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Constitutional Law in a Nutshell (Nutshells) 10th Jerome A. Barron Jerome A. Barron instant download

The document discusses the work of Louis Pasteur in developing vaccines for diseases affecting swine, particularly swine fever. It details his experiments, interactions with adversaries, and the scientific community's reception of his findings at an International Congress of Hygiene. Pasteur expresses optimism about the potential for vaccination to prevent swine fever, which has caused significant losses in pig populations across various regions.

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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
10 views

Constitutional Law in a Nutshell (Nutshells) 10th Jerome A. Barron Jerome A. Barron instant download

The document discusses the work of Louis Pasteur in developing vaccines for diseases affecting swine, particularly swine fever. It details his experiments, interactions with adversaries, and the scientific community's reception of his findings at an International Congress of Hygiene. Pasteur expresses optimism about the potential for vaccination to prevent swine fever, which has caused significant losses in pig populations across various regions.

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Whilst these things were being said and written, the Veterinary School of
Berlin asked the laboratory of the Ecole Normale for some charbon vaccine.
Pasteur answered that he wished that experiments should be made before a
commission nominated by the German Government. It was constituted by
the Minister of Agriculture and Forests, and Virchow was one of the
members of it. A former student of the Ecole Normale—who, after leaving
the school first on the list of competitors for the agrégation of physical
science, had entered the laboratory—one in whom Pasteur founded many
hopes, Thuillier, left for Germany with his little tubes of attenuated virus.
Pasteur was not satisfied; he would have liked to meet his adversaries face
to face and oblige them publicly to own their defeat. An opportunity was
soon to arise. He had come to Arbois, as usual, for the months of August
and September, and was having some alterations made in his little house.
The tannery pits were being filled up. “It will not improve the house itself,”
he wrote to his son, “but it will be made brighter and more comfortable by
having a tidy yard and a garden along the riverside.”
The Committee of the International Congress of Hygiene, which was to
meet at Geneva, interrupted these peaceful holidays by inviting Pasteur to
read a paper on attenuated virus. As a special compliment, the whole of one
meeting, that of Tuesday, September 5, was to be reserved for his paper
only. Pasteur immediately returned to work; he only consented under the
greatest pressure to go for a short walk on the Besançon road at five o’clock
every afternoon. After spending the whole morning and the whole afternoon
sitting at his writing table over laboratory registers, he came away
grumbling at being disturbed in his work. If any member of his family
ventured a question on the proposed paper, he hastily cut them short,
declaring that he must be let alone. It was only when Mme. Pasteur had
copied out in her clear handwriting all the little sheets covered with
footnotes, that the contents of the paper became known.
When Pasteur entered the Congress Hall, great applause greeted him on
every side. The seats were occupied, not only by the physicians and
professors who form the usual audience of a congress, but also by tourists,
who take an interest in scientific things when they happen to be the fashion.
Pasteur spoke of the invitation he had received. “I hastened to accept it,”
he said, “and I am pleased to find myself the guest of a country which has
been a friend to France in good as in evil days. Moreover, I hoped to meet
here some of the contradictors of my work of the last few years. If a
congress is a ground for conciliation, it is in the same degree a ground for
courteous discussion. We all are actuated by a supreme passion, that of
progress and of truth.”
Almost always, at the opening of a congress, great politeness reigns in a
confusion of languages. Men are seen offering each other pamphlets,
exchanging visiting cards, and only lending an inattentive ear to the solemn
speeches going on. This time, the first scene of the first act suspended all
private conversation. Pasteur stood above the assembly in his full strength
and glory. Though he was almost sixty, his hair had remained black, his
beard alone was turning grey. His face reflected indomitable energy; if he
had not been slightly lame, and if his left hand had not been a little stiff, no
one could have supposed that he had been struck with paralysis fourteen
years before. The feeling of the place France should hold in an International
Congress gave him a proud look and an imposing accent of authority. He
was visibly ready to meet his adversaries and to make of this assembly a
tribunal of judges. Except for a few diplomats who at the first words
exchanged anxious looks at the idea of possible polemics, Frenchmen felt
happy at being better represented than any other nation. Men eagerly
pointed out to each other Dr. Koch, twenty-one years younger than Pasteur,
who sat on one of the benches, listening, with impassive eyes behind his
gold spectacles.
Pasteur analysed all the work he had done with the collaboration of MM.
Chamberland, Roux, and Thuillier. He made clear to the most ignorant
among his hearers his ingenious experiments either to obtain, preserve or
modify the virulence of certain microbes. “It cannot be doubted,” he said,
“that we possess a general method of attenuation.... The general principles
are found, and it cannot be disbelieved that the future of those researches is
rich with the greatest hopes. But, however obvious a demonstrated truth
may be, it has not always the privilege of being easily accepted. I have met
in France and elsewhere with some obstinate contradictors.... Allow me to
choose amongst them the one whose personal merit gives him the greatest
claims to our attention, I mean Dr Koch, of Berlin.”
Pasteur then summed up the various criticisms which had appeared in
the Record of the Works of the German Sanitary Office. “Perhaps there may
be some persons in this assembly,” he went on, “who share the opinions of
my contradictors. They will allow me to invite them to speak; I should be
happy to answer them.”
Koch, mounting the platform, declined to discuss the subject, preferring,
he said, to make answer in writing later on. Pasteur was disappointed; he
would have wished the Congress, or at least a Commission designated by
Koch, to decide on the experiments. He resigned himself to wait. On the
following days, as the members of the Congress saw him attending
meetings on general hygiene, school hygiene, and veterinary hygiene, they
hardly recognized in the simple, attentive man, anxious for instruction, the
man who had defied his adversary. Outside the arena, Pasteur became again
the most modest of men, never allowing himself to criticize what he had not
thoroughly studied. But, when sure of his facts, he showed himself full of a
violent passion, the passion of truth; when truth had triumphed, he
preserved not the least bitterness of former struggles.
That day of the 5th September was remembered in Geneva. “All the
honour was for France,” wrote Pasteur to his son; “that was what I had
wished.”

He was already keen in the pursuit of another malady which caused great
damage, the “rouget” disease or swine fever. Thuillier, ever ready to start
when a demonstration had to be made or an experiment to be attempted,
had ascertained, in March, 1882, in a part of the Department of the Vienne,
the existence of a microbe in the swine attacked with that disease.
