pasteur had glimpses of another world beyond the phenomena of fermentation—the world of virus ferments. two centuries earlier, an english physicist, robert boyle, had said that he who could probe to the bottom the nature of ferments and fermentation would probably be more capable than any one of explaining certain morbid phenomena. these words often recurred to the mind of pasteur, who had, concerning the problem of contagious diseases, those sudden flashes of light wherein genius is revealed. but, ever insisting on experimental proofs, he constrained his exalted imagination so as to follow calmly and patiently the road of experimental method. he could not bear the slightest error, or even hasty interpretation, in the praises addressed to him. one day, during the period of the most ardent polemics, in the midst of the struggle on spontaneous generation, a medical man named déclat, who declared that pasteur’s experiments were “the glory of our century and the salvation of future generations,” gave a lecture on “the infinitesimally small and their r?le in the world.” “after the lecture,” relates dr. déclat himself, “m. pasteur, whom i only knew by name, came to me, and, after the usual compliments, condemned the inductions i had drawn from his experiments. ‘the arguments,’ he said, ‘by which you support my theories, are most ingenious, but not founded on demonstrated facts; analogy is no proof.’”

pasteur used to speak very modestly of his work. he said, in a speech to some arbois students, that it was “through assiduous work, with no special gift but that of perseverance joined to an attraction towards all that is great and good,” that he had met with success in his researches. he did not add that an ardent kindness of heart was ever urging him forward. after the services rendered within the last ten years to vinegar{224} makers, silkworm cultivators, vine growers, and brewers, he now wished to tackle what he had had in his mind since 1861—the study of contagious diseases. thus, with the consistent logic of his mind, showing him as it did the possibility of realizing in the future robert boyle’s prophecy, he associated the secret power of his feelings; not to give those feelings their share would be to leave one side of his nature entirely in the shade. he had himself revealed this great factor in his character when he had said, “it would indeed be a grand thing to give the heart its share in the progress of science.” he was ever giving it a greater share in his work.

his sorrows had only made him incline the more towards the griefs of others. the memory of the children he had lost, the mournings he had witnessed, caused him to passionately desire that there might be fewer empty places in desolate homes, and that this might be due to the application of methods derived from his discoveries, of which he foresaw the immense bearings on pathology. beyond this, patriotism being for him a ruling motive, he thought of the thousands of young men lost to france every year, victims of the tiny germs of murderous diseases. and, at the thought of epidemics and the heavy tax they levy on the whole world, his compassion extended itself to all human suffering.

he regretted that he was not a medical man, fancying that it might have facilitated his task. it was true that, at every incursion on the domain of medicine, he was looked upon as a chemist—a chymiaster, some said—who was poaching on the preserves of others. the distrust felt by the physicians in the chemists was of a long standing. in the traité de thérapeutique, published in 1855 by trousseau and pidoux, we find this passage: “when a chemist has seen the chemical conditions of respiration, of digestion, or of the action of some drug, he thinks he has given the theory of those functions and phenomena. it is ever the same delusion which chemists will never get over. we must make up our minds to that, but let us beware of trying to profit by the precious researches which they would probably never undertake if they were not stimulated by the ambition of explaining what is outside their range.” pidoux never retrenched anything from two other phrases, also to be found in that same treatise: “between a physiological fact and a pathological fact there is the same difference as between a mineral and a vegetable”; and: “it is{225} not within the power of physiology to explain the simplest pathological affection.” trousseau, on the other hand, was endowed with the far-seeing intelligence of a great physician attentive to the progress of science. he was greatly interested in pasteur’s work, and fully appreciated the possibilities opened by each of his discoveries.

pasteur, with the simplicity which contrasted with his extraordinary powers, supposed that, if he were armed with diplomas, he would have greater authority to direct medicine towards the study of the conditions of existence of phenomena, and—correlatively to the traditional method of observation, which consists in knowing and describing exactly the course of the disease—to inspire practitioners with the desire to prevent and to determine its cause. an unexpected offer went some way towards filling what he considered as a blank. at the beginning of the year 1873, a place was vacant in the section of the free associates of the academy of medicine. he was asked to stand for it, and hastened to accept. he was elected with a majority of only one vote, though he had been first on the section’s list. the other suffrages were divided between messrs. le roy de méricourt, brochin, lhéritier, and bertillon.

pasteur, as soon as he was elected, promised himself that he would be a most punctual academician. it was on a tuesday in april that he attended his first meeting. as he walked towards the desk allotted to him, his paralyzed left leg dragging a little, no one among his colleagues suspected that this quiet and unassuming new member would become the greatest revolutionary ever known in medicine.

one thing added to pasteur’s pleasure in being elected—the fact that he would join claude bernard. the latter had often felt somewhat forlorn in that centre, where some hostility was so often to be seen towards all that was outside the clinic. this was the time when the “princes of science,” or those who were considered as such, were all physicians. every great physician was conscious of being a ruling power. the almost daily habit of advising and counselling was added to that idea of haughty or benevolent superiority to the rest of the world; and, accustomed to dictate his wishes, the physician frequently adopted an authoritative tone and became a sort of personage. “have you noticed,” said claude bernard to pasteur with a smile under which many feelings were hidden, “that, when a{226} doctor enters a room, he always looks as if he was going to say, ‘i have just been saving a fellow-man’?”

pasteur knew not those harmless shafts which are a revenge for prolonged pomposity. why need claude bernard trouble to wonder what so-and-so might think? he had the consciousness of the work accomplished and the esteem and admiration of men whose suffrage more than satisfied him. whilst pasteur was already desirous of spreading in the académie médecine the faith which inspired him, claude bernard remembered the refractory state of mind of those who, at the time of his first lectures on experimental physiology applied to medicine, affirmed that “physiology can be of no practical use in medicine; it is but a science de luxe which could well be dispensed with.” he energetically defended this science de luxe as the very science of life. in his opening lecture at the museum in 1870, he said that “descriptive anatomy is to physiology as geography to history; and, as it is not sufficient to understand the topography of a country to know its history, so is it not enough to know the anatomy of an organ to understand its functions.” méry, an old surgeon, familiarly compared anatomists to those errand boys in large towns, who know the names of the streets and the numbers of the houses, but do not know what goes on inside. there are indeed in tissues and organs physico-chemical phenomena for which anatomy cannot account.

claude bernard was convinced that medicine would gradually emerge from quackery, and this by means of the experimental method, like all other science. “no doubt,” he said, “we shall not live to see the blossoming out of scientific medicine, but such is the fate of humanity; those that sow on the field of science are not destined to reap the fruit of their labours.” and so saying, claude bernard continued to sow.

it is true that here and there flashes of light had preceded pasteur; but, instead of being guided by them, most doctors continued to advance majestically in the midst of darkness. whenever murderous diseases, scourges of humanity, were in question, long french or latin words were put forward, such as “epidemic genius,” fatum, quid ignotum quid divinum, etc. medical constitution was also a useful word, elastic and applicable to anything.

when the vale de grace physician, villemin—a modest, gentle-voiced man, who, under his quiet exterior, hid a veritable{227} thirst for scientific truth—after experimental researches carried on from 1865 to 1869, brought the proof that tuberculosis is a disease which reproduces itself, and cannot be reproduced but by itself; in a word, specific, inoculable, and contagious, he was treated almost as a perturber of medical order.

