador, 127
Gosselin, Dr., 240
Got acts in _Plaideurs_, 128
Gounod conducts _Ave Maria_ at Trocadéro fête, 431
Grancher, Dr.:
Admiration for Pasteur’s experiments, 417, 424
Advises Pasteur to winter in South, 432
Attends Pasteur, 459
On antirabic cure, 434
Pasteur consults, 415
Performs inoculations, 432
Speech at inauguration of Pasteur Institute, 441
Grandeau, M., 327
Letter to Pasteur, 341
Gravière, Admiral Jurien de la, 433
Gréard, deputy to Edinburgh, 384
Greece, King and Queen of, at Medical Congress, 399
Grenet, Pasteur’s curator, 213
Gressier, M., Minister of Agriculture, 275
Grévy, Jules, supports Tamisier and Thurel, 248
Gridaine, Cunin, Minister of Agriculture, 275
Gsell, Stéphane, on origin of Sériana, 452
Guérin, Alphonse, on cause of purulent infection, 236
Guérin, Jules, on vaccine, 308
Guillaume, Eugène, deputy to Edinburgh, 384
Guillemin, M., 77
Schoolfellow of Louis Pasteur, 7
Guizot, M.:
Deputy to Edinburgh, 384
Quoted on spontaneous generation, 112
Welcomes Biot to Académie, 82
Guyon, Professor:
Accepts Pasteur’s advice, 232
Attends Pasteur, 459
H
Hankel, Professor of Physics at Leipzig, 64
Hardy, M., welcomes Pasteur to Académie de Médecine, 370
Harvey, discoveries through vivisection, 336
Hautefeuille, M., 327
Heated wine, experiments on, 157
_Hemiorganism_, 216
Henner, portrait of Pasteur, 439
Henri IV plants mulberry trees, 116, 172
Hens and anthrax, 267, 277
Commission on, 278
Héricourt, Dr., 455
At Villeneuve l’Etang, 445
Hervé, Edouard, 427
Heterogenia. (_See_ Spontaneous generation)
Hippocrates, allusions to hydrophobia, 407
Horsley, Victor, secretary to Commission on inoculation
for hydrophobia, 431, 437
Houssaye, Henry, on ovation to Pasteur, 426
Hugo, Victor, _Année Terrible_, 191
Huguenin, portrait of Bonaparte, 181
Humbert of Italy, Prince, 141
Humboldt, Alexander von, interview with J. B. Dumas, 356
Husson, M., 166
_Researches on Vaccine_, 405
Huxley on Pasteur’s discoveries, 374, 375
Hydrophobia:
Dogs inoculated against, 395;
Commission, 395, 410
English Commission on inoculation for, 430
Report, 437
Experiments on, 318, 363, 383, 390, 410, 422 _seqq._
Former remedies, 407
Origin of, 409
Hygiene:
Central Commission, 186
International Congress of, 446
I
Iceland spar, 27
Ingenhousz, 100
_Institut de France_, 29 _note_
J
Jacobsen, J. C., founds Carlsberg Brewery, 401
Jacquinet, sub-director of Ecole Normale, 84, 144, 145
Jaillard, experiments on _anthrax_, 258, 261
Jamin, M., 354
On heterogenist dispute, 111
Jarry, Claude, royal notary, 2
Jenner, national rewards to, 374
Joinville, Prince de, 53 _and note_
Joly, Nicolas, professor of physiology, Toulouse, 95, 104, 138, 216, 255
Demands Commission on spontaneous generation, 105, 111
Lecture at Faculty of Medicine, 111
Jouassain, Mlle., acts in _Plaideurs_, 128
Joubert, professor of physics at Collège Rollin, 254, 265, 269, 271
Jourdan, Gabrielle, wife of Jean Henri Pasteur, 2
_Journal de la Médecine et de la Chimie_ quoted, 310
Joux, forest of, 1
Jupille, J. B., bitten by mad dog, 421;
inoculated, 422
K
Kaempfen, director of fine arts, Dôle, 376
Kestner, produces paratartaric acid, 26, 62, 65, 68
Kitasato, discovers antitoxin for diphtheria, 455
Studies plague, 458
Klebs, discovers bacillus of diphtheria, 454
Klein, Dr., _pneumo-enteritis of swine_, 362
Koch, Dr.:
At Thuillier’s funeral, 381
Campaign against Pasteur, 357, 359, 363, 367
Finds bacillus of tuberculosis, 227
On _bacillus anthracis_, 259, 260
Studies cholera, 379, 382
Kuhn, Chamalières brewer, 207
L
Laboratories, 42, 84, 153
Lachadenède, M. de, 121, 171
Lactic fermentation, 83, 99
Lagrange, quoted on Lavoisier’s execution, 195
Lamartine, 36 _and note_
Lambert, Françoise, wife of Claude Etienne Pasteur, 2
Lamy, Auguste, 161
Landouzy, on ambulance ward (1870), 235
Lannelongue, Dr., 289, 391
Laplace, M., 356
Lapparent, M. de, Chairman of Commission on wine, 156, 157
Larrey Baron, 309
On Jupille and Pasteur’s discovery, 423
Surgery under, 235, 240
Laubespin, Comte de, 427
Lauder-Brunton, Dr., on Commission on inoculation for hydrophobia, 430
Laurent, Auguste, 55
Sketch of, 31, 33
Laurent, Madame, 47
Laurent, Maria. (_See_ Pasteur, Mme. Louis)
Laurent, M., Rector of Academy of Strasburg, 47, 156
Sketch of, 47, 54
Lavoisier, death, 195
Edition of his works, 122
Le Bel, studies on stereo-chemistry, 445
Le Dantec, studies on yellow fever in Brazil, 461
Le Fort, Léon:
On puerperal fever, 290
Surgery under, 235, 270
Le Roux, _Dissertation sur la Rage_, 407
Le Verrier, 129 _note_, 131
Leblanc, statistics of deaths from hydrophobia, 428
Lechartier, M., 104, 327
Lefebvre, General, 4
Lefort, Mayor of Arbois, 202
Lemaire, Jules, prescribes carbolic solution for wounds, 239
Lemuy, situation of, 1
Leplat, experiments on _anthrax_, 258, 261
Lereboullet, on anthrax, 269
Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 142
Deputy to Edinburgh, 384
Leval Division:
At Arcis-sur-Aube, 4
At Bar-sur-Aube, 3
Lhéritier, candidate for Académie de Médecine, 225
Liberty of teaching, law on, 52