In order to know whether this microbe was the cause of the evil, the
usual operations of the sovereign method had to be resorted to. First of all, a
culture medium had to be found which was suitable to the micro-organism
(veal broth was found to be very successful); then a drop of the culture had
to be abstracted from the little phials where the microbe was developing
and sown into other flasks; lastly the culture liquid had to be inoculated into
swine. Death supervened with all the symptoms of swine fever; the microbe
was therefore the cause of the evil? Could it be attenuated and a vaccine
obtained? Being pressed to study that disease, and to find the remedy for it,
by M. Maucuer, a veterinary surgeon of the Department of Vaucluse, living
at Bollène, Pasteur started, accompanied by his nephew, Adrien Loir, and
M. Thuillier. The three arrived at Bollène on September 13.
“It is impossible to imagine more obliging kindness than that of those
excellent Maucuers,” wrote Pasteur to his wife the next day. “Where, in
what dark corner they sleep, in order to give us two bedrooms, mine and
another with two beds, I do not like to think. They are young, and have an
eight-year-old son at the Avignon College, for whom they have obtained a
half-holiday to-day in order that he may be presented to ‘M. Pasteur.’ The
two men and I are taken care of in a manner you might envy. It is colder
here and more rainy than in Paris. I have a fire in my room, that green oak-
wood fire that you will remember we had at the Pont Gisquet.
“I was much pleased to hear that the swine fever is far from being
extinguished. There are sick swine everywhere, some dying, some dead, at
Bollène and in the country around; the evil is disastrous this year. We saw
some dead and dying yesterday afternoon. We have brought here a young
hog who is very ill, and this morning we shall attempt vaccination at a M.
de Ballincourt’s, who has lost all his pigs, and who has just bought some
more in the hope that the vaccine will be preservative. From morning till
night we shall be able to watch the disease and to try to prevent it. This
reminds me of the pébrine, with pigsties and sick pigs instead of nurseries
full of dying silkworms. Not ten thousand, but at least twenty thousand
swine have perished, and I am told it is worse still in the Ardèche.”
On the 17th, the day was taken up by the inoculation of some pigs on the
estate of M. de la Gardette, a few kilometres from Bollène. In the evening, a
former State Councillor, M. de Gaillard, came at the head of a delegation to
compliment Pasteur and invite him to a banquet. Pasteur declined this
honour, saying he would accept it when the swine fever was conquered.
They spoke to him of his past services, but he had no thought for them; like
all progress-seeking men, he saw but what was before him. Experiments
were being carried out—he had hastened to have an experimental pigsty
erected near M. Maucuer’s house—and already, on the 21st, he wrote to
Mme. Pasteur, in one of those letters which resembled the loose pages of a
laboratory notebook—
“Swine fever is not nearly so obscure to me now, and I am persuaded
that with the help of time the scientific and practical problem will be
solved.
“Three post-mortem examinations to-day. They take a long time, but that
seems of no account to Thuillier, with his cool and patient eagerness.”
Three days later: “I much regret not being able to tell you yet that I am
starting back for Paris. It is quite impossible to abandon all these
experiments which we have commenced; I should have to return here at
least once or twice. The chief thing is that things are getting clearer with
every experiment. You know that nowadays a medical knowledge of disease
is nothing; it must be prevented beforehand. We are attempting this, and I
think I can foresee success; but keep this for yourself and our children. I
embrace you all most affectionately.
“P.S.—I have never felt better. Send me 1,000 fr.; I have but 300 fr. left
of the 1,600 fr. I brought. Pigs are expensive, and we are killing a great
many.”
At last on December 8: “I am sending M. Dumas a note for to-morrow’s
meeting at the Academy. If I had time I would transcribe it for the
laboratory and for René.”
“Our researches”—thus ran the report to the Academy—“may be
summed up in the following propositions—
“I. The swine fever, or rouget disease, is produced by a special microbe,
easy to cultivate outside the animal’s body. It is so tiny that it often escapes
the most attentive search. It resembles the microbe of chicken cholera more
than any other; its shape is also that of a figure 8, but finer and less visible
than that of the cholera. It differs essentially from the latter by its
physiological properties; it kills rabbits and sheep, but has no effect on
hens.
“II. If inoculated in a state of purity into pigs, in almost inappreciable
doses, it speedily brings the fever and death, with all the characteristics
usual in spontaneous cases. It is most deadly to the white, so-called
improved, race, that which is most sought after by pork-breeders.
“III. Dr. Klein published in London (1878) an extensive work on swine
fever which he calls Pneumo-enteritis of Swine; but that author is entirely
mistaken as to the nature of the parasite. He has described as the microbe of
the rouget a bacillus with spores, more voluminous even than the
bacteridium of splenic fever. Dr. Klein’s microbe is very different from the
true microbe of swine fever, and has, besides, no relation to the etiology of
that disease.
“IV. After having satisfied ourselves by direct tests that the malady does
not recur, we have succeeded in inoculating in a benignant form, after
which the animal has proved refractory to the mortal disease.
“V. Though we consider that further control experiments are necessary,
we have already great confidence in this, that, dating from next spring,
vaccination by the virulent microbe of swine fever, attenuated, will become
the salvation of pigsties.”
Pasteur ended thus his letter of December 3: “We shall start to-morrow,
Monday. Adrien Loir and I shall sleep at Lyons. Thuillier will go straight to
Paris, to take care of ten little pigs which we have bought, and which he
will take with him. In this way they will not be kept waiting at stations.
Pigs, young and old, are very sensitive to cold; they will be wrapped up in
straw. They are very young and quite charming; one cannot help getting
fond of them.”
The next day Pasteur wrote to his son: “Everything has gone off well,
and we much hope, Thuillier and I, that preventive vaccination of this evil
can be established in a practical fashion. It would be a great boon in pork-
breeding countries, where terrible ravages are made by the rouget (so called
because the animals die covered with red or purple blotches, already
developed during the fever which precedes death). In the United States,
over a million swine died of this disease in 1879; it rages in England and in
Germany. This year, it has desolated the Côtes-du-Nord, the Poitou, and the
departments of the Rhone Valley. I sent to M. Dumas yesterday a résumé in
a few lines of our results, to be read at to-day’s meeting.”
Pasteur, once more in Paris, returned eagerly to his studies on divers
virus and on hydrophobia. If he was told that he over-worked himself, he
replied: “It would seem to me that I was committing a theft if I were to let
one day go by without doing some work.” But he was again disturbed in the
work he enjoyed by the contradictions of his opponents.
