page_title: Koch–Pasteur rivalry
section_title: Pasteur's attenuation and vaccines
hierarchical_section_title: Koch–Pasteur rivalry / Pasteur's attenuation and vaccines
context_page_description: The French Louis Pasteur and German Robert Koch are the two greatest figures in medical microbiology and in establishing acceptance of the germ theory of disease. In 1882, fueled by national rivalry and a language barrier, the tension between Pasteur and the younger Koch erupted into an acute conflict.
  Pasteur had already discovered molecular chirality, investigated fermentation, refuted spontaneous generation, inspired Lister's introduction of antisepsis to surgery, introduced pasteurization to France's wine industry, answered the silkworm diseases blighting France's silkworm industry, attenuated a Pasteurella species of bacteria to develop vaccine to chicken cholera, and introduced anthrax vaccine.
  Koch had transformed bacteriology by introducing the technique of pure culture, whereby he established the microbial cause of the disease anthrax, had introduced both staining and solid culture plates to bacteriology, had identified the microbial cause of tuberculosis, had incidentally popularized Koch's postulates for identifying the microbial cause of a disease, and would later identify the microbial cause of cholera.
context_section_description: From 1878 to 1880, when publishing on anthrax, Pasteur referred to the bacteria by the name given it by Frenchman Davaine, but in one footnote called it "Bacillus anthracis of the Germans". In July 1880 Toussaint reported developing a technique of chemical deactivation to produce anthrax vaccine that successfully protected dogs and cattle, and was praised by the Academy of Science, but Pasteur attacked the feat—chemical deactivation and not virulence attenuation to make a vaccine—as impossible. Pasteur soon introduced his own anthrax vaccine in a highly successful public experiment, and entered commerce with it. Pasteur was criticized by Koch and colleagues. (Pasteur had not used attenuation, but secretly used Toussaint's technique.)
caption: Louis Pasteur [1822 - 1895], microbiologist and chemist Description.
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