Liebig:
Ideas on fermentation, 175, 215, 222
Interview with Pasteur, 176
Theory of fermentation, 80, 81, 241
Lille:
Pasteur Dean of Faculté at, 75
Pasteur Institute at, 461
Lister, Sir Joseph:
Appreciation of Pasteur, 252
At Pasteur Jubilee, 449
Letter to Pasteur, 238
Method of surgery, 238, 239
On Commission on inoculation for hydrophobia, 430
Surgical method, 187, 216
Littré:
_Medicine and Physicians_, 294
On _Microbe_, 267
On primary causes, 244
Sketch of, 342
Loeffler, isolates bacillus of diphtheria, 454
Loir, Adrien, 54, 58, 360, 362, 402
Dean of Lyons Faculty of Science, 194
Head of Pasteur Institute, Tunis, 461
London, Pasteur visits, 210
London Medical Congress, Pasteur at, 329
London Society for Protection of Animals, complaints on vivisection, 336
Longet, Dr., _Treatise on Physiology_, 127
Lons-le-Saulnier, 192, 248
Louis XI introduces mulberry tree into Touraine, 116
Louis XVI, 171
Proposal for balloon ascent, 405
Lucas-Championnière, Just:
Edits _Journal de la Médecine_, 310
On dressing of wounds, 238
Lycée St. Louis, 11, 21, 22
Lyons, Pasteur at, 194
Lyons Commission on silkworm disease, 170
M
MacDonald, General, 4
Magendie, M.:
Experiment with rabic blood, 392
Interview with Quaker, 334
Maillot, M.:
Accompanies Pasteur to Milan, 249
Collaborates with Pasteur, 130, 138, 166, 169
Mairet, Bousson de, sketch of, 8
Maisonneuve, Dr., prescribes carbolic solution for wounds, 239
Malic acid, optical study of, 57, 59
Malus, Etienne Louis, discovers polarization of light, 27
Marat, conduct to Lavoisier, 195
Marchoux, attends on Pasteur, 459
Marcou, geologist, 161
Marie, Dr., attends on Pasteur, 459
Marie, Grand Duchess of Russia, 141
Marmier, attends on Pasteur, 459
Marnoz, Jean Joseph, Pasteur at, 6
Martin, M.:
Attends on Pasteur, 459
Collaborates with Roux, 455
Lecture on diphtheria, 457
Maternité, mortality at, 290
Mathilde, Princesse, 107
Salon, 125
Maucuer, at Bollène, 360
Maunory, M., 284, 303
Maury, A., 137
Medici, Catherine de, plants mulberry tree in Orléannais, 116
Medicine, general condition (1873), 226, 233
Meissonier, Knight of Legion of Honour, 142
Meister, Joseph, 432
Bitten by mad dog, 414
Inoculated, 415, 429
Melun Agricultural Society, tribute to Pasteur, 350
Melun, experiment on vaccination of anthrax near, 314, 316
Méricourt, Le Roy de, 225
Méry, on anatomists, 226
Mesnil, M. du, 163
Attends on Pasteur, 459
Metchnikoff:
At Pasteur Jubilee, 448
Directs private laboratories, 440
Work on “leucocytes,” 458
Metz surrendered, 185
Meudon, proposed laboratory at, 398
Mézières, mission to Edinburgh, 384
Michelet quoted on his friendship with Poinsat, 18
Microbe:
Rossignol on, 314
Word invented, 266
Microscope, results of its invention, 90
Mièges, near Nozeroy, registers of, 1
Milan Congress of Sericiculture, Pasteur at, 249
Miller, M., 66
Milne-Edwards:
At Tuileries, 154
On Commission on spontaneous generation, 106
Mina, Espoz y, sketch of, 3
Mitscherlich, chemist and crystallographer, 26
In Paris, 61
Theory of fermentation, 241
Moigno, Abbé, on spontaneous generation, 112
Molecular dissymmetry, 38, 72, 88, 199, 445
Monge, method of founding cannon, 195, 248
Monod, Henri, quotes Disraeli on public health, 446
Montaigne quoted on friendship, 18
Montalembert, attitude towards liberty of teaching, 52
Montanvert, 97, 105
Montpellier, Pasteur at, 353
Montrond, Pasteur at, 192
Moquin-Tandon, on Pasteur’s candidature for Académie, 100
Morax, attends on Pasteur, 459
Moreau, Armand, 278, 279
Moritz, on chicken cholera, 297
Morveau, Guyton de, 195, 248
Mount Poupet, Pasteur climbs, 97
Mouthe Priory, 1
Mucors, Raulin’s experiments on, 204
Mulberry tree, 116
Musset, Charles, 120, 216, 255
Demands Commission on spontaneous generation, 105
New _Experimental Researches on Heterogenia_, 94
Mussy, Dr. Henry Gueneau de:
Congratulates Pasteur, 337
Deputy to Edinburgh, 384
Paper on contagium germ, 263
Mussy, Dr. Noël Guineau de, 160
Mycoderma, 101, 128
_Mycoderma aceti_, 148, 215, 230
_Mycoderma vini_, 218, 219, 230
N
Napoleon I:
At Fontainebleau, 4
Respect for Science, 195
Restores silk industry, 116
Napoleon III:
Distributes exhibition rewards, 141
Grants laboratory to Pasteur, 147
Interest in sericiculture, 128, 133, 174
Interview with Pasteur, 104
Invites Pasteur to Compiègne, 127
Leaves Sedan and Paris, 181
Letter on Pasteur’s laboratory, 162
Summons scientists to Tuileries, 154
Napoleon, Prince, interviews with Pasteur, 436
National Testimonials, 245
Naumann, Dr. Maurice, 197
Professor of mineralogy, 286
Needham, partisan of spontaneous generation, 90
Nélaton, on surgery (1870), 236
Ney, General, 4
Nicolle, Dr., laboratory of bacteriology at Constantinople, 461
Niepce, national testimonial to, 245
Nîmes, Pasteur at, 352, 354
Nisard, Professor:
Academic sponsor for Pasteur, 344
Director of Ecole Normale, 84, 143
Letters to Pasteur, 119, 303
Sketch of, 345
Nocard, M., 307
Goes to Alexandria, 379
On hydrophobia, 403, 409
O
Oersted and modern telegraph, 76
“Ordonnances,” 8 _and note_.
Orleans, Pasteur lectures on vinegar at, 148
Oudinot, General, 4
Ovariotomy, fatal results of, 235
P
Pagès, Dr., Mayor of Alais, 121, 172
Paget, Sir James:
At Copenhagen Medical Congress, 399
President of Commission on inoculation for hydrophobia, 430
Speech at Medical Congress, 330
Paillerols, near Digne, 169
Panum, President of Copenhagen
Medical Congress, 399
Parandier, M., 43
Paratartaric (_racemic_) acid, 26, 38, 41, 62
Pasteur in search of, 63 _seqq._
Pareau, Mayor of Arbois, 13
Parieu, M. de, Minister of Public Instruction, 54
Paris:
Bombarded, 188
Capitulation, 193
Prepares for siege, 183
Parmentier on potato, 171
Pasteur, Camille, 119, 121, 123
Pasteur, Cécile, 130
Pasteur, Claude, 1
Marriage contract, 1
Pasteur, Claude Etienne, 2
Enfranchised, 2
Pasteur, Denis, marries Jeanne David, 1
Pasteur Hospital, project for, 464
Pasteur Institute:
_Annals of_, 434, 435, 457
Founded, 428
Inauguration, 440
Scholarships, 452
Trocadéro fête for, 431
Pasteur, Jean Henri, at Besançon, 2
Pasteur, Jean Joseph, 250
Character, 7, 22, 58
Conscript, 3
Death, 118
In Paris, 12, 57
Marriage, 5
Sergeant-major, 4
Studies, 31
Pasteur, Jeanne, death of, 86, 118
Pasteur, Josephine, 18, 30, 50
Pasteur, Louis:
Administration of Ecole Normale, 84, 109, 112
Advice to Paul Dalimier, 109
Advice to Raulin, 203
Article on Claude Bernard’s works, 134
-- indifference of public authorities, 151
-- Lavoisier, 122, 124
At Arbois, 7, 180, 420, 437
-- Besançon Royal College, 14 _seqq._
-- Bordeaux, 339
-- Compiègne, 127
-- Copenhagen Medical Congress, 398
Speech, 399
-- Geneva Congress of Hygiene, 358
-- London Medical Congress, 357
Lecture, 331, 337
-- Milan Congress of Sericiculture, 250
Speech, 251
-- Villa Vicentina, 173
-- Villeneuve l’Etang, 462
Birth, 6
Candidate for Academy of
Sciences, 81, 100
Candidature for Senate, 247
Characteristics, 9, 10, 12, 16, 22, 23, 25, 32, 60,
151, 223, 246, 252, 295, 325, 462
Chemistry and Physics theses, 34
Consulted on inoculation for peripneumonia, 350
Criticism of Bernard’s posthumous notes, 281, 287
Curator in Balard’s laboratory, 32
Crystallographic researches, 26, 38, 57, 60, 445
Lecture on, 102
Dean of Lille Faculté, 75, 249
Death, 464
Delegation to, 354
Deputy to Edinburgh, 384
Speech, 386
Discovers constitution of partartaric acid, 39
Discussion with Bastian, 253
Dispute with Rammelsberg, 102
Experiments on atmospheric air, 93 _seqq._
Friendship for Charles Chappuis, 18, 20, 22
Grand Cross of Legion of Honour, 326
His masters, 146, 252
His name given to district in Canada and to village in Algeria, 451
His teaching, 77, 79
Illness, 433, 439, 446, 458, 464
Watchers, 459, 462
In hospitals, 289, 291
-- London, 210
-- Paris, 11, 20, 57
-- Strasburg, 45, 177
Influence of his labours, 445
_Influence of Oxygen on Development of Yeast_, 221
Interview with Biot, 41
-- Liebig, 176
-- Mitscherlich and Rose, 61
-- Napoleon III, 104, 128
Jubilee celebration, 447
Speech, 450
Knight of Legion of Honour, 70
Laboratory (new), 157, 162, 164, 194, 232, 445
Laureat of Exhibition, 140
Lecture on germ theory, 271
Lectures on vinegar at Orleans, 148
Letters, 23, 24, 28
On experiment at Pouilly le Fort, 322, 323
To Bellotti, 207
-- Chappuis on Lille Faculty, 77
-- Dumas, 141, 166, 250
-- Duruy, 131
-- Emperor of Brazil, 404
-- Jupille, 427
-- Laurent, 48
-- Napoleon III, 146
-- Raulin, 199
-- Sainte Beuve, 126
M.D. of Bonn, 154
Returns diploma, 189, 190, 197
Marks of gratitude from agriculturists, 372
Marriage, 51
Medal from Society of French Agricultors, 312
Member of Académie de Médecine, 225
Speech, 241, 242, 243
-- Académie des Sciences, 103, 272
-- Académie Française, 341, 345
Memorial plate on house at Dôle, 376
National testimonial, 245
Obtains racemic acid, 69
Offered professorship at Pisa, 200
On chicken cholera, 299, 308
-- Littré and Positivism, 342
-- Science and religion, 244
-- Scientific supremacy of France, 195
-- Vaccine, 309, 311
of anthrax, 311, 312
-- Experiment, 314, 317, 318, 320, 323, 367
Results, 325
Paper on Plague, 301
Paralytic stroke, 160, 439
Pastel drawings, 12, 20
Pension augmented, 374
Permanent Secretary of Académie des Sciences, 439