Koch’s reply arrived soon after the Bollène episode. The German
scientist had modified his views to a certain extent; instead of denying the
attenuation of virus as in 1881, he now proclaimed it as a discovery of the
first order. But he did not believe much, he said, in the practical results of
the vaccination of charbon.
Pasteur put forward, in response, a report from the veterinary surgeon
Boutet to the Chartres Veterinary and Agricultural School, made in the
preceding October. The sheep vaccinated in Eure et Loir during the last year
formed a total of 79,392. Instead of a mortality which had been more than
nine per cent, on the average in the last ten years, the mortality had only
been 518 sheep, much less than one per cent; 5,700 sheep had therefore
been preserved by vaccination. Amongst cattle 4,562 animals had been
vaccinated; out of a similar number 300 usually died every year. Since
vaccination, only eleven cows had died.
“Such results appear to us convincing,” wrote M. Boutet. “If our
cultivators of the Beauce understand their own interest, splenic fever and
malignant pustules will soon remain a mere memory, for charbon diseases
never are spontaneous, and, by preventing the death of their cattle by
vaccination, they will destroy all possibility of propagation of that terrible
disease, which will in consequence entirely disappear.”
Koch continued to smile at the discovery on the earthworms’ action in
the etiology of anthrax. “You are mistaken, Sir,” replied Pasteur. “You are
again preparing for yourself a vexing change of opinion.” And he concluded
as follows: “However violent your attacks, Sir, they will not hinder the
success of the method of attenuated virus. I am confidently awaiting the
consequences which it holds in reserve to help humanity in its struggle
against the diseases which assault it.”
This debate was hardly concluded when new polemics arose at the
Académie de Médecine. A new treatment of typhoid fever was under
discussion.
In 1870, M. Glénard, a Lyons medical student, who had enlisted, was,
with many others, taken to Stettin as prisoner of war. A German physician,
Dr. Brand, moved with compassion by the sufferings of the vanquished
French soldiers, showed them great kindness and devotion. The French
student attached himself to him, helped him with his work, and saw him
treat typhoid fever with success by baths at 20° C. Brand prided himself on
this cold-bath treatment, which produced numerous cures. M. Glénard, on
his return to Lyons, remembering with confidence this method of which he
had seen the excellent results, persuaded the physician of the Croix Rousse
hospital, where he resided, to attempt the same treatment. This was done for
ten years, and nearly all the Lyons practitioners became convinced that
Brand’s method was efficacious. M. Glénard came to Paris and read to the
Academy of Medicine a paper on the cold-bath treatment of typhoid fever.
The Academy appointed a commission, composed of civil and military
physicians, and the discussion was opened.
The oratorical display which had struck Pasteur when he first came to
the Académie de Médecine was much to the fore on that occasion; the
merely curious hearers of that discussion had an opportunity of enjoying
medical eloquence, besides acquiring information on the new treatment of
typhoid fever. There were some vehement denunciations of the microbe
which was suspected in typhoid fever. “You aim at the microbe and you
bring down the patient!” exclaimed one of the orators, who added, amidst
great applause, that it was time “to offer an impassable barrier to such
adventurous boldness and thus to preserve patients from the unforeseen
dangers of that therapeutic whirlwind!”
Another orator took up a lighter tone: “I do not much believe in that
invasion of parasites which threatens us like an eleventh plague of Egypt,”
said M. Peter. And attacking the scientists who meddled with medicine,
chymiasters as he called them, “They have come to this,” he said, “that in
typhoid fevers they only see the typhoid fever, in typhoid fever, fever only,
and in fever, increased heat. They have thus reached that luminous idea that
heat must be fought by cold. This organism is on fire, let us pour water over
it; it is a fireman’s doctrine.”
Vulpian, whose grave mind was not unlike Pasteur’s, intervened, and
said that new attempts should not be discouraged by sneers. Without
pronouncing on the merits of the cold-bath method, which he had not tried,
he looked beyond this discussion, indicating the road which theoretically
seemed to him to lead to a curative treatment. The first thing was to
discover the agent which causes typhoid fever, and then, when that was
known, attempt to destroy or paralyse it in the tissues of typhoid patients, or
else to find drugs capable either of preventing the aggressions of that agent
or of annihilating the effects of that aggression, “to produce, relatively to
typhoid fever, the effect determined by salicylate of soda in acute
rheumatism of the articulations.”
Beyond the restricted audience, allowed a few seats in the Académie de
Médecine, the general public itself was taking an interest in this prolonged
debate. The very high death rate in the army due to typhoid fever was the
cause of this eager attention. Whilst the German army, where Brand’s
method was employed, hardly lost five men out of a thousand, the French
army lost more than ten per thousand.
Whilst military service was not compulsory, epidemics in barracks were
looked upon with more or less compassionate attention. But the thought that
typhoid fever had been more destructive within the last ten years than the
most sanguinary battle now awakened all minds and hearts. Is then personal
fear necessary to awaken human compassion?
Bouley, who was more given to propagating new doctrines than to
lingering on such philosophical problems, thought it was time to introduce
into the debate certain ideas on the great problems tackled by medicine
since the discovery of what might be called a fourth kingdom in nature, that
of microbia. In a statement read at the Académie de Médecine, he
formulated in broad lines the rôle of the infinitesimally small and their
activity in producing the phenomena of fermentations and diseases. He
showed by the parallel works of Pasteur on the one hand, and M. Chauveau
on the other, that contagion is the function of a living element. “It is
especially,” said Bouley, “on the question of the prophylaxis of virulent
diseases that the microbian doctrine has given the most marvellous results.
To seize upon the most deadly virus, to submit them to a methodical
culture, to cause modifying agents to act upon them in a measured
proportion, and thus to succeed in attenuating them in divers degrees, so as
to utilize their strength, reduced but still efficacious, in transmitting a
benignant malady by means of which immunity is acquired against the
deadly disease: what a beautiful dream!! And M. Pasteur has made that
dream into a reality!!!...”
The debate widened, typhoid fever became a mere incident. The
pathogenic action of the infinitesimally small entered into the discussion;
traditional medicine faced microbian medicine. M. Peter rushed once more
to the front rank for the fight. He declared that he did not apply the term
chymiaster to Pasteur; he recognized that it was but “fair to proclaim that
we owe to M. Pasteur’s researches the most useful practical applications in
surgery and in obstetrics.” But considering that medicine might claim more
independence, he repeated that the discovery of the material elements of
virulent diseases did not throw so much light as had been said, either on
pathological anatomy, on the evolution, on the treatment or especially on
the prophylaxis of virulent diseases. “Those are but natural history
curiosities,” he added, “interesting no doubt, but of very little profit to
medicine, and not worth either the time given to them or the noise made
about them. After so many laborious researches, nothing will be changed in
medicine, there will only be a few more microbes.”
