The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1885-02-21
Dumas wrote to Pasteur:
LOUIS PASTEUR.

builittS NlOte 10 uSutuT'
SIN the infinitely little of life you have dis
covered third kingdom, to which belong.
those beings that, with all the prerogatives OF
animal life, have no need of air to live, anC
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" Monsieur Louis Pasteur, 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 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-
tons, 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-
tifc 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.
Pasteur'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 II 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
isrns. 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 crowning
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 mild form Of the
sickness, and the creature escapes. Cattle
are thus inoculated throughout France for
the plague, and the mortality has been re-
duced to tenth Of what it was
This same marvellous Frenchman has set
tied for good and all the fact that there is nc
Such thlng as spontaneous generation. There
must be pre-existent germ. Some years
ago 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 way to
stamp out the pest. He restored its wealth
got paralysis of the left side, from which he
has never recovered.
His latest researches have been made with
hydrophobia in dogs. He keeps hundred of
these at time in kennels, inoculating then
with tho cultivated and attenuated virus of
rabies. His success is undoubted. 1t is only
question of time when peoples pet dogs will
be regularly inoculated for hydrophobia, as
human beings are now for smallpox. Thus
one of the terrors OF living will be made
naught.