Portraits, 439
Professor of Chemistry, Strasburg, 45
Professor of Physics at Dijon, 42
Proposed studies, 198
Refuses German decoration, 461
Reply to Dumas, 355
“_Researches on Dimorphism_,” 36
Researches on spontaneous generation, 87 _seqq._, 216, 222, 277
Lecture at Sorbonne on, 106
Speech on, 242
Researches on stereo-chemistry, 445
_Science’s Budget_, 153
_Scientific Annals of Ecole Normale_, 110
Searches for his son, 192
Solicitude for patients, 416, 425, 427
Speech at Aubenas, 351
Speech at inauguration of Institute, 442
Speech on Deville, 327
Speech on Joseph Bertrand, 419, 426
Studies beer, 207 _seqq._, 219, 229, 232, 282, 285
Book on, 214, 219, 339
-- Cholera, 126
-- Contagious diseases, 224 _seqq._
-- Fermentations, 79, 83, 85, 99, 113, 224, 240
-- Hydrophobia, 318, 363, 383, 390 _seqq._
Inoculates dogs, 395, 410
Inoculates Joseph Meister, 416
Inoculates Jupille, 422
-- _Silkworm Disease_, 117, 120, 129, 139, 155, 168
-- on Wine, 113, 158, 283
Book on, 133
-- Rouget of pigs, 360
Report on, 362
-- Splenic fever, 257, 259, 275, 284
Travels in search of racemic acid, 62 _seqq._
Trephines dog, 318
Turin veterinary school and, 367, 371
Vintage tour, 104
Visitors, 420
Visits Duclaux, 206
Pasteur, Madame Louis, 49, 52, 59, 108, 160, 172, 432, 459
Goes to Alais, 130
Letters to daughter, 318, 322, 325, 396
Paul, St. Vincent de, Life of, 463
Payen, paper on beer, 208
Pecquet, discoveries through vivisection, 336
_Peers of France_, 30 _note_
Pelletier, Louise, bitten by mad dog, 425
Pellico, Silvio, _Miei prigioni_, 16
Pelouze, M., 335
_Penicillium glaucum_, 204, 230
Perdrix, at Pasteur Jubilee, 448
Perraud, J. J., bust at Monay to, 421
Perreyve, Henri, on Poland, 184
Perroncito, on microbe of chicken cholera, 297
Perrot, deputy to Edinburgh, 384
Persoz, Professor of Chemistry, Strasburg, 45
Peter, M.:
Dispute with Pasteur, 364, 366, 369, 370
On antirabic cure, 434
Philomathic Society, Pasteur member of, 102
Phthisis, theory of, 227
Phylloxera, 295
Physicians, attitude towards chemists, 224, 233
Picard, General, candidature for Senate, 249
Pidoux and Trousseau, _Traité de Thérapeutique_, 224
Pidoux, Dr.:
On disease, 227
On tuberculosis, 227
Pierrefonds Castle restored, 127
Pierron, on Laurent at Riom, 47
Piorry, Dr.:
On disease and patient, 264
On tuberculosis, 228
Pisa, Pasteur offered professorship at, 200
Pitt, on vote to Jenner, 374, 375
Plague bacillus discovered, 457
Plague, Pasteur’s paper on, 301
_Plaideurs_ acted at Compiègne, 128
Plénisette village, 1
Pliny the Elder, remedy for hydrophobia, 407
Poggiale, speech on spontaneous generation, 242
Pointurier, M., 12
Polarisation of light, 27
Polignac, Cardinal of, _Anti-Lucretius_, 90
Poligny, 192
_Sous-préfet_ of, 9
Polytechnician, 43 _note_
Pontarlier, retreat to, 192
Positivist doctrine, 342
Potatoes, prejudice against, 171
Pottevin, attends on Pasteur, 459
Pouchet, M., 98, 104, 138, 216, 255
_Note on Vegetable and Animal Proto-organisms_, 92
_The Universe_, 214
Theory of fermentation, 241
Pouillet, Professor of Physics at Sorbonne, 27, 29, 43
Pouilly le Fort, experiment on vaccination of anthrax, 315, 316, 317, 319, 323
Results, 324
Prague, Pasteur at, 66
Prévôt, at Villeneuve l’Etang, 462
Primary teaching, law on reorganization, 140
Prince Imperial, Villa Vicentina, 173
_Prix de Rome_, 191 _note_
_Prix Montyon_, 16 _note_
Provost, acts in _Plaideurs_, 128
Provostaye, de la, work on crystallography, 33, 38
Prussia, Crown Prince of, 141
Puerperal fever, 290 _seqq._
Puiseux, Professor of Science at Besançon, 45
Putrefaction, 104
Q
Quain, Dr., on Commission on inoculation for hydrophobia, 430
Quatrefages, essay on history of silkworm, 116
Queyrat, attends on Pasteur, 459
R
Rabies and hydrophobia, 409
Rabies, Commission. (_See under_ Hydrophobia)
Rabourdin, M., 284
Racemic. (_See_ Paratartaric acid)
Raibaud-Lange, M., 169
Rammelsberg, dispute with Pasteur, 102
Randon, General, 166
Raspail, F. V., researches on origin of itch, 374
Rassmann, Dr., obtains racemic acid, 67
Raulin, Jules, 93, 130, 161, 166, 173, 209
Accompanies Pasteur to Milan, 250
Sketch of, 204
Raulin’s liquid, 205