A newspaper having repeated this last sentence, a professor of the
Faculty of Medicine, M. Cornil, simply recalled how, at the time when the
acarus of itch had been discovered, many partisans of old doctrines had
probably exclaimed, “What is your acarus to me? Will it teach me more
than I know already?” “But,” added M. Cornil, “the physician who had
understood the value of that discovery no longer inflicted internal
medication upon his patients to cure them of what seemed an inveterate
disease, but merely cured them by means of a brush and a little ointment.”
M. Peter, continuing his violent speech, quoted certain vaccination
failures, and incompletely reported experiments, saying, grandly: “M.
Pasteur’s excuse is that he is a chemist, who has tried, out of a wish to be
useful, to reform medicine, to which he is a complete stranger....
“In the struggle I have undertaken the present discussion is but a
skirmish; but, to judge from the reinforcements which are coming to me,
the mêlée may become general, and victory will remain, I hope, to the larger
battalions, that is to say, to the ‘old medicine.’ ”
Bouley, amazed that M. Peter should thus scout the notion of microbia
introduced into pathology, valiantly fought this “skirmish” alone. He
recalled the discussions à propos of tuberculosis, so obscure until a new and
vivifying notion came to simplify the solution of the problem. “And you
reject that solution! You say, ‘What does it matter to me?’... What! M.
Koch, of Berlin—who with such discoveries as he has made might well
abstain from envy—M. Koch points out to you the presence of bacteria in
tubercles, and that seems to you of no importance? But that microbe gives
you the explanation of those contagious properties of tuberculosis so well
demonstrated by M. Villemin, for it is the instrument of virulence itself
which is put under your eyes.”
Bouley then went on to refute the arguments of M. Peter, epitomized the
history of the discovery of the attenuation of virus, and all that this method
of cultures possible in an extra-organic medium might suggest that was
hopeful for a vaccine of cholera and of yellow fever, which might be
discovered one day and protect humanity against those terrible scourges. He
concluded thus—“Let M. Peter do what I have done; let him study M.
Pasteur, and penetrate thoroughly into all that is admirable, through the
absolute certainty of the results, in the long series of researches which have
led him from the discovery of ferments to that of the nature of virus; and
then I can assure him that instead of decrying this great glory of France, of
whom we must all be proud, he too will feel himself carried away by
enthusiasm and will bow with admiration and respect before the chemist,
who, though not a physician, illumines medicine and dispels, in the light of
his experiments, a darkness which had hitherto remained impenetrable.”
A year before this (Peter had not failed to report the fact) an experiment
of anthrax vaccination had completely failed at the Turin Veterinary School.
All the sheep, vaccinated and non-vaccinated, had succumbed subsequently
to the inoculation of the blood of a sheep which had died of charbon.
This took place in March, 1882. As soon as Pasteur heard of this
extraordinary fiasco, which seemed the counterpart of the Pouilly-le-Fort
experiment, he wrote on April 16 to the director of the Turin Veterinary
School, asking on what day the sheep had died the blood of which had been
used for the virulent inoculation.
The director answered simply that the sheep had died on the morning of
March 22, and that its blood had been inoculated during the course of the
following day. “There has been,” said Pasteur, “a grave scientific mistake;
the blood inoculated was septic as well as full of charbon.”
Though the director of the Turin Veterinary School affirmed that the
blood had been carefully examined and that it was in no wise septic, Pasteur
looked back on his 1877 experiments on anthrax and septicæmia, and
maintained before the Paris Central Veterinary Society on June 8, 1882, that
the Turin School had done wrong in using the blood of an animal at least
twenty-four hours after its death, for the blood must have been septic
besides containing anthrax. The six professors of the Turin School protested
unanimously against such an interpretation. “We hold it marvellous,” they
wrote ironically, “that your Illustrious Lordship should have recognized so
surely, from Paris, the disease which made such havoc amongst the animals
vaccinated and non-vaccinated and inoculated with blood containing
anthrax in our school on March 23, 1882.
“It does not seem to us possible that a scientist should affirm the
existence of septicæmia in an animal he has not even seen....”
The quarrel with the Turin School had now lasted a year. On April 9,
1883, Pasteur appealed to the Academy of Sciences to judge of the Turin
incident and to put an end to this agitation, which threatened to cover truth
with a veil. He read out the letter he had just addressed to the Turin
professors.
“Gentlemen, a dispute having arisen between you and myself respecting
the interpretation to be given to the absolute failure of your control
experiment of March 23, 1882, I have the honour to inform you that, if you
will accept the suggestion, I will go to Turin any day you may choose; you
shall inoculate in my presence some virulent charbon into any number of
sheep you like. The exact moment of death in each case shall be
determined, and I will demonstrate to you that in every case the blood of the
corpse containing only charbon at the first will also be septic on the next
day. It will thus be established with absolute certainty that the assertion
formulated by me on June 8, 1882, against which you have protested on two
occasions, arises, not as you say, from an arbitrary opinion, but from an
immovable scientific principle; and that I have legitimately affirmed from
Paris the presence of septicæmia without it being in the least necessary that
I should have seen the corpse of the sheep you utilized for your
experiments.
“Minutes of the facts as they are produced shall be drawn up day by day,
and signed by the professors of the Turin Veterinary School and by the other
persons, physicians or veterinary surgeons, who may have been present at
the experiments; these minutes will then be published both at the
Academies of Turin and of Paris.”
Pasteur contented himself with reading this letter to the Academy of
Sciences. For months he had not attended the Academy of Medicine; he was
tired of incessant and barren struggles; he often used to come away from the
discussions worn out and excited. He would say to Messrs. Chamberland
and Roux, who waited for him after the meetings, “How is it that certain
doctors do not understand the range, the value, of our experiments? How is
it that they do not foresee the great future of all these studies?”
The day after the Académie des Sciences meeting, judging that his letter
to Turin sufficiently closed the incident, Pasteur started for Arbois. He
wanted to set up a laboratory adjoining his house. Where the father had
worked with his hands, the son would work at his great light-emitting
studies.
On April 3 a letter from M. Peter had been read at the Academy of
Medicine, declaring that he did not give up the struggle and that nothing
would be lost by waiting.
