The life of Pasteur, by René Vallery-Radot, tr. from the French by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire, with an introduciton by Sir William Osler ...

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, Leeuwen- hoek, and others, began to use the microscope and to see 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, Q Pi /?**$ viii 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 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 distin- guished 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 Pasteur Institutes for the treatment of hydro- phobia 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 xii discoveries, which may be thus formulated. 1.Each ferment- ation 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.more charming picture than that of the family at Dole !Napoleon's old sergeant, Joseph Pasteur, is almost as interest- ing a character as his illustrious son; and we follow the joys and sorrows of the home with unflagging attention.RarelyWhat 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 :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 " ; * 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 Liiiri : ' He who proclaims the existence of the Infinite, and none can avoid it accumulates in that affirma- tion 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 * A great nation, said Disraeli, is a nation which produces great men.b THE LIFE OF PASTEUR but we have the signatures of the affianced couple, ClaudePasteur 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 Comte" (in contradiction to the name of that province, as VoUaire 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.

Topic: Medical History and Innovations
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences