CHAPTER XI

1882--1884

Pasteur was in the midst of some new experiments when he heard that the

date of the election to the Académie Française was fixed for December 8.

Certain candidates spent half their time in _fiacres_, paying the

traditional calls, counting the voters, calculating their chances, and

taking every polite phrase for a promise. Pasteur, with perfect

simplicity, contented himself with saying to the Academicians whom he

went to see, “I had never in my life contemplated the great honour of

entering the Académie Française. People have been kind enough to say to

me, ‘Stand and you will be elected.’ It is impossible to resist an

invitation so glorious for Science and so flattering to myself.”

One member of the Académie, Alexandre Dumas, refused to let Pasteur call

on him. “I will not allow him to come and see me,” he said; “I will

myself go and thank him for consenting to become one of us.” He agreed

with M. Grandeau, who wrote to Pasteur that “when Claude Bernard and

Pasteur consent to enter the ranks of a Society, all the honour is for

the latter.”

When Pasteur was elected, his youthfulness of sentiment was made

apparent; it seemed to him an immense honour to be one of the Forty. He

therefore prepared his reception speech with the greatest care, without

however allowing his scientific work to suffer. The life of his

predecessor interested him more and more; to work in the midst of family

intimacy had evidently been Littré’s ideal of happiness.

Few people, beyond Littré’s colleagues, know that his wife and daughter

collaborated in his great work; they looked out the quotations necessary

to that Dictionary, of which, if laid end to end, the columns would

reach a length of thirty-seven kilometres. The Dictionary, commenced in

1857, when Littré was almost sixty years old, was only interrupted

twice: in 1861, when Auguste Comte’s widow asked Littré for a biography

of the founder of positive philosophy; and in 1870, when the life of

France was compromised and arrested during long months.

Littré, poor and disinterested as he was, had been able to realize his

only dream, which was to possess a house in the country. Pasteur,

bringing to bear in this, as in all things, his habits of scrupulous

accuracy, left his laboratory for one day, and visited that villa,

situated near Maisons-Laffitte.

The gardener who opened the door to him might have been the owner of

that humble dwelling; the house was in a bad state of repair, but the

small garden gave a look of comfort to the little property. It had been

the only luxury of the philosopher, who enjoyed cultivating vegetables

while quoting Virgil, Horace or La Fontaine, and listened to the

nightingale when early dawn found him still sitting at his work.

After visiting this house and garden, reflecting as they did the life of

a sage, Pasteur said sadly, “Is it possible that such a man should have

been so misjudged!”

A crucifix, hanging in the room where Littré’s family were wont to work,

testified to his respect for the beliefs of his wife and daughter. “I

know too well,” he said one day, “what are the sufferings and

difficulties of human life, to wish to take from any one convictions

which may comfort them.”

Pasteur also studied the Positivist doctrine of which Auguste Comte had

been the pontiff and Littré the prophet. This scientific conception of

the world affirms nothing, denies nothing, beyond what is visible and

easily demonstrated. It suggests altruism, a “subordination of

personality to sociability,” it inspires patriotism and the love of

humanity. Pasteur, in his scrupulously positive and accurate work, his

constant thought for others, his self-sacrificing devotion to humanity,

might have been supposed to be an adept of this doctrine. But he found

it lacking in one great point. “Positivism,” he said, “does not take

into account the most important of positive notions, that of the

Infinite.” He wondered that Positivism should confine the mind within

limits; with an impulse of deep feeling, Pasteur, the scientist, the

slow and precise observer, wrote the following passage in his speech:

“What is beyond? the human mind, actuated by an invincible force, will

never cease to ask itself: What is beyond?... It is of no use to

answer: Beyond is limitless space, limitless time or limitless grandeur;

no one understands those words. He who proclaims the existence of the

Infinite--and none can avoid it--accumulates in that affirmation more of

the supernatural than is to be found in all the miracles of all the

religions; for the notion of the Infinite presents that double character

that it forces itself upon us and yet is incomprehensible. When this

notion seizes upon our understanding, we can but kneel.... I see

everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world;

through it, the supernatural is at the bottom of every heart. The idea

of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of

the Infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the

worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah,

or Jesus; and on the pavement of those temples, men will be seen

kneeling, prostrated, annihilated in the thought of the Infinite.”

At that time, when triumphant Positivism was inspiring many leaders of

men, the very man who might have given himself up to what he called “the

enchantment of Science” proclaimed the Mystery of the universe; with his

intellectual humility, Pasteur bowed before a Power greater than human

power. He continued with the following words, worthy of being preserved

for ever, for they are of those which pass over humanity like a Divine

breath: “Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and

who obeys it; ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel

virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions;

they all reflect light from the Infinite.”

Pasteur concluded by a supreme homage to Littré. “Often have I fancied

him seated by his wife, as in a picture of early Christian times: he,

looking down upon earth, full of compassion for human suffering; she, a

fervent Catholic, her eyes raised to heaven: he, inspired by all earthly

virtues; she, by every Divine grandeur; uniting in one impulse and in

one heart the twofold holiness which forms the aureole of the Man-God,

the one proceeding from devotion to humanity, the other emanating from

ardent love for the Divinity: she a saint in the canonic sense of the

word, he a lay-saint. This last word is not mine; I have gathered it on

the lips of all those that knew him.”

The two colleagues whom Pasteur had chosen for his Academic sponsors

were J. B. Dumas and Nisard. Dumas, who appreciated more than any one

the scientific progress due to Pasteur, and who applauded his brilliant

success, was touched by the simplicity and modesty which his former

pupil showed, now as in the distant past, when the then obscure young

man sat taking notes on the Sorbonne benches.

Their mutual relationship had remained unchanged when Pasteur,

accompanied by one of his family, rang at Dumas’ door in March, 1882,

with the manuscript of his noble speech in his pocket; he seemed more

like a student, respectfully calling on his master, than like a savant

affectionately visiting a colleague.

Dumas received Pasteur in a little private study adjoining the fine

drawing-room where he was accustomed to dispense an elegant hospitality.

Pasteur drew a stool up to a table and began to read, but in a shy and

hurried manner, without even raising his eyes towards Dumas, who

listened, enthroned in his armchair, with an occasional murmur of

approbation. Whilst Pasteur’s careworn face revealed some of his ardent

struggles and persevering work, nothing perturbed Dumas’ grave and

gentle countenance. His smile, at most times prudently affable and

benevolent in varying degree, now frankly illumined his face as he

congratulated Pasteur. He called to mind his own reception speech at the

Academy when he had succeeded Guizot, and the fact that he too had

concluded by a confession of faith in his Creator.

Pasteur’s other sponsor, Nisard, almost an octogenarian, was not so

happy as Dumas; death had deprived him of almost all his old friends. It

was a great joy to him when Pasteur came to see him on the wintry Sunday

afternoons; he fancied himself back again at the Ecole Normale and the

happy days when he reigned supreme in that establishment. Pasteur’s

deference, greater even perhaps than it had been in former times, aided

the delightful delusion. Though Nisard was ever inclined to bring a

shade of patronage into every intimacy, he was a conversationalist of

the old and rare stamp. Pasteur enjoyed hearing Nisard’s recollections

and watching for a smile lighting up the almost blind face. Those Sunday

talks reminded him of the old delightful conversations with Chappuis at

the Besançon College when, in their youthful fervour, they read together

André Chénier’s and Lamartine’s verses. Eighteen years later, Pasteur

had not missed one of Sainte Beuve’s lectures to the Ecole Normale

students; he liked that varied and penetrating criticism, opening

sidelights on every point of the literary horizon. Nisard understood

criticism rather as a solemn treaty, with clauses and conditions; with

his taste for hierarchy, he even gave different ranks to authors as if

they had been students before his chair. But, when he spoke, the

rigidity of his system was enveloped in the grace of his conversation.

Pasteur had but a restricted corner of his mind to give to literature,

but that corner was a privileged one; he only read what was really worth

reading, and every writer worthy of the name inspired him with more than

esteem, with absolute respect. He had a most exalted idea of Literature

and its influence on society; he was saying one day to Nisard that

Literature was a great educator: “The mind alone can if necessary

suffice to Science; both the mind and the heart intervene in Literature,

and that explains the secret of its superiority in leading the general

train of thought.” This was preaching to an apostle: no homage to

literature ever seemed too great in the eyes of Nisard.

He approved of the modest exordium in Pasteur’s speech--

“At this moment when presenting myself before this illustrious assembly,

I feel once more the emotion with which I first solicited your

suffrages. The sense of my own inadequacy is borne in upon me afresh,

and I should feel some confusion in finding myself in this place, were

it not my duty to attribute to Science itself the honour--so to speak,

an impersonal one--which you have bestowed upon me.”

The Permanent Secretary, Camille Doucet, well versed in the usages of

the Institute, and preoccupied with the effect produced, thought that

the public would not believe in such self-effacement, sincere as it was,

and sent the following letter to Pasteur with the proof-sheet of his

speech--

“Dear and honoured colleague, allow me to suggest to you a modification

of your first sentence; your modesty is excessive.”

Camille Doucet had struck out _the sense of my own inadequacy is borne

in upon me afresh_, and further _so to speak, an impersonal one_.

Pasteur consulted Nisard, and _the sense of my own inadequacy_ was

replaced by _the sense of my deficiencies_, while Pasteur adhered

energetically to _so to speak, an impersonal one_; he saw in his

election less a particular distinction than a homage rendered to Science

in general.

A reception at the Académie Française is like a sensational first night

at a theatre; a special public is interested days beforehand in every

coming detail. Wives, daughters, sisters of Academicians, great ladies

interested in coming candidates, widows of deceased Academicians,

laureates of various Academy prizes--the whole literary world agitates

to obtain tickets. Pasteur’s reception promised to be full of interest,

some even said piquancy, for it fell to Renan to welcome him.

In order to have a foretaste of the contrast between the two men it was

sufficient to recall Renan’s opening speech three years before, when he

succeeded Claude Bernard. His thanks to his colleagues began thus--

“Your cenaculum is only reached at the age of Ecclesiastes, a delightful

age of serene cheerfulness, when after a laborious prime, it begins to

be seen that all is but vanity, but also that some vain things are

worthy of being lingeringly enjoyed.”

The two minds were as different as the two speeches; Pasteur took

everything seriously, giving to words their absolute sense; Renan, an

incomparable writer, with his supple, undulating style, slipped away and

hid himself within the sinuosities of his own philosophy. He disliked

plain statements, and was ever ready to deny when others affirmed, even

if he afterwards blamed excessive negation in his own followers. He

religiously consoled those whose faith he destroyed, and, whilst

invoking the Eternal, claimed the right of finding fault even there.

When applauded by a crowd, he would willingly have murmured _Noli me

tangere_, and even added with his joyful mixture of disdain and

good-fellowship, “Let infinitely witty men come unto me.”

On that Thursday, April 27, 1882, the Institute was crowded. When the

noise had subsided, Renan, seated at the desk as Director of the Academy

between Camille Doucet, the Permanent Secretary, and Maxime du Camp, the

Chancellor, declared the meeting opened. Pasteur, looking paler than

usual, rose from his seat, dressed in the customary green-embroidered

coat of an Academician, wearing across his breast the Grand Cordon of

the Legion of Honour. In a clear, grave voice, he began by expressing

his deep gratification, and, with the absolute knowledge and sincerity

which always compelled the attention of his audience, of whatever kind,

he proceeded to praise his predecessor. There was no artifice of

composition, no struggle after effect, only a homage to the man,

followed almost immediately by a confession of dissent on philosophic

questions. He was listened to with attentive emotion, and when he showed

the error of Positivism in attempting to do away with the idea of the

Infinite, and proclaimed the instinctive and necessary worship by Man of

the great Mystery, he seemed to bring out all the weakness and the

dignity of Man--passing through this world bowed under the law of Toil

and with the prescience of the Ideal--into a startling and consolatory

light.

One of the privileges of the Academician who receives a new member is to

remain seated in his armchair before a table, and to comfortably prepare

to read his own speech, in answer, often in contradiction, to the first.

Renan, visibly enjoying the presidential chair, smiled at the audience

with complex feelings, understood by some who were his assiduous

readers. Respect for so much work achieved by a scientist of the first

rank in the world; a gratified feeling of the honour which reverted to

France; some personal pleasure in welcoming such a man in the name of

the Académie, and, at the same time, in the opportunity for a light and

ironical answer to Pasteur’s beliefs--all these sensations were

perceptible in Renan’s powerful face, the benevolence of whose soft blue

eyes was corrected by the redoubtable keenness of the smile.

He began in a caressing voice by acknowledging that the Academy was

somewhat incompetent to judge of the work and glory of Pasteur. “But,”

he added, with graceful eloquence, “apart from the ground of the

doctrine, which is not within our attributions, there is, Sir, a

greatness on which our experience of the human mind gives us a right to

pronounce an opinion; something which we recognize in the most varied

applications, which belongs in the same degree to Galileo, Pascal,

Michael-Angelo, or Molière; something which gives sublimity to the poet,

depth to the philosopher, fascination to the orator, divination to the

scientist.

“That common basis of all beautiful and true work, that divine fire,

that indefinable breath which inspires Science, Literature, and Art--we

have found it in you, Sir--it is Genius. No one has walked so surely

through the circles of elemental nature; your scientific life is like

unto a luminous tract in the great night of the Infinitesimally Small,

in that last abyss where life is born.”

After a brilliant and rapid enumeration of the Pastorian discoveries,

congratulating Pasteur on having touched through his art the very

confines of the springs of life, Renan went on to speak of truth as he

would have spoken of a woman: “Truth, Sir, is a great coquette; she will

not be sought with too much passion, but often is most amenable to

indifference. She escapes when apparently caught, but gives herself up

if patiently waited for; revealing herself after farewells have been

said, but inexorable when loved with too much fervour.” And further:

“Nature is plebeian, and insists upon work, preferring horny hands and

careworn brows.”

He then commenced a courteous controversy. Whilst Pasteur, with his

vision of the Infinite, showed himself as religious as Newton, Renan,

who enjoyed moral problems, spoke of Doubt with delectation. “The answer

to the enigma which torments and charms us will never be given to us....

What matters it, since the imperceptible corner of reality which we see

is full of delicious harmonies, and since life, as bestowed upon us, is

an excellent gift, and for each of us a revelation of infinite

goodness?”

Legend will probably hand to posterity a picture of Renan as he was in

those latter days, ironically cheerful and unctuously indulgent. But,

before attaining the quizzical tranquillity he now exhibited to the

Academy, he had gone through a complete evolution. When about the age of

forty-eight, he might bitterly have owned that there was not one basis

of thought which in him had not crumbled to dust. Beliefs, political

ideas, his ideal of European civilization, all had fallen to the ground.

After his separation from the Church, he had turned to historical

science; Germany had appeared to him, as once to Madame de Staël and so

many others, as a refuge for thinkers. It had seemed to him that a

collaboration between France, England, and Germany would create “An

invincible trinity, carrying the world along the road of progress

through reason.” But that German façade which he took for that of a

temple hid behind it the most formidable barracks which Europe had ever

known, and beside it were cannon foundries, death-manufactories, all the

preparations of the German people for the invasion of France. His

awakening was bitter; war as practised by the Prussians, with a method

in their cruelty, filled him with grief.

Time passed and his art, like a lily of the desert growing amongst

ruins, gave flowers and perfumes to surrounding moral devastation, A

mixture of disdain and nobility now made him regard as almost

imperceptible the number of men capable of understanding his

philosophical elevation. Pasteur had bared his soul; Renan took pleasure

in throwing light on the intellectual antithesis of certain minds, and

on their points of contact.

“Allow me, Sir, to recall to you your fine discovery of right and left

tartaric acids.... There are some minds which it is as impossible to

bring together as it is impossible, according to your own comparison, to

fit two gloves one into the other. And yet both gloves are equally

necessary; they complete each other. One’s two hands cannot be

superposed, they may be joined. In the vast bosom of nature, the most

diverse efforts, added to each other, combine with each other, and

result in a most majestic unity.”

Renan handled the French language, “this old and admirable language,

poor but to those who do not know it,” with a dexterity, a choice of

delicate shades, of tasteful harmonies which have never been surpassed.

Able as he was to define every human feeling, he went on from the above

comparison, painting divergent intellectual capabilities, to the

following imprecation against death: “Death, according to a thought

admired by M. Littré, is but a function, the last and quietest of all.

To me it seems odious, hateful, insane, when it lays its cold blind hand

on virtue and on genius. A voice is in us, which only great and good

souls can hear, and that voice cries unceasingly ‘Truth and Good are the

ends of thy life; sacrifice all to that goal’; and when, following the

call of that siren within us, claiming to bear the promises of life, we

reach the place where the reward should await us, the deceitful consoler

fails us. Philosophy, which had promised us the secret of death, makes a

lame apology, and the ideal which had brought us to the limits of the

air we breathe disappears from view at the supreme hour when we look for

it. Nature’s object has been attained; a powerful effort has been

realized, and then, with characteristic carelessness, the enchantress

abandons us and leaves us to the hooting birds of the night.”

Renan, save in one little sentence in his answer to Pasteur--“The divine

work accomplishes itself by the intimate tendency to what is Good and

what is True in the universe”--did not go further into the statement of

his doctrines. Perhaps he thought them too austere for his audience; he

was wont to eschew critical and religious considerations when in a

world which he looked upon as frivolous. Moreover, he thought his own

century amusing, and was willing to amuse it further. If he raised his

eyes to Heaven, he said that we owe virtue to the Eternal, but that we

have the right to add to it irony. Pasteur thought it strange that irony

should be applied to subjects which have beset so many great minds and

which so many simple hearts solve in their own way.

* * * * *

The week which followed Pasteur’s reception at the Académie Française

brought him a manifestation of applause in the provinces. The town of

Aubenas in the Ardèche was erecting a statue to Olivier de Serres, and

desired to associate with the name of the founder of the silk industry

in France in the sixteenth century that of its preserver in the

nineteenth.

This was the second time that a French town proclaimed its gratitude

towards Pasteur. A few months before, the Melun Agricultural Society had

held a special meeting in his honour, and had decided “to strike a medal

with Pasteur’s effigy on it, in commemoration of one of the greatest

services ever rendered by Science to Agriculture.”

But amidst this pæan of praise, Pasteur, instead of dwelling

complacently on the recollection of his experiments at Pouilly le Fort,

was absorbed in one idea, characteristic of the man: he wanted to at

once begin some experiments on the peripneumonia of horned cattle. The

veterinary surgeon, Rossignol, had just been speaking on this subject to

the meeting. Pasteur, who had recently been asked by the Committee of

Epizootic Diseases to inquire into the mortality often caused by the

inoculation of the peripneumonia virus, reminded his hearers in a few

words of the variable qualities of virus and how the slightest impurity

in a virus may exercise an influence on the effects of that virus.

He and his collaborators had vainly tried to cultivate the virus of

peripneumonia in chicken-broth, veal-broth, yeast-water, etc. They had

to gather the virus from the lung of a cow which had died of

peripneumonia, by means of tubes previously sterilized; it was injected,

with every precaution against alteration, under the skin of the tail of

the animal, this part being chosen on account of the thickness of the

skin and of the cellular tissue. By operating on other parts, serious

accidents were apt to occur, the virus being extremely violent, so much

so in fact that the local irritation sometimes went so far as to cause

the loss of part of the tail. At the end of the same year (1882),

Pasteur published in the _Recueil de la Médecine Vétérinaire_ a paper

indicating the following means of preserving the virus in a state of

purity--

“Pure virus remains virulent for weeks and months. One lung is

sufficient to provide large quantities of it, and its purity can easily

be tested in a stove and even in ordinary temperature. From one lung

only, enough can be procured to be used for many animals. Moreover,

without having recourse to additional lungs, the provision of virus

could be maintained in the following manner; it would suffice, before

exhausting the first stock of virus, to inoculate a young calf behind

the shoulder. Death speedily supervenes, and all the tissues are

infiltrated with a serosity, which in its turn becomes virulent. This

also can be collected and preserved in a state of purity.” It remained

to be seen whether virus thus preserved would become so attenuated as to

lose all degree of virulence.

Aubenas, then, wished to follow the example of Melun. In deference to

the unanimous wish of the inhabitants of the little town, Pasteur went

there on the 4th of May. His arrival was a veritable triumph; there were

decorations at the station, floral arches in the streets, brass and

other bands, speeches from the Mayor, presentation of the Municipal

Council, of the Chamber of Commerce, etc., etc. Excitement reigned

everywhere, and the music of the bands was almost drowned by the

acclamations of the people. At the meeting of the Agricultural Society,

Pasteur was offered a medal with his own effigy, and a work of art

representing genii around a cup, their hands full of cocoons. A little

microscope--that microscope which had been called an impracticable

instrument, fit for scientists only--figured as an attribute.

