The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-01-03
LOUIS PAsTEUR
"REMINISCENCES OF A GREAT
CATHOLIC SCIENTIST OF
FRANCE.

NAI7OLlC SCtENIlST OF
FRANCE.
The Times" of London recently
printed a leading article on "Pasteur
and Lister in which, apropos of the
seventeenth anniversary of the death
OF Pasteur, it insisted on his place
"on the heights with Darwin" and
reminded the reader that ito think of
Pasteur is to think also Of Lister"
That is certainly so, for Lister said
again and again that he got his in
splration from Pasteur-that he had
been on the wrong track until Pas
teur threw flood of light" on the
right one. In 1880, by final expert
ment at Chamonix, Pasteur estab-
l1shed once and for all the principles
OF aseptic surgery. In 1855 came Lis
ter's first use of carbolic acid. The
last meeting of these two men, whose
benefaction to humanity is inestim-
able. was on the occasion of Pasteur's
jubilee. Thanks to you," asserted
Lister, there has been a revolution
in surgery which has taken away it's
terrors. Humanity, says the Times,
will continue to salute Lister; ''but
Pasteur must be Included in the salu-
tation"
But to think of Pasteur is to think
OF something more than his associa-
ton with Lister. When, seventeen
years ago, Pasteur ended his great
career by death full of pain, yet full
OF peace, France recognized that she
lost in him not merely man of
genius, but one endowed with the in
innate domestic virtues which add to
the lustre of even such a reputation
as his
His career is easily divisible into
two parts. The earlier was all un-
questioned discovery, acclaimed sue
cess, and admired beneficence. He
healed the fiocks and herds of France
He saved the life of the silkworm;
that little spinner lived to spin the
innumerable threads of national in
dustry again. He saved the spelling
wine-bins of the South To no other
did the France of peace and the peas
ant owe so much. But over the last
twenty years OF, that courageous life
a very war of controversies has ragged.
He did the things Just named. But
has he safeguarded men, women and
children from the worst of deaths?
There is no one bold enough TO an
swer. Admitting nations cover their
uncertainty by increasing the rhetoric
OF the enthusiasm. The temperate
phrase of certainty is impossible;
therefore the exaggerated phrase is
used, to very WEAKNESS. But that
Pasteur fought hydrophobia, whether
he beat it or not, is admitted. AS a
d1scoverer he is among the immortals.
The spectroscope and the germ
theory have altered two sciences in
our time, and the germ theory is due
to his genius.
But we do not end here. The. scien-
tific men of France are not always to
be found among the sons of the
Church. Perhaps Pasteur himself
was not wholly in sympathy with
little movements on the surface of
French Catholicism; and that he did
not repeat the shibboleths of some of
4 the journalists is probable enough,
since he was from time to time the
object of their criticism. But Pasteur
did not depute to writer's, however
Jealous after their own kind, the Gus
tody of his conscience, nor did he ac-
cord to the fashions of the moment,
however much they suited others, a
conformity which would have been in
him only an insincerity. Such move
ment as that for the building of the
Church of the National Vow, at
Montmartre, had, of course, his
homage, and his name was on the list
of its first founders.
When Pasteur went to London, a
few years before his death, he had a
great reception at the Medical Con-
gress. But delighted as he was with
the enthusiastic sympathy of his Eng
lish colleagues in the art of healing,
he was still more delighted by the OPP
portunity he then had of sitting at a
banquet beside Cardinal Manning.
That was a banquet, one of the few
Of his life, which the Cardinal looked
back upon with equanimity-with
something more. There were many
things akin between these two great
men, utterly divided as were their in
terests, their methods, their measure
ments perhaps Of what was very
worth while. But there was the true
note of Manning in saying of Pas
tours In advanced years. He said that
what he hoped soon to attain to was
the faith of the Breton peasant.
And then as a further advance he
might hope to achieve-the faith of
the Breton peasants wife.