At the following sitting, another physician, M. Fauvel, while declaring
himself an admirer of Pasteur’s work and full of respect for his person,
thought it well not to accept blindly all the inductions into which Pasteur
might find himself drawn, and to oppose those which were contradictory to
acquired facts. After M. Fauvel, M. Peter violently attacked what he called
“microbicidal drugs which may become homicidal,” he said. When reading
the account of this meeting, Pasteur had an impulse of anger. His
resolutions not to return to the Academy of Medicine gave way before the
desire not to leave Bouley alone to lead the defensive campaign; he started
for Paris.
As his family was then at Arbois, and the doors of his flat at the Ecole
Normale closed, the simplest thing for Pasteur was to go to the Hôtel du
Louvre, accompanied by a member of his family. The next morning he
carefully prepared his speech, and, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he
entered the Academy of Medicine. The President, M. Hardy, welcomed him
in these words—“Allow me, before you begin to speak, to tell you that it is
with great pleasure that we see you once again among us, and that the
Academy hopes that, now that you have once more found your way to its
precincts, you will not forget it again.”
After isolating and rectifying the points of discussion, Pasteur advised
M. Peter to make a more searching inquiry into the subject of anthrax
vaccination, and to trust to Time, the only sovereign judge. Should not the
recollection of the violent hostility encountered at first by Jenner put people
on their guard against hasty judgments? There was not one of the doctors
present who could not remember what had been written at one time against
vaccination!!!
He went on to oppose the false idea that each science should restrict
itself within its own limitations. “What do I, a physician, says M. Peter,
want with the minds of the chemist, the physicist and the physiologist?
“On hearing him speak with so much disdain of the chemists and
physiologists who touch upon questions of disease, you might verily think
that he is speaking in the name of a science whose principles are founded
on a rock! Does he want proofs of the slow progress of therapeutics? It is
now six months since, in this assembly of the greatest medical men, the
question was discussed whether it is better to treat typhoid fever with cold
lotions or with quinine, with alcohol or salicylic acid, or even not to treat it
at all.
“And, when we are perhaps on the eve of solving the question of the
etiology of that disease by a microbe, M. Peter commits the medical
blasphemy of saying, ‘What do your microbes matter to me? It will only be
one microbe the more!’ ”
Amazed that sarcasm should be levelled against new studies which
opened such wide horizons, he denounced the flippancy with which a
professor of the Faculty of Medicine allowed himself to speak of
vaccinations by attenuated virus.
He ended by rejoicing once more that this great discovery should have
been a French one.

Pasteur went back to Arbois for a few days. On his return to Paris, he
was beginning some new experiments, when he received a long letter from
the Turin professors. Instead of accepting his offer, they enumerated their
experiments, asked some questions in an offended and ironical manner, and
concluded by praising an Italian national vaccine, which produced absolute
immunity in the future—when it did not kill.
“They cannot get out of this dilemma,” said Pasteur; “either they knew
my 1877 notes, unravelling the contradictory statements of Davaine,
Jaillard and Leplat, and Paul Bert, or they did not know them. If they did
not know them on March 22, 1882, there is nothing more to say; they were
not guilty in acting as they did, but they should have owned it freely. If they
did know them, why ever did they inoculate blood taken from a sheep
twenty-four hours after its death? They say that this blood was not septic;
but how do they know? They have done nothing to find out. They should
have inoculated some guinea-pigs, by choice, and then tried some cultures
in a vacuum to compare them with cultures in contact with air. Why will
they not receive me? A meeting between truth-seeking men would be the
most natural thing in the world!”
Still hoping to persuade his adversaries to meet him at Turin and be
convinced, Pasteur wrote to them. “Paris, May 9, 1883. Gentlemen—Your
letter of April 30 surprises me very much. What is in question between you
and me? That I should go to Turin, if you will allow me, to demonstrate that
sheep, dead of charbon, as numerous as you like, will, for a few hours after
their death, be exclusively infected with anthrax, and that the day after their
death they will present both anthrax and septic infection; and that therefore,
when, on March 23, 1882, wishing to inoculate blood infected with anthrax
only into sheep vaccinated and non-vaccinated, you took blood from a
carcase twenty-four hours after death, you committed a grave scientific
mistake.
“Instead of answering yes or no, instead of saying to me ‘Come to
Turin,’ or ‘Do not come,’ you ask me, in a manuscript letter of seventeen
pages, to send you from Paris, in writing, preliminary explanations of all
that I should have to demonstrate in Turin.
“Really, what is the good? Would not that lead to endless discussions? It
is because of the uselessness of a written controversy that I have placed
myself at your disposal.
“I have once more the honour of asking you to inform me whether you
accept the proposal made to you on April 9, that I should go to Turin to
place before your eyes the proofs of the facts I have just mentioned.
“P.S.—In order not to complicate the debate, I do not dwell upon the
many erroneous quotations and statements contained in your letter.”
M. Roux began to prepare an interesting curriculum of experiments to be
carried out at Turin. But the Turin professors wrote a disagreeable letter,
published a little pamphlet entitled Of the Scientific Dogmatism of the
Illustrious Professor Pasteur, and things remained as they were.
All these discussions, renewed on so many divers points, were not
altogether a waste of time; some of them bore fruitful results by causing
most decisive proofs to be sought for. It has also made the path of Pasteur’s
followers wider and smoother that he himself should have borne the brunt
of the first opposition.
In the meanwhile, testimonials of gratitude continued to pour in from the
agricultors and veterinary surgeons who had seen the results of two years’
practice of the vaccination against anthrax.
In the year 1882, 613,740 sheep and 83,946 oxen had been vaccinated.
The Department of the Cantal which had before lost about 3,000,000 fr.
every year, desired in June, 1883, on the occasion of an agricultural show,
to give M. Pasteur a special acknowledgement of their gratitude. It
consisted of a cup of silver-plated bronze, ornamented with a group of
cattle. Behind the group—imitating in this the town of Aubenas, who had
made a microscope figure as an attribute of honour—was represented, in
small proportions, an instrument which found itself for the first time raised
to such an exalted position, the little syringe used for inoculations.
Pasteur was much pressed to come himself and receive this offering
from a land which would henceforth owe its fortune to him. He allowed
himself to be persuaded, and arrived, accompanied as usual by his family.
The Mayor, surrounded by the municipal councillors, greeted him in
these words: “Our town of Aurillac is very small, and you will not find here
the brilliant population which inhabits great cities; but you will find minds
capable of understanding the scientific and humanitarian mission which you
have so generously undertaken. You will also find hearts capable of
appreciating your benefits and of preserving the memory of them; your
name has been on all our lips for a long time.”