“For us all,” said the President of the Aubenas Spinning Syndicate, “you

have been the kindly magician whose intervention conjured away the

scourge which threatened us; in you we hail our benefactor.”

Pasteur, effacing his own personality as he had done at the Académie,

laid all this enthusiasm and gratitude as an offering to Science.

“I am not its object, but rather a pretext for it,” he said, and

continued: “Science has been the ruling passion of my life. I have lived

but for Science, and in the hours of difficulty which are inherent to

protracted efforts, the thought of France upheld my courage. I

associated her greatness with the greatness of Science.

“By erecting a statue to Olivier de Serres, the illustrious son of the

Vivarais, you give to France a noble example; you show to all that you

venerate great men and the great things they have accomplished. Therein

lies fruitful seed; you have gathered it, may your sons see it grow and

fructify. I look back upon the time, already distant, when, desirous of

responding to the suggestions of a kind and illustrious friend, I left

Paris to study in a neighbouring Department the scourge which was

decimating your _magnaneries_. For five years I struggled to obtain some

knowledge of the evil and the means of preventing it; and, after having

found it, I still had to struggle to implant in other minds the

convictions I had acquired.

“All that is past and gone now, and I can speak of it with moderation. I

am not often credited with that characteristic, and yet I am the most

hesitating of men, the most fearful of responsibility, so long as I am

not in possession of a proof. But when solid scientific proofs confirm

my convictions, no consideration can prevent me from defending what I

hold to be true.

“A man whose kindness to me was truly paternal (Biot) had for his motto:

_Per vias rectas_. I congratulate myself that I borrowed it from him. If

I had been more timid or more doubtful in view of the principles I had

established, many points of science and of application might have

remained obscure and subject to endless discussion. The hypothesis of

spontaneous generation would still throw its veil over many questions.

Your nurseries of silkworms would be under the sway of charlatanism,

with no guide to the production of good seed. The vaccination of

charbon, destined to preserve agriculture from immense losses, would be

misunderstood and rejected as a dangerous practice.

“Where are now all the contradictions? They pass away, and Truth

remains. After an interval of fifteen years, you now render it a noble

testimony. I therefore feel a deep joy in seeing my efforts understood

and celebrated in an impulse of sympathy which will remain in my memory

and in that of my family as a glorious recollection.”

Pasteur was not allowed to return at once to his laboratory. The

agricultors and veterinary surgeons of Nîmes, who had taken an interest

in all the tests on the vaccination of charbon, had, in their turn,

drawn up a programme of experiments.

Pasteur arrived at a meeting of the Agricultural Society of the Gard in

time to hear the report of the veterinary surgeons and to receive the

congratulations of the Society. The President expressed to him the

gratitude of all the cattle-owners and breeders, hitherto powerless to

arrest the progress of the disease which he had now vanquished. Whilst a

commemoration medal was being offered to him and a banquet being

prepared--for Southern enthusiasm always implies a series of

toasts--Pasteur thanked these enterprising men who were contemplating

new experiments in order to dispel the doubts of a few veterinary

surgeons, and especially the characteristic distrust, felt by some of

the shepherds, of everything that did not come from the South. Sheep,

oxen, and horses, some of them vaccinated, others intact, were put at

Pasteur’s disposal; he, with his usual energy, fixed the experiments for

the next morning at eight o’clock. After inoculating all the animals

with the charbon virus, Pasteur announced that those which had been

vaccinated would remain unharmed, but that the twelve unvaccinated sheep

would be dead or dying within forty-eight hours. An appointment was made

for next day but one, on May 11, at the town knacker’s, near the Bridge

of Justice, where post-mortem examinations were made. Pasteur then went

on to Montpellier, where he was expected by the Hérault Central Society

of Agriculture, who had also made some experiments and had asked him to

give a lecture at the Agricultural School. He entered the large hall,

feeling very tired, almost ill, but his face lighted up at the sight of

that assembly of professors and students who had hurried from all the

neighbouring Faculties, and those agricultors crowding from every part

of the Department, all of them either full of scientific curiosity or

moved by their agricultural interests. His voice, at first weak and

showing marks of weariness, soon became strengthened, and, forgetting

his fatigue, he threw himself into the subject of virulent and

contagious diseases. He gave himself up, heart and soul, to this

audience for two whole hours, inspiring every one with his own

enthusiasm. He stopped now and then to invite questions, and his answers

to the objectors swept away the last shred of resistance.

“We must not,” said the Vice-President of the Agricultural Society, M.

Vialla, “encroach further on the time of M. Pasteur, which belongs to

France itself. Perhaps, however he will allow me to prefer a last

request: he has delivered us from the terrible scourge of splenic fever;

will he now turn to a no less redoubtable infection, viz. rot, which is,

so to speak, endemic in our regions? He will surely find the remedy for

it.”

“I have hardly finished my experiments on splenic fever,” answered

Pasteur gently, “and you want me to find a remedy for rot! Why not for

phylloxera as well?” And, while regretting that the days were not

longer, he added, with the energy of which he had just given a new

proof: “As to efforts, I am yours _usque ad mortem_.”