dr. pidoux, an ideal representative of traditional medicine, with his gold-buttoned blue coat and his reputation equally great in paris and at the eaux-bonnes, declared that the idea of specificity was a fatal thought. himself a pillar of the doctrine of diathesis and of the morbid spontaneity of the organism, he exclaimed in some much applauded speeches: “tuberculosis! but that is the common result of a quantity of divers external and internal causes, not the product of a specific agent ever the same!” was not this disease to be looked upon as “one and multiple at the same time, bringing the same final conclusion, the necrobiotic and infecting destruction of the plasmatic tissue of an organ by a number of roads which the hygienist and physician must endeavour to close?” where would these specificity doctrines lead to? “applied to chronic diseases, these doctrines condemn us to the research of specific remedies or vaccines, and all progress is arrested.... specificity immobilizes medicine.” these phrases were reproduced by the medical press.

the bacillus of tuberculosis had not been discovered by villemin; it was only found and isolated much later, in 1882, by dr. koch; but villemin suspected the existence of a virus. in order to demonstrate the infectious nature of tuberculosis, he experimented on animals, multiplying inoculations; he took the sputum of tuberculous patients, spread it on cotton wool, dried it, and then made the cotton wool into a bed for little guinea-pigs, who became tuberculous. pidoux answered these precise facts by declaring that villemin was fascinated by inoculation, adding ironically, “then all we doctors have to do is to set out nets to catch the sporules of tuberculosis, and find a vaccine.”

that sudden theory of phthisis, falling from the clouds, resembled pasteur’s theory of germs floating in air. was it not better, urged pidoux the heterogenist, to remain in the truer and more philosophical doctrine of spontaneous generation? “let us believe, until the contrary is proved, that we are right, we partisans of the common etiology of phthisis, partisans of the spontaneous tuberculous degeneration of the{228} organism under the influence of accessible causes, which we seek everywhere in order to cut down the evil in its roots.”

a reception somewhat similar to that given to villemin was reserved for davaine, who, having meditated on pasteur’s works on butyric ferment and the part played by that ferment, compared it and its action with certain parasites visible with a microscope and observed by him in the blood of animals which had died of charbon disease. by its action and its rapid multiplication in the blood, this agent endowed with life probably acted, said davaine, after the manner of ferments. the blood was modified to that extent that it speedily brought about the death of the infected animal. davaine called those filaments found in anthrax “bacteria,” and added, “they have a place in the classification of living beings.” but what was that animated virus to many doctors? they answered experimental proofs by oratorical arguments.

at the very time when pasteur took his seat at the academy of medicine, davaine was being violently attacked; his experiments on septic?mia were the cause, or the pretext. but the mere tone of the discussions prepared pasteur for future battles. the theory of germs, the doctrine of virus ferments, all this was considered as a complete reversal of acquired notions, a heresy which had to be suppressed. a well-known surgeon, dr. chassaignac, spoke before the académie de médecine of what he called “laboratory surgery, which has destroyed very many animals and saved very few human beings.” in order to remind experimentalists of the distance between them and practitioners, he added: “laboratory results should be brought out in a circumspect, modest and reserved manner, as long as they have not been sanctioned by long clinical researches, a sanction without which there is no real and practical medical science.” everything, he said, could not be resolved into a question of bacteria! and, ironically, far from realizing the truth of his sarcastic prophecy, he exclaimed, “typhoid fever, bacterization! hospital miasma, bacterization!”

every one had a word to say. dr. piorry, an octogenarian, somewhat weighed down with the burden of his years and reputation, rose to speak with his accustomed solemnity. he had found for villemin’s experiments the simple explanation that “the tuberculous matter seems to be no other than pus, which, in consequence of its sojourn in the organs, has undergone varied and numerous modifications”; and he now im{229}agined that one of the principal causes of fatal accidents due to septic?mia after surgical operations was the imperfect ventilation of hospital wards. it was enough, he thought, that putrid odours should not be perceptible, for the rate of mortality to be decreased.

it was then affirmed that putrid infection was not an organized ferment, that inferior organisms had in themselves no toxic action, in fact, that they were the result and not the cause of putrid alteration; whereupon dr. bouillaud, a contemporary of dr. piorry, called upon their new colleague to give his opinion on the subject.

it would have been an act of graceful welcome to pasteur, and a fitting homage to the memory of the celebrated trousseau, who had died five years before, in 1867, if any member present had then quoted one of the great practitioner’s last lectures at the h?tel dieu, wherein he predicted a future for pasteur’s works:

“the great theory of ferments is therefore now connected with an organic function; every ferment is a germ, the life of which is manifested by a special secretion. it may be that it is so for morbid viruses; they may be ferments, which, deposited within the organism at a given moment and under determined circumstances, manifest themselves by divers products. so will the variolous ferment produce variolic fermentation, giving birth to thousands of pustules, and likewise the virus of glanders, that of sheep pox, etc....

“other viruses appear to act locally, but, nevertheless, they ultimately modify the whole organism, as do gangrene, malignant pustula, contagious erysipelas, etc. may it not be supposed, under such circumstances, that the ferment or organized matter of those viruses can be carried about by the lancet, the atmosphere or the linen bandages?”

but it occurred to no one in the academy to quote those forgotten words.

pasteur, answering bouillaud, recalled his own researches on lactic and butyric fermentations and spoke of his studies on beer. he stated that the alteration of beer was due to the presence of filiform organisms; if beer becomes altered, it is because it contains germs of organized ferments. “the correlation is certain, indisputable, between the disease and the presence of organisms.” he spoke those last words with so much emphasis that the stenographer who was taking down the extempore speeches underlined them.{230}

a few months later, on november 17, 1873, he read to the academy a paper containing further developments of his principles. “in order that beer should become altered and become sour, putrid, slimy, ‘ropy,’ acid or lactic, it is necessary that foreign organisms should develop within it, and those organisms only appear and multiply when those germs are already extant in the liquid mass.” it is possible to oppose the introduction of those germs; pasteur drew on the blackboard the diagram of an apparatus which only communicated with the outer air by means of tubes fulfilling the office of the sinuous necks of the glass vessels he had used for his experiments on so-called spontaneous generation. he entered into every detail, demonstrating that as long as pure yeast alone had been sown, the security was absolute. “that which has been put forward on the subject of a possible transformation of yeast into bacteria, vibriones, mycoderma aceti and vulgar mucors, or vice versa, is mistaken.”

he wrote in a private letter on the subject: “these simple and clear results have cost me many sleepless nights before presenting themselves before me in the precise form i have now given them.”

but his own conviction had not yet penetrated the minds of his adversaries, and m. trécul was still supporting his hypothesis of transformations, the so-called proofs of which, according to pasteur, rested on a basis of confused facts tainted with involuntary errors due to imperfect experiments.

in december, 1873, at a sitting of the academy, he presented m. trécul with a few little flagons, in which he had sown some pure seed of penicillium glaucum, begging him to accept them and to observe them at his leisure, assuring him that it would be impossible to find a trace of any transformation of the spores into yeast cells.

“when m. trécul has finished the little task which i am soliciting of his devotion to the knowledge of truth,” continued pasteur, “i shall give him the elements of a similar work on the mycoderma vini; in other words, i shall bring to m. trécul some absolutely pure mycoderma vini with which he can reproduce his former experiments and recognize the exactness of the facts which i have lately announced.”

pasteur concluded thus: “the academy will allow me to make one last remark. it must be owned that my contradictors have been peculiarly unlucky in taking the occasion{231} of my paper on the diseases of beer to renew this discussion. how is it they did not understand that my process for the fabrication of inalterable beer could not exist if beer wort in contact with air could present all the transformations of which they speak? and that work on beer, entirely founded as it is on the discovery and knowledge of some microscopic beings, has it not followed my studies on vinegar, on the mycoderma aceti and on the new process of acetification which i have invented? has not that work been followed by my studies on the causes of wine diseases and the means of preventing them, still founded on the discovery and knowledge of non-spontaneous microscopic beings? have not these last researches been followed by the discovery of means to prevent the silkworm disease, equally deducted from the study of non-spontaneous microscopic beings?

“are not all the researches i have pursued for seventeen years, at the cost of many efforts, the product of the same ideas, the same principles, pushed by incessant toil into consequences ever new? the best proof that an observer is in the right track lies in the uninterrupted fruitfulness of his work.”

this fruitfulness was evidenced, not only by pasteur’s personal labours, but by those he inspired and encouraged. thus, in that same period, m. gayon, a former student of the ecole normale, whom he had chosen as curator, started on some researches on the alteration of eggs. he stated that when an egg is stale, rotten, this is due to the presence and multiplication of infinitesimally small beings; the germs of those organisms and the organisms themselves come from the oviduct of the hen and penetrate even into the points where the shell membrane and the albumen are formed. “the result is,” concluded m. gayon, “that, during the formation of those various elements, the egg may or may not, according to circumstances, gather up organisms or germs of organisms, and consequently bear within itself, as soon as it is laid, the cause of ulterior alterations. it will be seen at the same time that the number of eggs susceptible of alteration may vary from one hen to another, as well as between the eggs of one hen, for the organisms to be observed on the oviduct rise to variable heights.”

if the organisms which alter the eggs and cause them to rot “were formed,” said pasteur, “by the spontaneous self-{232}organization of the matter within the egg into those small beings, all eggs should putrefy equally, whereas they do not.” at the end of m. gayon’s thesis—which had not taken so long as raulin’s to prepare, only three years—we find the following conclusion: “putrefaction in eggs is correlative with the development and multiplication of beings which are bacteria when in contact with air and vibriones when away from the contact of air. eggs, from that point of view, do not depart from the general law discovered by m. pasteur.”

pasteur’s influence was now spreading beyond the laboratory of physiological chemistry, as the small laboratory at the ecole normale was called.

in the treatise he had published in 1862, criticizing the doctrine of spontaneous generation, he had mentioned, among the organisms produced by urine in putrefaction, the existence of a torulacea in very small-grained chaplets. a physician, dr. traube, in 1864, had demonstrated that pasteur was right in thinking that ammoniacal fermentation was due to this torulacea, whose properties were afterwards studied with infinite care by m. van tieghem, a former student of the ecole normale, who had inspired pasteur with a deep affection. pasteur, in his turn, completed his own observations and assured himself that this little organized ferment was to be found in every case of ammoniacal urine. finally, after proving that boracic acid impeded the development of that ammoniacal ferment, he suggested to m. guyon, the celebrated surgeon, the use of boracic acid for washing out the bladder; m. guyon put the advice into practice with success, and attributed the credit of it to pasteur.

in a letter written at the end of 1873, pasteur wrote: “how i wish i had enough health and sufficient knowledge to throw myself body and soul into the experimental study of one of our infectious diseases!” he considered that his studies on fermentations would lead him in that direction; he thought that when it should be made evident that every serious alteration in beer was due to the micro-organisms which find in that liquid a medium favourable to their development, when it should be seen that—in contradiction to the old ideas by which those alterations are looked upon as spontaneous, inherent in those liquids, and depending on their nature and composition—the cause of those diseases is not interior but exterior, then would indeed be defeated the doctrine of men{233} like pidoux, who à propos of diseases, said: “disease is in us, of us, by us,” and who, à propos of small-pox, even said that he was not certain that it could only proceed from inoculation and contagion.

though the majority of physicians and surgeons considered that it was waste of time to listen to “a mere chemist,” there was a small group of young men, undergraduates, who, in their thirst for knowledge, assembled at the académie de médecine every tuesday, hoping that pasteur might bring out one of his communications concerning a scientific method “which resolves each difficulty by an easily interpreted experiment, delightful to the mind, and at the same time so decisive that it is as satisfying as a geometrical demonstration, and gives an impression of security.”

those words were written by one of those who came to the académie sittings, feeling that they were on the eve of some great revelations. he was a clinical assistant of dr. béhier’s, and, busy as he was with medical analysis, he was going over pasteur’s experiments on fermentations for his own edification. he was delighted with the sureness of the pastorian methods, and was impatient to continue the struggle now begun. enthusiasm was evinced in his brilliant eyes, in the timbre of his voice, clear, incisive, slightly imperious perhaps, and in his implacable desire for logic. of solitary habits, with no ambition for distinction or degrees, he worked unceasingly for sheer love of science. the greatest desire of that young man of twenty-one, quite unknown to pasteur, was to be one day admitted, in the very humblest rank, to the ecole normale laboratory. his name was roux.

was not that medical student, that disciple lost in the crowd, an image of the new generation hungering for new ideas, more convinced than the preceding one had been of the necessity of proofs? struck by the unstable basis of medical theories, those young men divined that the secret of progress in hospitals was to be found in the laboratories. medicine and surgery in those days were such a contrast to what they are now that it seems as if centuries divided them. no doubt one day some professor, some medical historian, will give us a full account of that vast and immense progress. but, whilst awaiting a fully competent work of that kind, it is possible, even in a book such as this (which is, from many causes, but a hasty epitome of many very different things spread over a very simple{234} biography), to give to a reader unfamiliar with such studies a certain idea of one of the most interesting chapters in the history of civilization, affecting the preservation of innumerable human lives.

“a pin-prick is a door open to death,” said the surgeon velpeau. that open door widened before the smallest operation; the lancing of an abscess or a whitlow sometimes had such serious consequences that surgeons hesitated before the slightest use of the bistoury. it was much worse when a great surgical intervention was necessary, though, through the irony of things, the immediate success of the most difficult operations was now guaranteed by the progress of skill and the precious discovery of an?sthesia. the patient, his will and consciousness suspended, awoke from the most terrible operation as from a dream. but at that very moment when the surgeon’s art was emboldened by being able to disregard pain, it was arrested, disconcerted, and terrified by the fatal failures which supervened after almost every operation. the words py?mia, gangrene, erysipelas, septic?mia, purulent infection, were bywords in those days.

in the face of those terrible consequences, it had been thought better, about forty years ago, to discourage and even to prohibit a certain operation, then recently invented and practised in england and america, ovariotomy, “even,” said velpeau, “if the reported cures be true.” in order to express the terror inspired by ovariotomy, a physician went so far as to say that it should be “classed among the attributes of the executioner.”

as it was supposed that the infected air of the hospitals might be the cause of the invariably fatal results of that operation, the assistance publique[31] hired an isolated house in the avenue de meudon, near paris, a salubrious spot. in 1863, ten women in succession were sent to that house; the neighbouring inhabitants watched those ten patients entering the house, and a short time afterwards their ten coffins being taken away. in their terrified ignorance they called that house the house of crime.

surgeons were asking themselves whether they did not carry death with them, unconsciously scattering virus and subtle poisons.{235}

since the beginning of the nineteenth century, surgery had positively retrograded; the mortality after operations was infinitely less in the preceding centuries, because antisepsis was practised unknowingly, though cauterizations by fire, boiling liquids and disinfecting substances. in a popular handbook published in 1749, and entitled medicine and surgery for the poor, we read that wounds should be kept from the contact of air; it was also recommended not to touch the wound with fingers or instruments. “it is very salutary, when uncovering the wound in order to dress it, to begin by applying over its whole surface a piece of cloth dipped into hot wine or brandy.” good results had been obtained by the great surgeon larrey, under the first empire, by hot oil, hot brandy, and unfrequent dressings. but, under the influence of broussais, the theory of inflammation caused a retrogression in surgery. then came forth basins for making poultices, packets of charpie (usually made of old hospital sheets merely washed), and rows of pots of ointment. it is true that, during the second half of the last century, a few attempts were made to renew the use of alcoholized water for dressings. in 1868, at the time when the mortality after amputation in hospitals was over sixty per cent., surgeon léon le fort banished sponges, exacted from his students scrupulous cleanliness and constant washing of hands and instruments before every operation, and employed alcoholized water for dressings. but though he obtained such satisfactory results as to lower, in his wards at the h?pital cochin, the average of mortality after amputations to twenty-four per cent., his colleagues were very far from suspecting that the first secret for preventing fatal results after operations consisted in a reform of the dressings.

those who visited an ambulance ward during the war of 1870, especially those who were medical students, have preserved such a recollection of the sight that they do not, even now, care to speak about it. it was perpetual agony, the wounds of all the patients were suppurating, a horrible fetor pervaded the place, and infectious septic?mia was everywhere. “pus seemed to germinate everywhere,” said a student of that time (m. landouzy, who became a professor at the faculty of medicine), “as if it had been sown by the surgeon.” m. landouzy also recalled the words of m. denonvilliers, a surgeon of the charité hospital, whom he {236}calls “a splendid operator ... a virtuoso, and a dilettante in the art of operating,” who said to his pupils: “when an amputation seems necessary, think ten times about it, for too often, when we decide upon an operation, we sign the patient’s death-warrant.” another surgeon, who must have been profoundly discouraged in spite of his youthful energy, m. verneuil, exclaimed: “there were no longer any precise indications, any rational provisions; nothing was successful, neither abstention, conservation, restricted or radical mutilation, early or postponed extraction of the bullets, dressings rare or frequent, emollient or excitant, dry or moist, with or without drainage; we tried everything in vain!” during the siege of paris, in the grand h?tel, which had been turned into an ambulance, nélaton, in despair at the sight of the death of almost every patient who had been operated on, declared that he who should conquer purulent infection would deserve a golden statue.

it was only at the end of the war that it occurred to alphonse guérin—(who to his intense irritation was so often confounded with another surgeon, his namesake and opponent, jules guérin)—that “the cause of purulent infection may perhaps be due to the germs or ferments discovered by pasteur to exist in the air.” alphonse guérin saw, in malarial fever, emanations of putrefied vegetable matter, and, in purulent infection, animal emanations, septic, and capable of causing death.

“i thought more firmly than over,” he declared, “that the miasms emanating from the pus of the wounded were the real cause of this frightful disease, to which i had the sorrow of seeing the wounded succumb—whether their wounds were dressed with charpie and cerate or with alcoholized and carbolic lotions, either renewed several times a day or impregnating linen bandages which remained applied to the wounds. in my despair—ever seeking some means of preventing these terrible complications—i bethought me that the miasms, whose existence i admitted, because i could not otherwise explain the production of purulent infection—and which were only known to me by their deleterious influence—might well be living corpuscles, of the kind which pasteur had seen in atmospheric air, and, from that moment, the history of miasmatic poisoning became clearer to me. if,” i said, “miasms are ferments, i might protect the wounded from their fatal influence by filtering the air, as pasteur did. i then con{237}ceived the idea of cotton-wool dressings, and i had the satisfaction of seeing my anticipations realized.”

after arresting the bleeding, ligaturing the blood vessels and carefully washing the wound with carbolic solution or camphorated alcohol, alphonse guérin applied thin layers of cotton wool, over which he placed thicker masses of the same, binding the whole with strong bandages of new linen. this dressing looked like a voluminous parcel and did not require to be removed for about twenty days. this was done at the st. louis hospital to the wounded of the commune from march till june, 1871. other surgeons learnt with amazement that, out of thirty-four patients treated in that way, nineteen had survived operation. dr. reclus, who could not bring himself to believe it, said: “we had grown to look upon purulent infection as upon an inevitable and necessary disease, an almost divinely instituted consequence of any important operation.”

there is a much greater danger than that of atmospheric germs, that of the contagium germ, of which the surgeon’s hands; sponges and tools are the receptacle, if minute and infinite precautions are not taken against it. such precautions were not even thought of in those days; charpie, odious charpie, was left lying about on hospital and ambulance tables, in contact with dirty vessels. it had, therefore, been sufficient to institute careful washing of the wounds, and especially to reduce the frequency of dressings, and so diminish the chances of infection to obtain—thanks to a reform inspired by pasteur’s labours—this precious and unexpected remedy to fatalities subsequent to operations. in 1873, alphonse guérin, now a surgeon at the h?tel dieu, submitted to pasteur all the facts which had taken place at the hospital st. louis where surgery was more “active,” he said, than at the h?tel dieu; he asked him to come and see his cotton-wool dressings, and pasteur gladly hastened to accept the invitation. it was with much pleasure that pasteur entered upon this new period of visits to hospitals and practical discussions with his colleagues of the académie de médecine. his joy at the thought that he had been the means of awakening in other minds ideas likely to lead to the good of humanity was increased by the following letter from lister, dated from edinburgh, february 13, 1874, which is here reproduced in the original{238}—

“my dear sir—allow me to beg your acceptance of a pamphlet, which i send by the same post, containing an account of some investigations into the subject which you have done so much to elucidate, the germ theory of fermentative changes. i flatter myself that you may read with some interest what i have written on the organism which you were the first to describe in your mémoire sur la fermentation appelée lactique.

“i do not know whether the records of british surgery ever meet your eye. if so, you will have seen from time to time notices of the antiseptic system of treatment, which i have been labouring for the last nine years to bring to perfection.

“allow me to take this opportunity to tender you my most cordial thanks for having, by your brilliant researches, demonstrated to me the truth of the germ theory of putrefaction, and thus furnished me with the principle upon which alone the antiseptic system can be carried out. should you at any time visit edinburgh, it would, i believe, give you sincere gratification to see at our hospital how largely mankind is being benefited by your labours.

“i need hardly add that it would afford me the highest gratification to show you how greatly surgery is indebted to you.

“forgive the freedom with which a common love of science inspires me, and

“believe me, with profound respect,

“yours very sincerely,

“joseph lister.”

in lister’s wards, the instruments, sponges and other articles used for dressings were first of all purified in a strong solution of carbolic acid. the same precautions were taken for the hands of the surgeon and of his assistants. during the whole course of each operation, a vaporizer of carbolic solution created around the wound an antiseptic atmosphere; after it was over, the wound was again washed with the carbolic solution. special articles were used for dressing: a sort of gauze, similar to tarlatan and impregnated with a mixture of resin, paraffin and carbolic, maintained an antiseptic atmosphere around the wound. such was—in its main lines—lister’s method.{239}

a medical student, m. just lucas-championnière—who later on became an exponent in france of this method, and who described it in a valuable treatise published in 1876—had already in 1869, after a journey to glasgow, stated in the journal de médecine et de chirurgie pratique what were those first principles of defence against gangrene—“extreme and minute care in the dressing of wounds.” but his isolated voice was not heard; neither was any notice taken of a celebrated lecture given by lister at the beginning of 1870 on the penetrating of germs into a purulent centre and on the utility of antisepsis applied to clinical practice. a few months before the war, tyndall, the great english physicist, alluded to this lecture in an article entitled “dusts and diseases,” which was published by the revue des cours scientifiques. but the heads of the profession in france had at that time absolute confidence in themselves, and nobody took any interest in the rumour of success attained by the antiseptic method. yet, between 1867 and 1869, thirty-four of lister’s patients out of forty had survived after amputation. it is impossible on reading of this not to feel an immense sadness at the thought of the hundreds and thousands of young men who perished in ambulances and hospitals during the fatal year, and who might have been saved by lister’s method. in his own country, lister had also been violently criticized. “people turned into ridicule lister’s minute precautions in the dressing of wounds,” writes a competent judge, dr. auguste reaudin, a professor at the geneva faculty of medicine, “and those who lost nearly all their patients by poulticing them had nothing but sarcasms for the man who was so infinitely superior to them.” lister, with his calm courage and smiling kindliness, let people talk, and endeavoured year by year to perfect his method, testing it constantly and improving it in detail. no one, however sceptical, whom he invited to look at his results, could preserve his scepticism in the face of such marked success.

some of his opponents thought to attack him on another point by denying him the priority of the use of carbolic acid. lister never claimed that priority, but his enemies took pleasure in recalling that jules lemaire, in 1860, had proposed the use of weak carbolic solution for the treatment of open wounds, and that the same had been prescribed by dr. déclat in 1861, and also by maisonneuve, demarquay and others. the fact that should have been proclaimed was that lister{240} had created a surgical method which was in itself an immense and beneficial progress; and lister took pleasure in declaring that he owed to pasteur the principles which had guided him.

at the time when pasteur received the letter above quoted, which gave him deep gratification, people in france were so far from all that concerned antisepsis and asepsis, that, when he advised surgeons at the académie de médecine to put their instruments through a flame before using them, they did not understand what he meant, and he had to explain—

“i mean that surgical instruments should merely be put through a flame, not really heated, and for this reason: if a sound were examined with a microscope, it would be seen that its surface presents grooves where dusts are harboured, which cannot be completely removed even by the most careful cleansing. fire entirely destroys those organic dusts; in my laboratory, where i am surrounded by dust of all kinds, i never make use of an instrument without previously putting it through a flame.”

pasteur was ever ready to help others, giving them willing advice or information. in november, 1874, when visiting the h?tel dieu with messrs. larrey and gosselin, he had occasion to notice that a certain cotton-wool dressing had been very badly done by a student in one of guérin’s wards. a wound on the dirty hand of a labouring man had been bandaged with cotton wool without having been washed in any way. when the bandaging was removed in the presence of guérin, the pus exhaled a repugnant odour, and was found to swarm with vibriones. pasteur in a sitting of the académie des sciences, entered into details as to the precautions which are necessary to get rid of the germs originally present on the surface of the wound or of the cotton wool; he declared that the layers of cotton wool should be heated to a very high temperature. he also suggested the following experiment: “in order to demonstrate the evil influence of ferments and proto-organisms in the suppuration of wounds, i would make two identical wounds on the two symmetrical limbs of an animal under chloroform; on one of those wounds i would apply a cotton-wool dressing with every possible precaution; on the other, on the contrary, i would cultivate, so to speak, micro-organisms abstracted from a strange sore, and offering, more or less, a septic character.

“finally, i should like to cut open a wound on an animal{241} under chloroform in a very carefully selected part of the body—for the experiment would be a very delicate one—and in absolutely pure air, that is, air absolutely devoid of any kind of germs, afterwards maintaining a pure atmosphere around the wound, and having recourse to no dressing whatever. i am inclined to think that perfect healing would ensue under such conditions, for there would be nothing to hinder the work of repair and reorganization which must be accomplished on the surface of a wound if it is to heal.”

he explained in that way the advantage accruing to hygiene, in hospitals and elsewhere, from infinite precautions of cleanliness and the destroying of infectious germs. himself a great investigator of new ideas, he intended to compel his colleagues at the académie de médecine to include the pathogenic share of the infinitesimally small among matters demanding the attention of medicine and surgery. the struggle was a long, unceasing and painful one. in february, 1875, his presence gave rise to a discussion on ferments, which lasted until the end of march. in the course of this discussion he recalled the experiments he had made fifteen years before, describing how—in a liquid composed of mineral elements, apart from the contact of atmospheric air and previously raised to ebullition—vibriones could be sown and subsequently seen to flourish and multiply, offering the sight of those two important phenomena: life without air, and fermentation.

“they are far behind us now,” he said; “they are now relegated to the rank of chimeras, those theories of fermentation imagined by berzelius, mitscherlich, and liebig, and re-edited with an accompaniment of new hypotheses by messrs. pouchet, frémy, trécul, and béchamp. who would now dare to affirm that fermentations are contact phenomena, phenomena of motion, communicated by an altering albuminoid matter, or phenomena produced by semi-organized materia, transforming themselves into this or into that? all those creations of fancy fall to pieces before this simple and decisive experiment.”

pasteur ended up his speech by an unexpected attack on the pompous etiquette of the academy’s usual proceedings, urging his colleagues to remain within the bounds of a scientific discussion instead of making flowery speeches. he was much applauded, and his exhortation taken in good part.{242} his colleagues also probably sympathized with his irritation in hearing a member of the assembly, m. poggiale, formerly apothecary in chief to the val de grace, give a somewhat sceptical dissertation on such a subject as spontaneous generation, saying disdainfully—

“m. pasteur has told us that he had looked for spontaneous generation for twenty years without finding it; he will long continue to look for it, and, in spite of his courage, perseverance and sagacity, i doubt whether he ever will find it. it is almost an unsolvable question. however those who, like me, have no fixed opinion on the question of spontaneous generation reserve the right of verifying, of sifting and of disputing new facts, as they appear, one by one and wherever they are produced.”

“what!” cried pasteur, wrathful whenever those great questions were thoughtlessly tackled, “what! i have been for twenty years engaged in one subject and i am not to have an opinion! and the right of verifying, sifting, and disputing the facts is to belong to him who does nothing to become enlightened but merely to read our works more or less attentively, his feet on his study fender!!!

“you have no opinion on spontaneous generation, my dear colleague; i can well believe that, while regretting it. i am not speaking, of course, of those sentimental opinions that everybody has, more or less, in questions of this nature, for in this assembly we do not go in for sentiment. you say that, in the present state of science, it is wiser to have no opinion: well, i have an opinion, not a sentimental one, but a rational one, having acquired a right to it by twenty years of assiduous labour, and it would be wise in every impartial mind to share it. my opinion—nay, more, my conviction—is that, in the present state of science, as you rightly say, spontaneous generation is a chimera; and it would be impossible for you to contradict me, for my experiments all stand forth to prove that spontaneous generation is a chimera. what is then your judgment on my experiments? have i not a hundred times placed organic matter in contact with pure air in the best conditions for it to produce life spontaneously? have i not practised on those organic materia which are most favourable, according to all accounts, to the genesis of spontaneity, such as blood, urine, and grape juice? how is it that you do not see the essential difference between my op{243}ponents and myself? not only have i contradicted, proof in hand, every one of their assertions, while they have never dared to seriously contradict one of mine, but, for them, every cause of error benefits their opinion. for me, affirming as i do that there are no spontaneous fermentations, i am bound to eliminate every cause of error, every perturbing influence, i can maintain my results only by means of most irreproachable experiments; their opinions, on the contrary, profit by every insufficient experiment and that is where they find their support.”

pasteur having been abruptly addressed by a colleague, who remarked that there were yet many unexplained facts in connection with fermentation, he answered by thus apostrophizing his adversaries—

“what is then your idea of the progress of science? science advances one step, then another, and then draws back and meditates before taking a third. does the impossibility of taking that last step suppress the success acquired by the two others? would you say to an infant who hesitated before a third step, having ventured on two previous ones; ‘thy former efforts are of no avail; never shalt thou walk’?

“you wish to upset what you call my theory, apparently in order to defend another; allow me to tell you by what signs these theories are recognized: the characteristic of erroneous theories is the impossibility of ever foreseeing new facts; whenever such a fact is discovered, those theories have to be grafted with further hypotheses in order to account for them. true theories, on the contrary, are the expression of actual facts and are characterized by being able to predict new facts, a natural consequence of those already known. in a word, the characteristic of a true theory is its fruitfulness.”

“science,” said he again at the following sitting of the academy, “should not concern itself in any way with the philosophical consequences of its discoveries. if through the development of my experimental studies i come to demonstrate that matter can organize itself of its own accord into a cell or into a living being, i would come here to proclaim it with the legitimate pride of an inventor conscious of having made a great discovery, and i would add, if provoked to do so, ‘all the worse for those whose doctrines or systems do not fit in with the truth of the natural facts.’

“it was with similar pride that i defied my opponents to{244} contradict me when i said, ‘in the present state of science the doctrine of spontaneous generation is a chimera.’ and i add, with similar independence, ‘all the worse for those whose philosophical or political ideas are hindered by my studies.’

“this is not to be taken to mean that, in my beliefs and in the conduct of my life, i only take account of acquired science: if i would, i could not do so, for i should then have to strip myself of a part of myself. there are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of nature through observation, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in that hope, the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die. the two domains are distinct, and woe to him who tries to let them trespass on each other in the so imperfect state of human knowledge.”

and that separation, as he understood it, caused in him none of those conflicts which often determine a crisis in a human soul. as a scientist, he claimed absolute liberty of research; he considered, with claude bernard and littré, that it was a mistaken waste of time to endeavour to penetrate primary causes; “we can only note correlations,” he said. but, with the spiritual sentiment which caused him to claim for the inner moral life the same liberty os for scientific research, he could not understand certain givers of easy explanations who affirm that matter has organized itself, and who, considering as perfectly simple the spectacle of the universe of which earth is but an infinitesimal part, are in no wise moved by the infinite power who created the worlds. with his whole heart he proclaimed the immortality of the soul.

his mode of looking upon human life, in spite of sorrows, of struggles, of heavy burdens, had in it a strong element of consolation: “no effort is wasted,” he said, giving thus a most virile lesson of philosophy to those inferior minds who only see immediate results in the work they undertake and are discouraged by the first disappointment. in his respect for the great phenomenon of conscience, by which almost all men, enveloped as they are in the mystery of the universe, have the prescience of an ideal, of a god, he considered that{245} “the greatness of human actions can be measured by the inspirations which give them birth.” he was convinced that there are no vain prayers. if all is simple to the simple, all is great to the great; it was through “the divine regions of knowledge and of light” that he had visions of those who are no more.

it was very seldom that he spoke of such things, though he was sometimes induced to do so in the course of a discussion so as to manifest his repugnance for vainglorious negations and barren irony; sometimes too he would enter into such feelings when speaking to an assembly of young men.

those discussions at the academy of medicine had the advantage of inciting medical men to the research of the infinitesimally small, described by the annual secretary roger as “those subtle artisans of many disorders in the living economy.”

m. roger, at the end of a brief account of his colleague’s work, wrote, “to the signal services rendered by m. pasteur to science and to our country, it was but fair that a signal recompense should be given: the national assembly has undertaken that care.”

that recompense, voted a few months previously, was the third national recompense accorded to french scientists since the beginning of the century. in 1837, arago, before the chamber of deputies, and gay lussac, before the chamber of peers, had obtained a glorious recognition of the services rendered by daguerre and niepce. in 1845 another national recompense was accorded, to m. vicat, the engineer. in 1874, paul bert, a member of the national assembly, gladly reporting on the projected law tending to offer a national recompense to pasteur, wrote quoting those precedents:

“such an assurance of gratitude, given by a nation to men who have made it richer and more illustrious, honours it at least as much as it does them....” paul bert continued by enumerating pasteur’s discoveries, and spoke of the millions pasteur had assured to france, “without retaining the least share of them for himself.” in sericiculture alone, the losses in twenty years, before pasteur’s interference, rose to 1,500 millions of francs.

“m. pasteur’s discoveries, gentlemen,” concluded paul bert, “after throwing a new light on the obscure question of fermentations and of the mode of appearance of microscopic{246} beings, have revolutionized certain branches of industry, of agriculture, and of pathology. one is struck with admiration when seeing that so many, and such divers results, proceed—through an unbroken chain of facts, nothing being left to hypothesis—from theoretical studies on the manner in which tartaric acid deviates polarized light. never was the famous saying, ‘genius consists in sufficient patience,’ more amply justified. the government now proposes that you should honour this admirable combination of theoretical and practical study by a national recompense; your commission unanimously approves of this proposition.

“the suggested recompense consists in a life annuity of 12,000 francs, which is the approximate amount of the salary of the sorbonne professorship, which m. pasteur’s ill health has compelled him to give up. it is indeed small when compared with the value of the services rendered, and your commission much regrets that the state of our finances does not allow us to increase that amount. but the commission agrees with its learned chairman (m. marès) ‘that the economic and hygienic results of m. pasteur’s discoveries will presently become so considerable that the french nation will desire to increase later on its testimony of gratitude towards him and towards science, of which he is one of the most glorious representatives.’”

half the amount of the annuity was to revert to pasteur’s widow. the bill was passed by 532 votes against 24.

“where is the government which has secured such a majority?” wrote pasteur’s old friend chappuis, now rector of the grenoble academy. the value of the recompense was certainly much enhanced by the fact that the assembly, divided upon so many subjects, had been almost unanimous in its feeling of gratitude towards him who had laboured so hard for science, for the country and for humanity.

“bravo, my dear pasteur: i am glad for you and for myself, and proud for us all. your devoted friend, sainte claire deville.”

“you are going to be a happy scientist,” wrote m. duclaux, “for you can already see, and you will see more and more, the triumph of your doctrines and of your discoveries.”

those who imagined that this national recompense was the close of a great chapter, perhaps even the last chapter of the book of his life, gave him, in their well-meaning ignorance,{247} some advice which highly irritated him: they advised him to rest. it is true that his cerebral h?morrhage had left him with a certain degree of lameness and a slight stiffness of the left hand, those external signs reminding him only too well of the threatening possibility of another stroke; but his mighty soul was more than ever powerful to master his infirm body. it was therefore evident that nisard, usually very subtle in his insight into character, did not thoroughly understand pasteur when he wrote to him, “now, dear friend, you must give up your energies to living for your family, for all those who love you, and a little too for yourself.”

in spite of his deep, even passionate tenderness for his family, pasteur had other desires than to limit his life to such a narrow circle. every man who knows he has a mission to fulfil feels that there are rays of a light purer and more exalted than that proceeding from the hearth. as to the suggestion that pasteur should take care of his own health, it was as useless as it would be to advise certain men to take care of that of others.

dr. andral had vainly said and written that he should forbid pasteur any assiduous labour. pasteur considered that not to work was to lose the object of living at all. if, however, a certain equilibrium was established between the anxious solicitude of friends, the prohibitions of medical advisers and the great amount of work which pasteur insisted on doing, it was owing to her who with a discreet activity watched in silence to see that nothing outside his work should complicate pasteur’s life, herself his most precious collaborator, the confidante of every experiment.

everything was subordinate to the laboratory; pasteur never accepted an invitation to those large social gatherings which are a tax laid by those who have nothing to do on the time of those who are busy, especially if they be celebrated. pasteur’s name, known throughout the world, was never mentioned in fashionable journals; he did not even go to theatres. in the evening, after dinner, he usually perambulated the hall and corridor of his rooms at the ecole normale, cogitating over various details of his work. at ten o’clock, he went to bed, and at eight the next morning, whether he had had a good night or a bad one, he resumed his work in the laboratory.

that regular life, preserving its even tenor through so many polemics and discussions, was momentarily perturbed by{248} politics in january, 1876. pasteur, who, in his extraordinary, almost disconcerting modesty, believed that a medical diploma would have facilitated his scientific revolution, imagined—after the pressing overtures made to him by some of his proud compatriots—that he would be able to serve more usefully the cause of higher education if he were to obtain a seat at the senate.

he addressed from paris a letter to the senatorial electors of the department of jura. “i am not a political man,” he said, “i am bound to no party; not having studied politics i am ignorant of many things, but i do know this, that i love my country and have served her with all my strength.” like many good citizens, he thought that a renewal of the national grandeur and prosperity might be sought in a serious experimental trial of the republic. if honoured with the suffrages of his countrymen, he would “represent in the senate, science in all its purity, dignity and independence.” two jura newspapers, of different opinions, agreed in regretting that pasteur should leave “the peaceful altitudes of science,” and come down into the jura to solicit the electors’ suffrages.

in his answers to such articles, letters dictated to his son—who acted as his secretary during that electoral campaign and accompanied him to lons-le-saulnier, where they spent a week, published addresses, posters, etc.—pasteur invoked the following motto, “science et patrie.” why had france been victorious in 1792? “because science had given to our fathers the material means of fighting.” and he recalled the names of monge, of carnot, of fourcroy, of guyton de morveau, of berthollet, that concourse of men of science, thanks to whom it had been possible—during that grandiose epoch—to hasten the working of steel and the preparation of leather for soldiers’ boots, and to find means of extracting saltpetre for gunpowder from plaster rubbish, of making use of reconnoitring balloons and of perfecting telegraphy.

the senatorial electors numbered 650. jules grévy came to lons-le-saulnier to support the candidature of mm. tamisier and thurel. in a meeting which took place the day before the election he said, “you will give them your suffrage to-morrow, and in so doing you will have deserved well of the republic and of france.” he mentioned, incidentally, that “m. pasteur’s character and scientific work entitle him to universal respect and esteem; but science has its natural place{249} at the institute,” he added, insisting on the senate’s political attributes. grévy’s intervention in favour of his two candidates was decisive. m. tamisier obtained 446 votes, m. thurel 445, general picard 113, m. besson, a monarchist, 153, pasteur 62 only.

he had received on that very morning a letter from his daughter, wishing him a failure—a bright, girlish letter, frankly expressing the opinion that her father could be most useful to his country by confining himself to laboratory work, and that politics would necessarily hinder such work.

it was easy to be absolutely frank with pasteur, who willingly accepted every truthful statement. no man was ever more beloved, more admired and less flattered in his own home than he was.

“what a wise judge you are, my dearest girl!” answered pasteur the same evening; “you are perfectly right. but i am not sorry to have seen all this, and that your brother should have seen it; all knowledge is useful.”

that little incursion into the domain of politics was rendered insignificant in pasteur’s life by the fact that his long-desired object was almost reached. three months later, at the distribution of prizes of the concours général, the minister of public instruction pronounced a speech, of which pasteur preserved the text, underlining with his own hand the following passages: “soon, i hope, we shall see the schools of medicine and of pharmacy reconstructed; the collège de france provided with new laboratories; the faculty of medicine transferred and enlarged, and the ancient sorbonne itself restored and extended.”

and while the minister spoke of “those higher studies of philosophy, of history, of disinterested science which are the glory of a nation and an honour to the human mind ... which must retain the first rank to shed their serene light over inferior studies, and to remind men of the true goal and the true grandeur of human intelligence....” pasteur could say to himself that the great cause which he had pleaded since he was made dean of faculty at lille in 1854, which he had supported in 1868 and again on the morrow of the war, was at last about to be won in 1876.

he had a patriotic treat during the summer holidays of that same year. a great international congress of sericiculture was gathered at milan; there were delegates from russia, austria,{250} italy and france, and pasteur represented france. he was accompanied by his former pupils, his associates in his silkworm studies, duclaux and raulin, both of whom had become professors at the lyons faculty of sciences, and maillot, who was then manager of the silkworm establishment of montpellier. the members of the congress had been previously informed of the programme of questions, and each intending speaker was armed with facts and observations. the open discussions allowed duclaux, raulin and maillot to demonstrate the strictness and perfection of the experimental method which they had learned from their master and which they were teaching in their turn.

excursions formed a delightful interlude; one on the lake of como was an enchantment. then the french delegates were offered the pleasant surprise of a visit to an immense seeding establishment in the neighbourhood of milan, which had been named after pasteur. we have an account of this visit in a letter to j. b. dumas (september 17).

“my dear master ... i very much regret that you are not here: you would have shared my satisfaction. i am dating my letter from milan, but in reality, the congress being ended, we are staying at signor susani’s country house for a few days. here, from july 4, sixty or seventy women are busy for ten hours every day with microscopic examinations of absolute accuracy. i never saw a better arranged establishment. 400,000 moth cells are put under the microscope every day. the order and cleanliness are admirable; any error is made impossible by the organization of a second test following the first.

“i felt, in seeing my name in large letters on the fa?ade of that splendid establishment, a joy which compensates for much of the frivolous opposition i have encountered from some of my countrymen these last few years; it is a spontaneous homage from the proprietor to my studies. many sericicultors do their seeding themselves, by selection, or have it done by competent workers accustomed to the operation. the harvest from that excellent seed depends on the climate only; in a moderately favourable season the production often reaches fifty or seventy kilogrammes per ounce of twenty-five grammes.”

signor susani was looking forward to producing for that one year 30,000 ounces of seed. in the presence of the prodigious activity of this veritable factory—where, besides the microscope{251} women, more than one hundred persons were occupied in various ways, washing the mortars with which the moths are pounded before being put under the microscopes, cleansing the slides, etc.; in fact, doing those various delicate but simple operations which had formerly been pronounced to be impracticable—pasteur’s thoughts went back to his experiments in the pont-gisquet greenhouse, to the modest beginnings of his process, now so magnificently applied in italy. a month before this, j. b. dumas, presiding at a scientific meeting at clermont ferrand, had said—

“the future belongs to science; woe to the nations who close their eyes to this fact.... let us call to our aid on this neutral and pacific ground of natural philosophy, where defeats cost neither blood nor tears, those hearts which are moved by their country’s grandeur; it is by the exaltation of science that france will recover her prestige.”

those same ideas were expressed in a toast given by pasteur in the name of france at a farewell banquet, when the 300 members of the sericiculture congress were present.

“gentlemen, i propose a toast—to the peaceful strife of science. it is the first time that i have the honour of being present on foreign soil at an international congress; i ask myself what are the impressions produced in me, besides these courteous discussions, by the brilliant hospitality of the noble milanese city, and i find myself deeply impressed by two propositions. first, that science is of no nationality; and secondly, in apparent, but only in apparent, contradiction, that science is the highest personification of nationality. science has no nationality because knowledge is the patrimony of humanity, the torch which gives light to the world. science should be the highest personification of nationality because, of all the nations, that one will always be foremost which shall be first to progress by the labours of thought and of intelligence.

“let us therefore strive in the pacific field of science for the pre-eminence of our several countries. let us strive, for strife is effort, strife is life when progress is the goal.

“you italians, try to multiply on the soil of your beautiful and glorious country the tecchi, the brioschi, the tacchini, the sella, the cornalia.... you, proud children of austria-hungary, follow even more firmly than in the past the fruitful impulse which an eminent statesman, now your representative at the court of england, has given to science and agriculture.{252} we, who are here present, do not forget that the first sericiculture establishment was founded in austria. as to you, japanese, may the cultivation of science be numbered among the chief objects of your care in the amazing social and political transformation of which you are giving the marvellous spectacle to the world. we frenchmen, bending under the sorrow of our mutilated country, should show once again that great trials may give rise to great thoughts and great actions.

“i drink to the peaceful strife of science.”