Ravaisson, F., 137
Rayer, on charbon blood, 258
Raynaud, Dr. Maurice, 289
On hydrophobia, 391
Reaudin, Auguste, on Lister’s methods, 239
Reclus, Dr., on purulent infection, 237
Reculfoz village, 1
Redi, Francesco, experiment on spontaneous generation, 89
Redtenbacher, M., 66
“Régiment Dauphin,” 4
Regnault, Henri, 50, 59 Death, 191
Regnier acts in _Plaideurs_, 128
Renan, E., 137
On state of France, 199
Quoted from _Revue Germanique_, 110
Sketch of, 348
Speech to Pasteur on hydrophobia, 390
Welcomes Pasteur to Académie Française, 346
Renaud, M., 7
Renault, experiments with rabic blood, 392
Rencluse, 105
Renon, attends on Pasteur, 459
Répécaud, Headmaster of Royal College, Besançon, 14
Rhenish provinces, 189
Richet, Dr., 455
Rigault, lectures at Collège de France, 82
Robin, Charles, sketch of, 124
Rochard, Dr., on plague, 303
Rochette, Baron de la, sketch of, 314
Rochleder, professor of chemistry, Prague, 67
Roger, on Pasteur’s services, 245
Rollin College, experiments in laboratory at, 411, 415, 432
Romanet, Headmaster of Arbois College, 9, 13, 30, 36
Romieu, sketch of, 53
“Rouget” of pigs (swine fever), 360, 362
Roqui, Jean Claude, 6
Roqui, Jeanne Etiennette, wife of Jean Joseph Pasteur, 6, 7
Death, 40
Roscoe, Sir Henry, on Commission on inoculation for hydrophobia, 430
Rose, G., crystallographer, in Paris, 61
Rossignol, M.:
Article in _Veterinary Press_ on microbe, 313
Vaccination of sheep against anthrax and, 315, 321, 323
Rotz, Pasteur medal, 447
Rouher, at Tuileries, 154
Roux, Dr.:
Account of Thuillier’s death, 381
At Pasteur Jubilee, 448
Attends Pasteur, 459
Collaborates with Pasteur, 289, 291, 303, 305,
308, 317, 318, 321, 338, 359, 372, 393, 420, 424
Cross of Legion of Honour, 326
Goes to Alexandria, 379
Inoculates horse with diphtheritic toxin, 455
Lectures on diphtheria, 456
Lectures on technical microbia, 440
Lecture to London Royal Society, 454
On Pasteur’s medical work, 283
Performs inoculations, 432
Sketch of, 233
Studies diphtheria, 453
Roziers, Pilâtre de, balloon ascent, 405
Russian mujiks bitten by wolf, 429
S
Saccharimeter, 28
Sadowa, battle of, 178
Sainte Beuve:
Letters to Pasteur, 125
On Biot’s character, 56
Opinion of Joseph Droz, 14
Pasteur attends his lectures, 123
Philosophy, 123
Speech at Senate, 143
St. Dizier, 4
St. Hippolyte la Fort, 165, 174
St. Victor, Paul de, on Germany, 188
Salimbeni, treatise on sericiculture, 159
Salins, 97
Claude Etienne Pasteur settles at, 2
Sand, George, 107
Sandeau, Jules, 127
Sanderson, Professor Burdon, on Commission on inoculation for hydrophobia, 431
Sarcey, Francisque, 37
Saussure, Théodore de, 100
Sauton, speech at Pasteur Jubilee, 449
Say, Léon, Pasteur’s reply to, 417
Scheele discovers tartaric acid, 26
Schrotter, Professor, 66
Schwann, Dr., observations on fermentations, 80
Science and Religion, 244
Scientists meet at Tuileries, 154
Sedan, 181
Sédillot, Dr.:
Correspondence of Institute, 186
Sketch of, 266
Senarmont, M. de, 50, 58, 59, 101
Advice to Pasteur, 69
Confidence in Pasteur, 89
Septicæmia, 229, 234, 263, 308, 368
Sériana village, Algeria, 451
Sericiculture, 115
Serotherapy. (_See_ Diphtheria)
Serres, Olivier de, 172
Statue to, 350, 352
_Théâtre d’Agriculture_, 172
_Treatise on Gathering of Silk_, 116, 120
Seybel, M., 66
Signol, experiments, 262
Silkworm disease, 116 _seqq_., 139, 155, 156, 168
Lyons Commission on, 170
Simon, Jules, 144, 418
At inauguration of Pasteur Institute, 441
On Ecole Normale, 23
Sorbonne, 21 _note_, 146
Inauguration of new, 446
Pasteur Jubilee celebration, 447
Spallanzani, Abbé, experiments on animalculæ, 91
Splenic fever (charbon). (_See Anthrax_)
Spontaneous generation, 87 _seqq._, 216, 222, 227, 232, 277
Commission on, 106, 111
Pasteur’s lecture at Sorbonne on, 106
Stoffel, Colonel Baron, 155
Strasburg, Pasteur at, 45, 71
Strasburg arsenal, 179, 185
Strasburg University, 189
Straus, M.:
Goes to Alexandria, 379
On Cholera Commission, 382
Sully, opposes silk industry, 116
Sully-Prudhomme, love of France, 191
Supt village, 2
Surgery before Pasteur, 234 _seqq._
Susani, S., 250
Swine fever. (_See_ Rouget of pigs)
T
Talmy, Dr., at Bordeaux, 339