Pasteur, visiting that local exhibition, did not resemble the official
personages who listen wearily to the details given them by a staff of
functionaries. He thought but of acquiring knowledge, going straight to this
or that exhibitor and questioning him, not with perfunctory politeness, but
with a real desire for practical information; no detail seemed to him
insignificant. “Nothing should be neglected,” he said; “and a remark from a
rough labourer who does well what he has to do is infinitely precious.”
After visiting the products and agricultural implements, Pasteur was met
in the street by a peasant who stopped and waved his large hat, shouting,
“Long live Pasteur!”... “You have saved my cattle,” continued the man,
coming up to shake hands with him.
Physicians in their turn desired to celebrate and to honour him who,
though not a physician, had rendered such service to medicine. Thirty-two
of them assembled to drink his health. The head physician of the Aurillac
Hospital, Dr. Fleys, said in proposing the toast: “What the mechanism of the
heavens owes to Newton, chemistry to Lavoisier, geology to Cuvier,
general anatomy to Bichat, physiology to Claude Bernard, pathology and
hygiene will owe to Pasteur. Unite with me, dear colleagues, and let us
drink to the fame of the illustrious Pasteur, the precursor of the medicine of
the future, a benefactor to humanity.”

This glorious title was now associated with his name. In the first rank of
his enthusiastic admirers came the scientists, who, from the point of view of
pure science, admired the achievements, within those thirty-five years, of
that great man whose perseverance equalled his penetration. Then came the
manufacturers, the sericicultors, and the agricultors, who owed their fortune
to him who had placed every process he discovered into the public domain.
Finally, France could quote the words of the English physiologist, Huxley,
in a public lecture at the London Royal Society: “Pasteur’s discoveries
alone would suffice to cover the war indemnity of five milliards paid by
France to Germany in 1870.”
To that capital was added the inestimable price of human lives saved.
Since the antiseptic method had been adopted in surgical operations, the
mortality had fallen from 50 per 100 to 5 per 100.
In the lying-in hospitals, more than decimated formerly (for the statistics
had shown a death-rate of not only 100 but 200 per 1,000), the number of
fatalities was now reduced to 3 per 1,000 and soon afterwards fell to 1 per
1,000. And, in consequence of the principles established by Pasteur,
hygiene was growing, developing, and at last taking its proper place in the
public view. So much progress accomplished had brought Pasteur a daily
growing acknowledgment of gratitude, his country was more than proud of
him. His powerful mind, allied with his very tender heart, had brought to
French glory an aureole of charity.
The Government of the Republic remembered that England had voted
two national rewards to Jenner, one in 1802 and one in 1807, the first of
£10,000, and the second of £20,000. It was at the time of that deliberation
that Pitt, the great orator, exclaimed, “Vote, gentlemen, your gratitude will
never reach the amount of the service rendered.”
The French Ministry proposed to augment the 12,000 fr. pension
accorded to Pasteur in 1874 as a national recompense, and to make it
25,000 fr., to revert first to Pasteur’s widow, and then to his children. A
Commission was formed and Paul Bert again chosen to draw up the report.
On several occasions at the meetings of the commission one of its
members, Benjamin Raspail, exalted the parasitic theory propounded in
1843 by his own father. His filial pleading went so far as to accuse Pasteur
of plagiarism. Paul Bert, whilst recognizing the share attributed by F. V.
Raspail to microscopic beings, recalled the fact that his attempt in favour of
epidemic and contagious diseases had not been adopted by scientists. “No
doubt,” he said, “the parasitic origin of the itch was now definitely
accepted, thanks in a great measure to the efforts of Raspail; but
generalizations were considered as out of proportion to the fact they were
supposed to rest on. It seemed excessive to conclude from the existence of
the acarus of itch, visible to the naked eye or with the weakest magnifying
glass, the presence of microscopic parasites in the humours of virulent
diseases.... Such hypotheses can be considered but as a sort of intuition.”
“Hypotheses,” said Pasteur, “come into our laboratories in armfuls; they
fill our registers with projected experiments, they stimulate us to research—
and that is all.” One thing only counted for him: experimental verification.
Paul Bert, in his very complete report, quoted Huxley’s words to the
Royal Society and Pitt’s words to the House of Commons. He stated that
since the first Bill had been voted, a new series of discoveries, no less
marvellous from a theoretical point of view and yet more important from a
practical point of view, had come to strike the world of Science with
astonishment and admiration.” Recapitulating Pasteur’s works, he said—
“They may be classed in three series, constituting three great
discoveries.
“The first one may be formulated thus: Each fermentation is produced
by the development of a special microbe.
“The second one may be given this formula: Each infectious disease
(those at least that M. Pasteur and his immediate followers have studied) is
produced by the development within the organism of a special microbe.
“The third one may be expressed in this way: The microbe of an
infectious disease, cultivated under certain detrimental conditions, is
attenuated in its pathogenic activity; from a virus it has become a vaccine.
“As a practical consequence of the first discovery, M. Pasteur has given
rules for the manufacture of beer and of vinegar, and shown how beer and
wine may be preserved against secondary fermentations which would turn
them sour, bitter or slimy, and which render difficult their transport and
even their preservation on the spot.
“As a practical consequence of the second discovery, M. Pasteur has
given rules to be followed to preserve cattle from splenic fever
contamination, and silkworms from the diseases which decimated them.
Surgeons, on the other hand, have succeeded, by means of the guidance it
afforded, in effecting almost completely the disappearance of erysipelas and
of the purulent infections which formerly brought about the death of so
many patients after operations.
“As a practical consequence of the third discovery, M. Pasteur has given
rules for, and indeed has effected, the preservation of horses, oxen, and
sheep from the anthrax disease which every year kills in France about
20,000,000 francs’ worth. Swine will also be preserved from the rouget
disease which decimates them, and poultry from the cholera which makes
such terrible havoc among them. Everything leads us to hope that rabies
will also soon be conquered.” When Paul Bert was congratulated on his
report, he said, “Admiration is such a good, wholesome thing!!”
The Bill was voted by the Chamber, and a fortnight later by the Senate,
unanimously. Pasteur heard the first news through the newspapers, for he
had just gone to the Jura. On July 14, he left Arbois for Dôle, where he had
promised to be present at a double ceremony.

On that national holiday, a statue of Peace was to be inaugurated, and a


memorial plate placed on the house where Pasteur was born; truly a
harmonious association of ideas. The prefect of the Jura evidently felt it
when, while unveiling the statue in the presence of Pasteur, he said: “This is
Peace, who has inspired Genius and the great services it has rendered.” The
official procession, followed by popular acclamation, went on to the narrow
Rue des Tanneurs. When Pasteur, who had not seen his native place since
his childhood, found himself before that tannery, in the low humble rooms
of which his father and mother had lived, he felt himself the prey to a strong
emotion.
The mayor quoted these words from the resolutions of the Municipal
Council: “M. Pasteur is a benefactor of Humanity, one of the great men of
France; he will remain for all Dôlois and in particular those who, like him,
have risen from the ranks of the people, an object of respect as well as an
example to follow; we consider that it is our duty to perpetuate his name in
our town.”
The Director of Fine Arts, M. Kaempfen, representing the Government
at the ceremony, pronounced these simple words: “In the name of the
Government of the Republic, I salute the inscription which commemorates
the fact that in this little house, in this little street, was born, on December
27, 1822, he who was to become one of the greatest scientists of this
century so great in science, and who has, by his admirable labours,
increased the glory of France and deserved well of the whole of humanity.”
The feelings in Pasteur’s heart burst forth in these terms: “Gentlemen, I
am profoundly moved by the honour done to me by the town of Dôle; but
allow me, while expressing my gratitude, to protest against this excess of
praise. By according to me a homage rendered usually but to the illustrious
dead, you anticipate too much the judgment of posterity. Will it ratify your
decision? and should not you, Mr. Mayor, have prudently warned the
Municipal Council against such a hasty resolution?
“But after protesting, gentlemen, against the brilliant testimony of an
admiration which is more than I deserve, let me tell you that I am touched,
moved to the bottom of my soul. Your sympathy has joined on that
memorial plate the two great things which have been the passion and the
delight of my life: the love of Science and the cult of the home.
“Oh! my father, my mother, dear departed ones, who lived so humbly in
this little house, it is to you that I owe everything. Thy enthusiasm, my
brave-hearted mother, thou hast instilled it into me. If I have always
associated the greatness of Science with the greatness of France, it is
because I was impregnated with the feelings that thou hadst inspired. And
thou, dearest father, whose life was as hard as thy hard trade, thou hast
shown to me what patience and protracted effort can accomplish. It is to
thee that I owe perseverance in daily work. Not only hadst thou the qualities
which go to make a useful life, but also admiration for great men and great
things. To look upwards, learn to the utmost, to seek to rise ever higher,
such was thy teaching. I can see thee now, after a hard day’s work, reading
in the evening some story of the battles in the glorious epoch of which thou
wast a witness. Whilst teaching me to read, thy care was that I should learn
the greatness of France.
“Be ye blessed, my dear parents, for what ye have been, and may the
homage done to-day to your little house be yours!
“I thank you, gentlemen, for the opportunity of saying aloud what I have
thought for sixty years. I thank you for this fête and for your welcome, and I
thank the town of Dôle, which loses sight of none of her children, and
which has kept such a remembrance of me.”
“Nothing is more exquisite,” wrote Bouley to Pasteur, “than those
feelings of a noble heart, giving credit to the parents’ influence for all the
glory with which their son has covered their name. All your friends
recognized you, and you appeared under quite a new light to those who may
have misjudged your heart by knowing of you only the somewhat bitter
words of some of your Academy speeches, when the love of truth has
sometimes made you forgetful of gentleness.”
It might have seemed that after so much homage, especially when
offered in such a delicate way as on this last occasion, Pasteur had indeed
reached a pinnacle of fame. His ambition however was not satisfied. Was it
then boundless, in spite of the modesty which drew all hearts towards him?
What more did he wish? Two great things: to complete his studies on
hydrophobia and to establish the position of his collaborators—whose name
he ever associated with his work—as his acknowledged successors.

A few cases of cholera had occurred at Damietta in the month of June.


The English declared that it was but endemic cholera, and opposed the
quarantines. They had with them the majority of the Alexandria Sanitary
Council, and could easily prevent sanitary measures from being taken. If the
English, voluntarily closing their eyes to the dangers of the epidemic, had
wished to furnish a new proof of the importation of cholera, they could not
have succeeded better. The cholera spread, and by July 14 it had reached
Cairo. Between the 14th and 22nd there were five hundred deaths per day.
Alexandria was threatened. Pasteur, before leaving Paris for Arbois,
submitted to the Consulting Committee of Public Hygiene the idea of a
French Scientific Mission to Alexandria. “Since the last epidemic in 1865,”
he said, “science has made great progress on the subject of transmissible
diseases. Every one of those diseases which has been subjected to a
thorough study has been found by biologists to be produced by a
microscopic being developing within the body of man or of animals, and
causing therein ravages which are generally mortal. All the symptoms of the
disease, all the causes of death depend directly upon the physiological
properties of the microbe.... What is wanted at this moment to satisfy the
preoccupations of science is to inquire into the primary cause of the
scourge. Now the present state of knowledge demands that attention should
be drawn to the possible existence within the blood, or within some organ,
of a micro-organism whose nature and properties would account in all
probability for all the peculiarities of cholera, both as to the morbid
symptoms and the mode of its propagation. The proved existence of such a
microbe would soon take precedence over the whole question of the
measures to be taken to arrest the evil in its course, and might perhaps
suggest new methods of treatment.”
Not only did the Committee of Hygiene approve of Pasteur’s project, but
they asked him to choose some young men whose knowledge would be
equalled by their devotion. Pasteur only had to look around him. When, on
his return to the laboratory, he mentioned what had taken place at the
Committee of Hygiene, M. Roux immediately offered to start. A professor
at the Faculty of Medicine who had some hospital practice, M. Straus, and a
professor at the Alfort Veterinary School, M. Nocard, both of whom had
been authorised to work in the laboratory, asked permission to accompany
M. Roux. Thuillier had the same desire, but asked for twenty-four hours to
think over it.
The thought of his father and mother, who had made a great many
sacrifices for his education, and whose only joy was to receive him at
Amiens, where they lived, during his short holidays, made him hesitate. But
the thought of duty overcame his regrets; he put his papers and notes in
order and went to see his dear ones again. He told his father of his intention,
but his mother did not know of it. At the time when the papers spoke of a
French commission to study cholera, his elder sister, who loved him with an
almost motherly tenderness, said to him suddenly, “You are not going to
Egypt, Louis? swear that you are not!” “I am not going to swear anything,”
he answered, with absolute calm; adding that he might some time go to
Russia to proceed to some vaccination of anthrax, as he had done at Buda-
Pesth in 1881. When he left Amiens nothing in his farewells revealed his
deep emotion; it was only from Marseilles that he wrote the truth.
Administrative difficulties retarded the departure of the Commission,
which only reached Egypt on August 15. Dr. Koch had also come to study
cholera. The head physician of the European hospital, Dr. Ardouin, placed
his wards at the entire disposal of the French savants. In a certain number of
cases, it was possible to proceed to post-mortem examinations immediately
after death, before putrefaction had begun. It was a great thing from the
point of view of the search after a pathogenic micro-organism as well as
from the anatomo-pathological point of view.
The contents of the intestines and the characteristic stools of the cholera
patients offered a great variety of micro-organisms. But which was really
the cause of cholera? The most varied modes of culture were attempted in
vain. The same negative results followed inoculations into divers animal
species, cats, dogs, swine, monkeys, pigeons, rabbits, guinea-pigs, etc.,
made with the blood of cholerics or with the contents of their bowels.
Experiments were made with twenty-four corpses. The epidemic ceased
unexpectedly. Not to waste time, while waiting for a reappearance of the
disease, the French Commission took up some researches on cattle plague.
Suddenly a telegram from M. Roux informed Pasteur that Thuillier had
succumbed to an attack of cholera.
“I have just heard the news of a great misfortune,” wrote Pasteur to J. B.
Dumas on September 19; “M. Thuillier died yesterday at Alexandria of
cholera. I have telegraphed to the Mayor of Amiens asking him to break the
news to the family.
“Science loses in Thuillier a courageous representative with a great
future before him. I lose a much-loved and devoted pupil; my laboratory
one of its principal supports.
“I can only console myself for this death by thinking of our beloved
country and all he has done for it.”
Thuillier was only twenty-six. How had this happened? Had he
neglected any of the precautions which Pasteur had written down before the
departure of the Commission, and which were so minute as to be thought
exaggerated?
Pasteur remained silent all day, absolutely overcome. The head of the
laboratory, M. Chamberland, divining his master’s grief, came to Arbois.
They exchanged their sorrowful thoughts, and Pasteur fell back into his sad
broodings.
A few days later, a letter from M. Roux related the sad story:
“Alexandria, September 21. Sir and dear master—Having just heard that an
Italian ship is going to start, I am writing a few lines without waiting for the
French mail. The telegraph has told you of the terrible misfortune which has
befallen us.”
M. Roux then proceeded to relate in detail the symptoms presented by
the unfortunate young man, who, after going to bed at ten o’clock,
apparently in perfect health, had suddenly been taken ill about three o’clock
in the morning of Saturday, September 15. At eight o’clock, all the horrible
symptoms of the most violent form of cholera were apparent, and his
friends gave him up for lost. They continued their desperate endeavours
however, assisted by the whole staff of French and Italian doctors.
“By dint of all our strength, all our energy, we protracted the struggle
until seven o’clock on Wednesday morning, the 19th. The asphyxia, which
had then lasted twenty-four hours, was stronger than our efforts.
“Your own feelings will help you to imagine our grief.
“The French colony and the medical staff are thunderstruck. Splendid
funeral honours have been rendered to our poor Thuillier.
“He was buried at four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, with the finest
and most imposing manifestation Alexandria had seen for a long time.
“One very precious and affecting homage was rendered by the German
Commission with a noble simplicity which touched us all very much.
“M. Koch and his collaborators arrived when the news spread in the
town. They gave utterance to beautiful and touching words to the memory
of our dead friend. When the funeral took place, those gentlemen brought
two wreaths which they themselves nailed on the coffin. ‘They are simple,’
said M. Koch, ‘but they are of laurel, such as are given to the brave.’
“M. Koch hold one corner of the pall. We embalmed our comrade’s
body; he lies in a sealed zinc coffin. All formalities have been complied
with, so that his remains may be brought back to France when the necessary
time has expired. In Egypt the period of delay is a whole year.
“The French colony desires to erect a monument to the memory of Louis
Thuillier.
“Dear master, how much more I should like to tell you! The recital of the
sad event which happened so quickly would take pages. This blow is
altogether incomprehensible. It was more than a fortnight since we had seen
a single case of cholera; we were beginning to study cattle-plague.
“Of us all, Thuillier was the one who took most precautions; he was
irreproachably careful.
“We are writing by this post a few lines to his family, in the names of all
of us.
“Such are the blows cholera can strike at the end of an epidemic! Want
of time forces me to close this letter. Pray believe in our respectful
affection.”
The whole of the French colony, who received great marks of sympathy
from the Italians and other foreigners, wished to perpetuate the memory of
Thuillier. Pasteur wrote, on October 16, to a French physician at
Alexandria, who had informed him of this project:
“I am touched with the generous resolution of the French colony at
Alexandria to erect a monument to the memory of Louis Thuillier. That
valiant and beloved young man was deserving of every honour. I know,
perhaps better than any one, the loss inflicted on science by his cruel death.
I cannot console myself, and I am already dreading the sight of the dear
fellow’s empty place in my laboratory.”
On his return to Paris, Pasteur read a paper to the Academy of Sciences,
in his own name and in that of Thuillier, on the now well-ascertained mode
of vaccination for swine-fever. He began by recalling Thuillier’s worth:
“Thuillier entered my laboratory after taking the first rank at the Physical
Science Agrégation competition at the Ecole Normale. His was a deeply
meditative, silent nature; his whole person breathed a virile energy which
struck all those who knew him. An indefatigable worker, he was ever ready
for self-sacrifice.”
A few days before, M. Straus had given to the Biology Society a
summary statement of the studies of the Cholera Commission, concluding
thus: “The documents collected during those two months are far from
solving the etiological problem of cholera, but will perhaps not be useless
for the orientation of future research.”
The cholera bacillus was put in evidence, later on, by Dr. Koch, who had
already suspected it during his researches in Egypt.

Glory, which had been seen in the battlefield at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, now seemed to elect to dwell in the laboratory, that
“temple of the future” as Pasteur called it. From every part of the world,
letters reached Pasteur, appeals, requests for consultations. Many took him
for a physician. “He does not cure individuals,” answered Edmond About
one day to a foreigner who was under that misapprehension; “he only tries
to cure humanity.” Some sceptical minds were predicting failure to his
studies on hydrophobia. This problem was complicated by the fact that
Pasteur was trying in vain to discover and isolate the specific microbe.

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