“you will find,” wrote pasteur to dumas, telling him of this toast, which had been received with enthusiastic applause, “an echo of the feelings with which you have inspired your pupils on the grandeur and the destiny of science in modern society.”

the tender and delicate side of this powerful spirit was thus once again apparent in this deference to his master in the midst of acclamations, and in those deep and noble ideas expressed in the middle of a noisy banquet. but it was chiefly in his private life that his open-heartedness, his desire to love and to be loved, became apparent. that great genius had a childlike heart, and the charm of this was incomparable.

he once said: “the recompense and the ambition of a scientist is to conquer the approbation of his peers and of the masters whom he venerates.” he had already known that recompense and could satisfy that ambition. dumas had known and appreciated him for thirty years; lister had proclaimed his gratitude; tyndall—an indefatigable excursionist, who loved to survey wide horizons, and who in his celebrated classes was wont to make use of comparisons with altitudes and heights and everything which opens a clear and vast outlook—had a great admiration for the wide development of pasteur’s work. now, pasteur’s experiments had been strongly attacked by a young english physician, dr. bastian, who had excited in the english and american public a bitter prejudice against the results announced by pasteur on the subject of spontaneous generation.

“the confusion and uncertainty,” wrote tyndall to pasteur, “have finally become such that, six months ago, i thought that it would be rendering a service to science, at the same time as justice to yourself, if the question were subjected to a fresh investigation.

“putting into practice an idea which i had entertained six{253} years ago—the details of which are set out in the article in the british medical journal which i had the pleasure to send you—i went over a large portion of the ground on which dr. bastian had taken up his stand, and refuted, i think, many of the fallacies which had misled the public.

“the change which has taken place since then in the tone of the english medical journals is quite remarkable, and i am disposed to think that the general confidence of the public in the accuracy of dr. bastian’s experiments has been considerably shaken.

“in taking up these investigations, i have had the opportunity of refreshing my memory about your labours; they have reawakened in me all the admiration which i felt for them when i first read of them. i intend to continue these investigations until i have dispersed all the doubts which may have arisen as to the indisputable accuracy of your conclusions.”

and tyndall added a paragraph for which pasteur modestly substituted asterisks in communicating this letter to the academy.

“for the first time in the history of science we have the right to cherish the sure and certain hope that, as regards epidemic diseases, medicine will soon be delivered from quackery and placed on a real scientific basis. when that day arrives, humanity, in my opinion, will know how to recognize that it is to you that will be due the largest share of her gratitude.”

tyndall was indeed qualified to sign this passport to immortality. but in the meanwhile a struggle was necessary, and pasteur did not wish to leave the burden of the discussion even on such shoulders as tyndall’s! moreover he was interested in his opponent.

“dr. bastian,” writes m. duclaux, “had some tenacity, a fertile mind, and the love, if not the gift, of the experimental method.” the discussion was destined to last for months. in general (according to j. b. dumas’ calculation) “at the end of ten years, judgment on a great thing is usually formed; it is by then an accomplished fact, an idea adopted by science or irrevocably repudiated.” pasteur, on the morrow of the milan congress, might feel that it had been so for the adoption of his system of cellular seeding, but such was not the case in this question of spontaneous generation. the quarrel had started again at the academy of sciences and at the academy of medicine; it was now being revived in england, and bastian pro{254}posed to come himself and experiment in the laboratory of the ecole normale.

“for nearly twenty years,” said pasteur, “i have pursued, without finding it, a proof of life existing without an anterior and similar life. the consequences of such a discovery would be incalculable; natural science in general, and medicine and philosophy in particular, would receive therefrom an impulse which cannot be foreseen. therefore, whenever i hear that this discovery has been made, i hasten to verify the assertions of my fortunate rival. it is true that i hasten towards him with some degree of mistrust, so many times have i experienced that, in the difficult art of experimenting, the very cleverest stagger at every step, and that the interpretation of facts is no less perilous.”

dr. bastian operated on acid urine, boiled and neutralized by a solution of potash heated to a temperature of 120° c. if, after the flask of urine had cooled down, it was heated to a temperature of 50° c. in order to facilitate the development of germs, the liquid in ten hours’ time swarmed with bacteria. “those facts prove spontaneous generation,” said dr. bastian.

pasteur invited him to replace his boiled solution of potash by a fragment of solid potash, after heating it to 110° c., in order to avoid the bacteria germs which might be contained in the aqueous solution. this question of the germs of inferior organisms possibly contained in water was—during the course of that protracted discussion—studied by pasteur with the assistance of m. joubert, professor of physics at the collège rollin. such germs were to be found even in the distilled water of laboratories; it was sufficient that the water should be poured in a thin stream through the air to become contaminated. spring water, if slowly filtered through a solid mass of ground, alone contained no germs.

there was also the question of the urine and that of the recipient. the urine, collected by dr. bastian in a vase and placed into a retort, neither of which had been put through a flame, might contain spores of a bacillus called bacillus subtilis, which offer a great resistance to the action of heat. those spores do not develop in notably acid liquids, but the liquid having been neutralized or rendered slightly alkaline by the potash, the development of germs took place. the thing therefore to be done was to collect the urine in a vase and introduce it into a retort both of which had been put through a flame. after{255} that, no organisms were produced, as was stated in the thesis of m. chamberland, then a curator at the laboratory, and who took an active part in these experiments.

a chapter might well have been written by a moralist “on the use of certain opponents”; for it was through that discussion with bastian that it was discovered how it was that—at the time of the celebrated discussions on spontaneous generation—the heterogenists, pouchet, joly, and musset, operating as pasteur did, but in a different medium, obtained results apparently contradictory to pasteur’s. if their flasks, filled with a decoction of hay, almost constantly showed germs, whilst pasteur’s, full of yeast water, were always sterile, it was because the hay water contained spores of the bacillus subtilis. the spores remained inactive as long as the liquid was preserved from the contact of air, but as soon as oxygen re-entered the flask they were able to develop.

the custom of raising liquids to a temperature of 120° c. in order to sterilize them dates from that conflict with bastian. “but,” writes m. duclaux, “the heating to 120° of a flask half filled with liquid can sterilize the liquid part only, allowing life to persist in those regions which are not in contact with the liquid. in order to destroy everything, the dry walls must be heated to 180° c.”

a former pupil of the ecole normale, who had been a curator in pasteur’s laboratory since october, 1876, boutroux by name, who witnessed all these researches, wrote in his thesis: “the knowledge of these facts makes it possible to obtain absolutely pure neutral culture mediums, and, in consequence, to study as many generations as are required of one unmixed micro-organism, whenever pure seed has been procured.”

pasteur has defined what he meant by putting tubes, cotton, vases, etc., through a flame. “in order to get rid of the microscopic germs which the dusts of air and of the water used for the washing of vessels deposit on every object, the best means is to place the vessels (their openings closed with pads of cotton wool) during half an hour in a gas stove, heating the air in which the articles stand to a temperature of about 150° c. to 200° c. the vessels, tubes, etc., are then ready for use. the cotton wool is enclosed in tubes or in blotting-paper.”

what pasteur had recommended to surgeons, when he advised them to pass through a flame all the instruments they used, had become a current practice in the laboratory; the least{256} pad of cotton wool used as a stopper was previously sterilized. thus was an entirely new technique rising fully armed and ready to repel new attacks and ensure new victories.

if pasteur was so anxious to drive dr. bastian to the wall, it was because he saw behind that so-called experiment on spontaneous generation a cause of perpetual conflict with physicians and surgeons. some of them desired to repel purely and simply the whole theory of germs. others, disposed to admit the results of pasteur’s researches, as laboratory work, did not admit his experimental incursions on clinical ground. pasteur therefore wrote to dr. bastian in the early part of july, 1877—

“do you know why i desire so much to fight and conquer you? it is because you are one of the principal adepts of a medical doctrine which i believe to be fatal to progress in the art of healing—the doctrine of the spontaneity of all diseases.... that is an error which, i repeat it, is harmful to medical progress. from the prophylactic as well as from the therapeutic point of view, the fate of the physician and surgeon depends upon the adoption of the one or the other of these two doctrines.{257}”