Tamisier, candidature for Senate, 249
Tantonville brewery, 213
Tarnier, Dr., 289
On puerperal fever, 289
Tartaric acid, constitution of, 26, 38
Teaching:
Law on liberty of, 52
Law on primary, 140
Terrillon, Dr., 432
Thenard, Baron, 59, 356
Sketch of, 45
Thierry, M., at Pouilly le Fort experiment, 316, 319
Thiers, M.:
Letter to Pasteur, 144
On bravery of 3rd Regiment, 3
Third Regiment of Line, 3
“Régiment Dauphin,” 4
Thorwaldsen Museum, Copenhagen, 402
Thuillier, Louis, 317
Collaborates with Pasteur, 357, 359, 360, 362
Death, 380
Goes to Alexandria, 379
Studies hydrophobia, 391
Thurel, candidature for Senate, 249
Tisserand, M., 354
Director of Crown Agricultural establishments, 173
On Commission on hydrophobia, 395
Toscanelli, S., 200, 201
Toul, on second line of fortifications, 179
Tourtel brewery at Tantonville, 213
Toussaint, professor at Toulouse
Veterinary School, 264, 284
Studies microbe of chicken cholera, 297
Vaccinates sheep against anthrax, 306, 307
Traube, Dr., on ammoniacal fermentation, 232
Trécul, Dr., 230
On heterogenesis, 216, 218
Theory of fermentation, 241
Trélat, Dr., surgeon at Maternité, 290
On Commission of Hygiene, 186
Trocadéro fête for Pasteur Institute, 431
Troost, M., 327
Trousseau and Pidoux, _Traité de Thérapeutique_, 224
Trousseau, Dr.:
Lecture on ferments quoted, 229
On diphtheria, 453
On puerperal fever, 290
Tsar, sends Cross of St. Anne of Russia to Pasteur, 430
Tuberculosis, researches on, 227
Tuileries, scientists meet at, 154
Tunis, Pasteur Institute at, 461
Turin Veterinary School and Pasteur, 368, 371
Tyndall, Professor:
_Dust and Diseases_, 239
Letter to Pasteur, 353
Typhoid fever, medical methods of treating, 364
U
Udressier, Claude François, Count of, 1
Udressier, Philippe-Marie-François, Count of, 2
Université, 44 _note_, 155
University of Edinburgh, Tercentenary, 384
Degrees, 385
V
Vaccination, 300, 309, 311
Against anthrax, 312
Experiment, 314, 317, 318, 320, 328, 367
Results, 325
Against swine fever, 382
Vaillant, Field-Marshal, 142, 168
At Tuileries, 154
Silkworm nursery, 173
Vallisneri, medical professor of Padua, 90
Van Holmont, recipe for producing mice, 89
Van t’Hoff, studies on stereo-chemistry, 445
Van Tieghem, 217, 232
Vauquelin, tanning process, 29
Veillon, attends on Pasteur, 459
Velpeau:
On diphtheria, 453
On pin prick, 234
Venasque Pass, 105
Vercel, Jules, 7, 36, 97, 192, 266
Accompanies Pasteur to Paris, 10
Verneuil, M.:
On antirabic cure, 434
On surgery (1870), 236
Vescovato, 169
Veuillot, Louis, 36
On liberty of teaching, 53
Viala, Eugène:
Attends on Pasteur, 459
Preparations for inoculations, 424
Sketch of, 402
Vialla, M., Vice-President of Agricultural Society, Montpellier, 353
Vicat, national testimonial to, 245
Villa Vicentina, Illyria, 173
Villemin, Dr.:
Advises Pasteur to winter in south, 433, 434
At experiment on earthworms, 304
On Commission on hydrophobia, 395
On contagion of tuberculosis, 367
Researches on tuberculosis, 226, 227
Villeneuve l’Etang, branch establishment of laboratory at, 398, 406, 410
Stables, 463
Villers-Farlay, Mayor of, writes to Pasteur, 421
Vinegar, Pasteur lectures on manufacture of, 148
Virchow, Professor:
At Copenhagen Medical Congress, 399
At Edinburgh, 386
On anti-vivisection, 332
_Virulent Diseases--Chicken Cholera_, 298
Virus ferments, 223 _seqq._
Vivisection:
Discoveries made through, 337
Virchow on, 332
Volta, S., 195
Voltaire:
_Philosophic Dictionary_ quoted on God, 92
_Singularities of Nature_, 92
Vone, Théodore, consults Pasteur, 414
Vulpian, 278
Champions Pasteur, 435, 436
Death, 438
On Brand’s treatment of typhoid, 365
On Commission on hydrophobia, 395
Pasteur consults, 415
Speech on Pasteur’s experiments on hydrophobia, 422, 438
W
Wales, Prince of, 141
Wallace, Sir Richard, founds dogs’ cemetery at Bagatelle, 411
Wasserzug, Etienne, interprets for Pasteur, 424
Weber, Dr., advises Mme. Meister to consult Pasteur, 414
William, King of Prussia, meets Napoleon, 182
Wine, studies on, 113, 158
Wissemburg, 178
Wolf-bites, statistics of death from, 430
Wurtz:
Laboratory, 42
On Commission of Hygiene, 186
Y
Yeast, 80
Pasteur’s paper on, 221, 230.
(_See also_ Fermentation)
Yellow fever, Pasteur studies, 338
Yersin, Dr.:
Studies diphtheria, 453
Studies plague in China, 458, 461
Younger, welcomes Pasteur to Edinburgh, 38
Z
Zevort, M., 47, 130
Zimmern, _sous-préfecture_, 189
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A great nation, said Disraeli, is a nation which produces great men.
[2] _Ordonnances du 26 Juillet_, 1830. A royal Decree issued by Charles
X under the advice of his minister, Prince de Polignac; it was based
on a misreading of one of the articles of the Charter of 1814, and
dissolved the new Chamber of Deputies before it had even assembled; it
suppressed the freedom of the Press and created a new electoral system
to the advantage of the royalist party. These _ordonnances_ were the
cause of the 1830 Revolution, which placed Louis Philippe of Orleans on
the Throne. [Trans.]
[3] _Ecole Normale Supérieure_, under the supervision of the Ministry
of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, founded in 1808 by Napoleon I,
with the object of training young professors. Candidates must (1)
be older than eighteen and younger than twenty-one; (2) pass one
written and one vivâ voce examination; (3) be already in possession
of their diploma as _bachelier_ of science or of letters, according
to the branch of studies which they wish to take up; and (4) sign an
engagement for ten years’ work in public instruction. The professors of
the Ecole Normale take the title of _Maître des Conférences_. [Trans.]
[4] Baccalauréat (low Latin _bachalariatus_), first degree taken in a
French Faculty; the next is _licence_, and the next _doctorate_. It is
much more elementary than a bachelor’s degree in an English university.
There are two baccalauréats: (1) the baccalauréat _ès lettres_ required
of candidates for the Faculties of Medicine and of Law, to the Ecole
Normale Supérieure and to several public offices; (2) the baccalauréat
_ès sciences_, required for admission to the Schools of Medicine and of
Pharmacy, to the Ecole Normale Supérieure (scientific section), and the
Polytechnic, Military and Foresters’ Schools. [Trans.]
[5] Philosophie class. In French secondary schools or _lycées_ the
forms or classes, in Pasteur’s time, were arranged as follows, starting
from the bottom--
1º huitième.
2º septième.
6º sixième (French grammar was begun).
5º cinquième (Latin was begun).
6º quatrième (Greek was begun).
7º troisième.
8º seconde.
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9º Mathématiques élémentaires. Rhétorique.
10º Mathématiques spéciales. Philosophie.
The seconde students who intended to pass their _baccalauréat ès
sciences_ went into the mathématiques élémentaires class, whilst those
who were destined for letters or the law entered the rhétorique class,
from which they went on to the philosophie class. [Trans.]
[6] Prix Montyon: a series of prizes founded at the beginning of the
nineteenth century by Baron de Montyon, a distinguished philanthropist,
and conferred on literary works for their moral worth, and on
individuals for acts of private virtue or self-sacrifice. The laureates
are chosen every year by the Académie Française, and in this way many
obscure heroes are deservedly rewarded, and many excellent books
brought to public notice. [Trans.]
[7] Sorbonne. Name given to the Paris Faculty of Theology and the
buildings in which it was established. It was originally intended by
its founder, Robert de Sorbon (who was chaplain to St. Louis, King of
France, 1270) as a special establishment to facilitate theological
studies for poor students. This college became one of the most
celebrated in the world, and produced so many clever theologians that
it gave its name to all the members of the Faculty of Theology. It
was closed during the Revolution in 1789, and its buildings, which
had been restored by Richelieu in the seventeenth century, were given
to the Université in 1808. Since 1821 they have been the seat of the
Universitarian Academy of Paris, and used for the lectures of the
Faculties of Theology, of Letters, and of Sciences. [Trans.]
[8] Accessit. A distinction accorded in French schools to those who
have come nearest to obtaining the prize in any given subject. [Trans.]
[9] Concours Général. An open competition held every year at the
Sorbonne between the _élite_ of the students of all the colleges in
France, from the highest classes down to the _quatrième_. [Trans.]
[10] _Institut de France._ Name given collectively to the five
following societies--
1. _Académie Française_, founded by Richelieu in 1635 in order to
polish and maintain the purity of the French language. It is composed
of forty Life members, and publishes from time to time a dictionary
which is looked upon as a standard test of correct French.
2. _Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres_, founded by Colbert in
1663.
3. _Académie des Sciences_, also founded by Colbert in 1666. It has
published most valuable reports ever since 1699.
4. _Académie des Beaux-Arts_, which includes the Academies of Painting,
of Sculpture, of Music, and of Architecture.
5. _Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques._
It was in 1795 that these ancient academies, which had been suppressed
two years before by the Revolution, were reorganized and combined
together to form the _Institut de France_. [Trans.]
