1873--1877
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 Rôle 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 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 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 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 Grâce physician, Villemin--a modest, gentle-voiced man,
who, under his quiet exterior, hid a veritable 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
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 septicæmia 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 imagined that
one of the principal causes of fatal accidents due to septicæmia 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 Hôtel 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.
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 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-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 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 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 anæsthesia. 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
pyæmia, gangrene, erysipelas, septicæmia, 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.
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 Hôpital 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 septicæmia 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
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 Hôtel, 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 conceived 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 Hôtel 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 Hôtel 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--
“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.
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 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 Hôtel 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 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. 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 Grâce, 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 opponents 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 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 “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 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, some advice which highly
irritated him: they advised him to rest. It is true that his cerebral
hæmorrhage 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 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
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, 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 façade 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 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. 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 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 proposed 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 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 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.”