He afterwards was the honoured guest at the banquet prepared for him. It

was now not only Sericiculture, but also Agriculture, which proclaimed

its infinite gratitude to him; he was given an enthusiastic ovation, in

which, as usual, he saw no fame for himself, but for work and science

only.

On May 11, at nine o’clock in the morning, he was again at Nîmes to meet

the physicians, veterinary surgeons, cattle-breeders, and shepherds at

the Bridge of Justice. Of the twelve sheep, six were already dead, the

others dying; it was easy to see that their symptoms were the same as

are characteristic of the ordinary splenic fever. “M. Pasteur gave all

necessary explanations with his usual modesty and clearness,” said the

local papers.

“And now let us go back to work!” exclaimed Pasteur, as he stepped into

the Paris express; he was impatient to return to his laboratory.

* * * * *

In order to give him a mark of public gratitude greater still than that

which came from this or that district, the Académie des Sciences

resolved to organize a general movement of Scientific Societies. It was

decided to present him with a medal, engraved by Alphée Dubois, and

bearing on one side Pasteur’s profile and on the other the inscription:

“To Louis Pasteur, his colleagues, his friends, and his admirers.”

On June 25, a Sunday, a delegation, headed by Dumas, and composed of

Boussingault, Bouley, Jamin, Daubrée, Bertin, Tisserand and Davaine

arrived at the Ecole Normale and found Pasteur in the midst of his

family.

“My dear Pasteur,” said Dumas, in his deep voice, “forty years ago, you

entered this building as a student. From the very first, your masters

foresaw that you would be an honour to it, but no one would have dared

to predict the startling services which you were destined to render to

science, France, and the world.”

And after summing up in a few words Pasteur’s great career, the sources

of wealth which he had discovered or revived, the benefits he had

acquired to medicine and surgery: “My dear Pasteur,” continued Dumas,

with an affectionate emotion, “your life has known but success. The

scientific method which you use in such a masterly manner owes you its

greatest triumphs. The Ecole Normale is proud to number you amongst its

pupils; the Académie des Sciences is proud of your work; France ranks

you amongst its glories.

“At this time, when marks of public gratitude are flowing towards you

from every quarter, the homage which we have come to offer you, in the

name of your admirers and friends, may seem worthy of your particular

attention. It emanates from a spontaneous and universal feeling, and it

will preserve for posterity the faithful likeness of your features.

“May you, my dear Pasteur, long live to enjoy your fame, and to

contemplate the rich and abundant fruit of your work. Science,

agriculture, industry, and humanity will preserve eternal gratitude

towards you, and your name will live in their annals amongst the most

illustrious and the most revered.”

Pasteur, standing with bowed head, his eyes full of tears, was for a few

moments unable to reply, and then, making a violent effort, he said in a

low voice--

“My dear master--it is indeed forty years since I first had the

happiness of knowing you, and since you first taught me to love science.

“I was fresh from the country; after each of your classes, I used to

leave the Sorbonne transported, often moved to tears. From that moment,

your talent as a professor, your immortal labours and your noble

character have inspired me with an admiration which has but grown with

the maturity of my mind.

“You have surely guessed my feelings, my dear master. There has not been

one important circumstance in my life or in that of my family, either

happy or painful, which you have not, as it were, blessed by your

presence and sympathy.

“Again to-day, you take the foremost rank in the expression of that

testimony, very excessive, I think, of the esteem of my masters, who

have become my friends. And what you have done for me, you have done

for all your pupils; it is one of the distinctive traits of your nature.

Behind the individual, you have always considered France and her

greatness.

“What shall I do henceforth? Until now, great praise had inflamed my

ardour, and only inspired me with the idea of making myself worthy of it

by renewed efforts; but that which you have just given me in the names

of the Académie and of the Scientific Societies is in truth beyond my

courage.”

Pasteur, who for a year had been applauded by the crowd, received on

that June 25, 1882, the testimony which he rated above every other:

praise from his master.

Whilst he recalled the beneficent influence which Dumas had had over

him, those who were sitting in his drawing-room at the Ecole Normale

were thinking that Dumas might have evoked similar recollections with

similar charm. He too had known enthusiasms which had illumined his

youth. In 1822, the very year when Pasteur was born, Dumas, who was then

living in a student’s attic at Geneva, received the visit of a man about

fifty, dressed Directoire fashion, in a light blue coat with steel

buttons, a white waistcoat and yellow breeches. It was Alexander von

Humboldt, who had wished, on his way through Geneva, to see the young

man who, though only twenty-two years old, had just published, in

collaboration with Prévost, treatises on blood and on urea. That visit,

the long conversations, or rather the monologues, of Humboldt had

inspired Dumas with the feelings of surprise, pride, gratitude and

devotion with which the first meeting with a great man is wont to fill

the heart of an enthusiastic youth. When Dumas heard Humboldt speak of

Laplace, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Arago, Thenard, Cuvier, etc., and

describe them as familiarly accessible, instead of as the awe-inspiring

personages he had imagined, Dumas became possessed with the idea of

going to Paris, knowing those men, living near them and imbibing their

methods. “On the day when Humboldt left Geneva,” Dumas used to say, “the

town for me became empty.” It was thus that Dumas’ journey to Paris was

decided on, and his dazzling career of sixty years begun.