[11] _Peers of France._ A supreme Council formed originally of the
First Vassals of the Crown; became in 1420 one of the Courts of
Parliament. In 1789 the Peerage was suppressed, but reinstated in 1814
by the Restoration, when it again formed part of the Legislative Corps;
there were then hereditary peers and life-peers. In 1831 the hereditary
peerage was abolished and life-peers were nominated by the King under
certain restrictions. This House of Peers was suppressed in 1848, and
in 1852 the Senate was instituted in its stead. [Trans.]
[12] _Facultés_, Government establishments for superior studies; there
are in France Faculties of Theology, of Law, of Medicine, of Sciences
and of Letters, distributed among the larger provincial towns as well
as in Paris. The administrator of a faculty is styled _doyen_ (dean)
and is chosen among the professors. [Trans.]
[13] _Agrégation._ An annual competition for recruiting professors
for faculties and secondary schools or _lycées_. A candidate for the
_lycées agrégation_ must have passed his _licence_ examination, and a
candidate for the superior _agrégation_ must be in possession of his
doctorate. [Trans.]
[14] This celebrated poet took a large share in the Revolution of 1848,
when his popularity became enormous. His political talents, however,
apart from his wonderful eloquence, were less than mediocre, and he
retired into private life within three years.
His “Meditations,” “Jocelyn,” “Recueillements,” etc., etc., are
beautiful examples of lyrical poetry, and may be considered as forming
part of the literature of the world. [Trans.]
[15] Garde Nationale. A city militia, intended to preserve order and
to maintain municipal liberties; it was improvised in 1789, and its
first Colonel was General Lafayette, of American Independence fame. Its
cockade united the King’s white to the Paris colours, blue and red, and
thus was inaugurated the celebrated Tricolour.
The National Guard was preserved by the Restoration, but Charles
X disbanded it as being dangerously Liberal in its tendencies. It
re-formed itself of its own accord in 1830, and helped to overthrow the
elder branch of Bourbon. It proved a source of disorder in 1848 and
was reorganized under the second Empire, but, having played an active
and disastrous part in the Commune (1871), it was disarmed and finally
suppressed. [Trans.]
[16] February days. The Republicans had organized a banquet in Paris
for February 22, 1848. The Government prohibited it, with the result
that an insurrection took place. Barricades were erected and some
fighting ensued; on the 24th, the insurgents were masters of the
situation. Louis Philippe abdicated (vainly) in favour of his grandson,
the Comte de Paris, and fled to England. [Trans.]
[17] Collège de France. An establishment of superior studies founded
in Paris by Francis I in 1530, and where public lectures are given on
languages, literature, history, mathematics, physical science, etc.
It was formerly independent, but is now under the jurisdiction of the
Ministry of Public Instruction. [Trans.]
[18] Polytechnician. A student of the Ecole Polytechnique, a military
and engineering school under the jurisdiction of the Minister of
War, founded in 1794. Candidates for admission must be older than
sixteen and younger than twenty, but the limit of age is raised to
twenty-five in the case of private soldiers and non-commissioned
officers. They must also have passed their _baccalauréat ès lettres_
or _ès sciences_--preferably the latter. After two years’ residence
(compulsory) students pass a leaving examination, and are entered
according to their list number as engineers of the Navy, Mines, or
Civil Works, or as officers in the military Engineers or in the
Artillery; the two last then have to go through one of the military
training schools (Ecoles d’Application). [Trans.]
[19] _Université._ The celebrated body known as Université de
Paris, and instituted by Philippe Auguste in 1200, possessed great
privileges from its earliest times. It had the monopoly of teaching
and a jurisdiction of its own. It took a share in public affairs on
several occasions, and had long struggles to maintain against several
religious orders. The Université was suppressed by the Convention, but
re-organized by Napoleon I in 1808. It is now subdivided into sixteen
_Académies Universitaires_, each of which is administered by a Rector.
The title of Grand Master of the Université always accompanies that of
Minister of Public Instruction. [Trans.]
[20] _Départements._ The present divisions of French territory,
numbering eighty-seven in all. Each department is administered by a
_préfet_, and subdivided into _arrondissements_, each of which has a
_sous-préfet_. [Trans.]
[21] _Prince de Joinville._ Third son of Louis Philippe, and an Admiral
in the French navy. It was he who was sent to fetch Napoleon’s remains
from St. Helena. [Trans.]
[22] Of the Legion of Honour.
[23] Hectare: French measure of surface, about 2⅓ acres. [Trans.]
[24] _Conseil-Général de département._ A representative assembly for
the general management of each département, somewhat similar to the
County Councils in England. [Trans.]
[25] Le Verrier, a celebrated astronomer, at that time Director of the
Paris Observatory. His calculations led him to surmise the existence of
the planet Neptune, which was discovered accordingly. Adam, an English
astronomer, attained the same result, by the same means, at the same
time, each of the two scientists being in absolute ignorance of the
work of the other. Le Verrier was the first to publish his discovery.
[Trans.]
[26] Ancient name of the high flat ground surrounding Chartres and
including parts of the Departments of Eure et Loir, Loir et Cher,
Loiret and Seine et Oise. These plains are very fertile, the soil being
extremely rich, and produce cereals chiefly. [Trans.]
[27] _Val-de-Grâce._ A handsome monument of the seventeenth century,
now a military hospital. [Trans.]
[28] By Dr. Smiles. [Trans.]
[29] Ps. cxxxvii. 9.
[30] _Prix de Rome._ A competition takes place every year amongst the
students of the _Ecole des Beaux Arts_ for this prize; the successful
competitor is sent to Rome for a year at the expense of the Ecole.
[Trans.]
[31] _Assistance Publique_, official organisation of the charitable
works supported by the State. [Trans.]
[32] _La Vie d’un Savant_, by the author of the present work. [Trans.]
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