The Windham County reformer. (Battleboro, Vt.) 1876-1897, 1895-10-04
Pasteur and His Work.

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history, if experience finally confirms
what is now the general opinion, died
at his home near st. Cloud Saturday
at the age of 70. He was best known
to the general public as the dicoverer
of that treatment, which bears his
name, now generally applied to the
disease known as hydrophobia, but
that was only a part, an incident
of the work on which he has been en-
gagged for more than 40 years and
which Roux, Koch, Salmon, Chamber
and and other famous investigators
have supplemented with important
discoveries, until it has come to be a
generally accepted belief in the med
zeal world that all zmotic diseases at
least, like phthisis, cholera, diphthe-
ria, typhus, typhoid and scarlet fevers,
intermittent fever, the plague, are due
to the development in our bodies OF
myrads of infinitely little organisms
that grow and flourish in our tissues
as parasites. There are also many en-
thusiasts who believe that every dis
ease is to be explained II the same
way, as certainly seems to be true OF
the supuration of wounds, for which
| the anti septic treatment is now the
accepted one. 1t is the general belief
also, that most of these diseases can
be guarded against by incubation just
as smallpox is, the microbes being
cultivated and attenuated 10 Il degree
of slight viruencc and then injected
| into the system SO as to give light run
| of the disease though not a few author
tiles dispute the claim aud insist, as
some do with regard to smallpox, that
the method is simply one of introduc-
ing disease without atfording any
sufficient surety against its recurrence
to Justify such risk. Extensive re-
searches and experiments. costing
hundreds of thousands of dollars a
year. in the line of what is generally
accepted as this Few science of bac-
teriology, are constantly being con
Quoted at the Pasteur Institute at
Paris, and in the last year or two the
anti toxine theory has been evolved
there, the principle of which, though
allied, is distinct from that of lnocula-
ton. BY repeated injections through
horses, a serum is obtained that is free
from the bacili and is supposed TO
have had developed potency to over
come the bacilli. so that when inject
ed into the human being and acting on
the blood corpucsles it will kill the dis
ease. In other words. something after
the homeopathic idea that like cures
like" it is believed that for every
disease poison, there is an antidotc
developed by nature in overcoming il.
The anti-t oxine treatment, prima
rily applied to diphthcria with dis
puted success as yet, is regarded by
these authorities to be of universal
application.
This microbe theory of Pasteur and
his school is at least SO far proved,
that within the range of the investiga-
lions thus far every disease has its
peculiar microbe. The point of con
troversy is whether the microhc is the
cause of the result of the disease. The
contention of the psychologists is
supported by the fact that the transfer
of the microbes from diseased to
healthy persons will reproduce it in
the latter, and as Pasteur demonstrate
ed quite clearly, contrary to the opln-
ion of scientists who preceded him,
that there can be no such thing as
spontaneous generation, that all life
must proceed from anticedent life, he
made the argument for microbe causes
very strong one, He set up his
laboratory on a mountain top and
proved conclusively that in pure air
where there could be no contagion of
germs, fermentation could not occur,
and no animalculH could appear, and
that therefore there was no such thing
as spontaneous generation. Professor
Tyndall acknowledged that Pasteur
had proved his case.
Pasteur was of lowly origin. the son
of French tanner, but early exhibit
ted such talent that his father gave
him IA college education. and he early
began to carry an experimental re-
search in laboratory of his own. He
began by proving that fermentation
caused by oxygen in the air, as used to
be believed, was the work of microscop-
ical plants or microbes. and that each
fermentation or each form of change
in organic matter has its special
microbe. Since these microbes are the
productive agents of organic matter,
they are the regulators of life on the
globe. They necessarily reconstitute
the water. air and soil. SO that each
new form of life can find that wherein
it lives. If everything that has lived
were not destroyed, or. rather. were j.
not again divided into its elementst
there could be no new life All the !
material available for the creation of
organic matter would soon be used up
if organic matter. once made. were in
destructible. \ man dies. and by the |!
process of fermentation or putrefaction
that of which he was made is grad
ually set free and becomes available
for the manufacture of another man. I
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