He was now near the end of his scientific career, closing peacefully

like a beautiful summer evening, and he was happy in the fame of his

former pupil. As he left the Ecole Normale, on that June afternoon, he

passed under the windows of the laboratory, where a few young men,

imbued with Pasteur’s doctrines, represented a future reserve for the

progress of science.

* * * * *

That year 1882 was the more interesting in Pasteur’s life, in that

though victory on many points was quite indisputable, partial struggles

still burst out here and there, and an adversary often arose suddenly

when he had thought the engagement over.

The sharpest attacks came from Germany. The Record of the Works of the

German Sanitary Office had led, under the direction of Dr. Koch and his

pupils, a veritable campaign against Pasteur, whom they declared

incapable of cultivating microbes in a state of purity. He did not even,

they said, know how to recognize the septic vibrio, though he had

discovered it. The experiments by which hens contracted splenic fever

under a lowered temperature after inoculation signified nothing. The

share of the earthworms in the propagation of charbon, the inoculation

into guinea-pigs of the germs found in the little cylinders produced by

those worms followed by the death of the guinea-pigs, all this they said

was pointless and laughable. They even contested the preserving

influence of vaccination.

Whilst these things were being said and written, the Veterinary School

of Berlin asked the laboratory of the Ecole Normale for some charbon

vaccine. Pasteur answered that he wished that experiments should be made

before a commission nominated by the German Government. It was

constituted by the Minister of Agriculture and Forests, and Virchow was

one of the members of it. A former student of the Ecole Normale--who,

after leaving the school first on the list of competitors for the

_agrégation_ of physical science, had entered the laboratory--one in

whom Pasteur founded many hopes, Thuillier, left for Germany with his

little tubes of attenuated virus. Pasteur was not satisfied; he would

have liked to meet his adversaries face to face and oblige them publicly

to own their defeat. An opportunity was soon to arise. He had come to

Arbois, as usual, for the months of August and September, and was having

some alterations made in his little house. The tannery pits were being

filled up. “It will not improve the house itself,” he wrote to his son,

“but it will be made brighter and more comfortable by having a tidy yard

and a garden along the riverside.”

The Committee of the International Congress of Hygiene, which was to

meet at Geneva, interrupted these peaceful holidays by inviting Pasteur

to read a paper on attenuated virus. As a special compliment, the whole

of one meeting, that of Tuesday, September 5, was to be reserved for his

paper only. Pasteur immediately returned to work; he only consented

under the greatest pressure to go for a short walk on the Besançon road

at five o’clock every afternoon. After spending the whole morning and

the whole afternoon sitting at his writing table over laboratory

registers, he came away grumbling at being disturbed in his work. If any

member of his family ventured a question on the proposed paper, he

hastily cut them short, declaring that he must be let alone. It was only

when Mme. Pasteur had copied out in her clear handwriting all the little

sheets covered with footnotes, that the contents of the paper became

known.

When Pasteur entered the Congress Hall, great applause greeted him on

every side. The seats were occupied, not only by the physicians and

professors who form the usual audience of a congress, but also by

tourists, who take an interest in scientific things when they happen to

be the fashion.

Pasteur spoke of the invitation he had received. “I hastened to accept

it,” he said, “and I am pleased to find myself the guest of a country

which has been a friend to France in good as in evil days. Moreover, I

hoped to meet here some of the contradictors of my work of the last few

years. If a congress is a ground for conciliation, it is in the same

degree a ground for courteous discussion. We all are actuated by a

supreme passion, that of progress and of truth.”

Almost always, at the opening of a congress, great politeness reigns in

a confusion of languages. Men are seen offering each other pamphlets,

exchanging visiting cards, and only lending an inattentive ear to the

solemn speeches going on. This time, the first scene of the first act

suspended all private conversation. Pasteur stood above the assembly in

his full strength and glory. Though he was almost sixty, his hair had

remained black, his beard alone was turning grey. His face reflected

indomitable energy; if he had not been slightly lame, and if his left

hand had not been a little stiff, no one could have supposed that he had

been struck with paralysis fourteen years before. The feeling of the

place France should hold in an International Congress gave him a proud

look and an imposing accent of authority. He was visibly ready to meet

his adversaries and to make of this assembly a tribunal of judges.

Except for a few diplomats who at the first words exchanged anxious

looks at the idea of possible polemics, Frenchmen felt happy at being

better represented than any other nation. Men eagerly pointed out to

each other Dr. Koch, twenty-one years younger than Pasteur, who sat on

one of the benches, listening, with impassive eyes behind his gold

spectacles.

Pasteur analysed all the work he had done with the collaboration of MM.

Chamberland, Roux, and Thuillier. He made clear to the most ignorant

among his hearers his ingenious experiments either to obtain, preserve

or modify the virulence of certain microbes. “It cannot be doubted,” he

said, “that we possess a general method of attenuation.... The general

principles are found, and it cannot be disbelieved that the future of

those researches is rich with the greatest hopes. But, however obvious a

demonstrated truth may be, it has not always the privilege of being

easily accepted. I have met in France and elsewhere with some obstinate

contradictors.... Allow me to choose amongst them the one whose personal

merit gives him the greatest claims to our attention, I mean Dr Koch, of

Berlin.”

Pasteur then summed up the various criticisms which had appeared in the

Record of the Works of the German Sanitary Office. “Perhaps there may be

some persons in this assembly,” he went on, “who share the opinions of

my contradictors. They will allow me to invite them to speak; I should

be happy to answer them.”

