, 1885-03-01

Dumas wrote to Pasteur;
"In the infinitely little of life you have dis
covered a third kingdom, to which belongs
those beings that, with all the p~rerogatives Of
animal life, have no need Of air TO live, and
find the heat they require in the chemical de
compositions they provoke around Them
In the field he has chosen, that Of the Gin
finitely little, y Monsieur Louis P~asteur, whose
portrait we give above, Is the greatest Of
living scientists. He is a man well on In
years now, and has been studying micro
scopic life since his early youth. He was
born in Dole, one OF the old country towns Of
France, in the Department Of the Jura. In
boyhood he showed no particular talent ex-
cept for drawing. But a little later, in the
chemistry class at Besancon, he vexed the
professor without measure by his many in
quiries, till the old man shut the boy off by
declaring that it was his place to ask ques-
tions, not Pasteur's.
The record of his life labors fills many vol
umes. On his wedding morning he went to
his laboratory to work, and forgot all about
the greatest day Of his life till he was sent for
to take his part in the marriage services. The
good he has conferred on his fellow-man by
his incessant researches, the wonderful scien-
thc discoveries he has made, may perhaps
tend TO convince young people that there are
gains in this life which are worth more than
the mere heaping up of money.
PasteuI's first important discovery was that
there Is a great difference between the mole
cular arrangement OF mineral and crystal
line substance and that of other matter. The
former is symmetrical, the latter unsym-
mstrical.
Next he investigated fermentation and
putrefaction. He upset all extant theories
by proclaiming that these processes are pro
duced by millions of living, moving organ
iSms. He investigated especially the alcohol
producing yeast-plant. In brief, ferment is a
living being, animal or vegetable, endowed
with motion, and existing without air.
To apply this step TO the propagation of
contagious sicknesses was only one step more.
The step was taken, and was the browning
triumph of Pasteur's busy life. The germ
theory of disease is now universally known.
Pasteur inoculates men and animals for con-
tagious diseases, produces a mild form Of the
sickness, and the creature escapes. Cattle
are thus inoculated throughout France for
the plague, and the mortality has been TO
duced to a tenth of what it was.
This same marvellous Frenchman has set
tied for good and all the fact that there is no
such thing as spontaneous gener ton. There
must be a preexistent germ. Some years
ago a strange disease ran riot among the silk
worms Of his country, and threatened to de
stroy the chief industry in the south OF
France. Pasteur was called on for aid In this
distress, and not vainly. He experimental
and investigated with his mighty microscope
and mightier brain till he found a way to
stamp out the pest. He restored its wealth
to the desolated district" but in doing 80 he
got a paralysis of the left side, from which he
has never recovered.
His latest researches nave been made with
hrlwn-AAlta l.. 12-a 7. lo.r, 1..rI--l -
these at a time in kennels, inoculating them
with the cultivated and ~attenuatedv virus Of
rabies. His success is undoubted. It is only
a question Of time when peoples pet dogs will
be regularly inoculated for h~ydrophobia, as
human beings are now for smallpox. Thus
one of the terrors Of living will be made
nauRht.