Koch, mounting the platform, declined to discuss the subject,

preferring, he said, to make answer in writing later on. Pasteur was

disappointed; he would have wished the Congress, or at least a

Commission designated by Koch, to decide on the experiments. He resigned

himself to wait. On the following days, as the members of the Congress

saw him attending meetings on general hygiene, school hygiene, and

veterinary hygiene, they hardly recognized in the simple, attentive man,

anxious for instruction, the man who had defied his adversary. Outside

the arena, Pasteur became again the most modest of men, never allowing

himself to criticize what he had not thoroughly studied. But, when sure

of his facts, he showed himself full of a violent passion, the passion

of truth; when truth had triumphed, he preserved not the least

bitterness of former struggles.

That day of the 5th September was remembered in Geneva. “All the honour

was for France,” wrote Pasteur to his son; “that was what I had wished.”

* * * * *

He was already keen in the pursuit of another malady which caused great

damage, the “rouget” disease or swine fever. Thuillier, ever ready to

start when a demonstration had to be made or an experiment to be

attempted, had ascertained, in March, 1882, in a part of the Department

of the Vienne, the existence of a microbe in the swine attacked with

that disease.

In order to know whether this microbe was the cause of the evil, the

usual operations of the sovereign method had to be resorted to. First of

all, a culture medium had to be found which was suitable to the

micro-organism (veal broth was found to be very successful); then a drop

of the culture had to be abstracted from the little phials where the

microbe was developing and sown into other flasks; lastly the culture

liquid had to be inoculated into swine. Death supervened with all the

symptoms of swine fever; the microbe was therefore the cause of the

evil? Could it be attenuated and a vaccine obtained? Being pressed to

study that disease, and to find the remedy for it, by M. Maucuer, a

veterinary surgeon of the Department of Vaucluse, living at Bollène,

Pasteur started, accompanied by his nephew, Adrien Loir, and M.

Thuillier. The three arrived at Bollène on September 13.

“It is impossible to imagine more obliging kindness than that of those

excellent Maucuers,” wrote Pasteur to his wife the next day. “Where, in

what dark corner they sleep, in order to give us two bedrooms, mine and

another with two beds, I do not like to think. They are young, and have

an eight-year-old son at the Avignon College, for whom they have

obtained a half-holiday to-day in order that he may be presented to ‘M.

Pasteur.’ The two men and I are taken care of in a manner you might

envy. It is colder here and more rainy than in Paris. I have a fire in

my room, that green oak-wood fire that you will remember we had at the

Pont Gisquet.

“I was much pleased to hear that the swine fever is far from being

extinguished. There are sick swine everywhere, some dying, some dead, at

Bollène and in the country around; the evil is disastrous this year. We

saw some dead and dying yesterday afternoon. We have brought here a

young hog who is very ill, and this morning we shall attempt vaccination

at a M. de Ballincourt’s, who has lost all his pigs, and who has just

bought some more in the hope that the vaccine will be preservative. From

morning till night we shall be able to watch the disease and to try to

prevent it. This reminds me of the pébrine, with pigsties and sick pigs

instead of nurseries full of dying silkworms. Not ten thousand, but at

least twenty thousand swine have perished, and I am told it is worse

still in the Ardèche.”

On the 17th, the day was taken up by the inoculation of some pigs on the

estate of M. de la Gardette, a few kilometres from Bollène. In the

evening, a former State Councillor, M. de Gaillard, came at the head of

a delegation to compliment Pasteur and invite him to a banquet. Pasteur

declined this honour, saying he would accept it when the swine fever was

conquered. They spoke to him of his past services, but he had no thought

for them; like all progress-seeking men, he saw but what was before him.

Experiments were being carried out--he had hastened to have an

experimental pigsty erected near M. Maucuer’s house--and already, on the

21st, he wrote to Mme. Pasteur, in one of those letters which resembled

the loose pages of a laboratory notebook--

“Swine fever is not nearly so obscure to me now, and I am persuaded that

with the help of time the scientific and practical problem will be

solved.

“Three post-mortem examinations to-day. They take a long time, but that

seems of no account to Thuillier, with his cool and patient eagerness.”

Three days later: “I much regret not being able to tell you yet that I

am starting back for Paris. It is quite impossible to abandon all these

experiments which we have commenced; I should have to return here at

least once or twice. The chief thing is that things are getting clearer

with every experiment. You know that nowadays a medical knowledge of

disease is nothing; it must be prevented beforehand. We are attempting

this, and I think I can foresee success; but keep this for yourself and

our children. I embrace you all most affectionately.

“P.S.--I have never felt better. Send me 1,000 fr.; I have but 300 fr.

left of the 1,600 fr. I brought. Pigs are expensive, and we are killing

a great many.”

At last on December 8: “I am sending M. Dumas a note for to-morrow’s

meeting at the Academy. If I had time I would transcribe it for the

laboratory and for René.”

“Our researches”--thus ran the report to the Academy--“may be summed up

in the following propositions--

“I. The swine fever, or rouget disease, is produced by a special

microbe, easy to cultivate outside the animal’s body. It is so tiny that

it often escapes the most attentive search. It resembles the microbe of

chicken cholera more than any other; its shape is also that of a figure

8, but finer and less visible than that of the cholera. It differs

essentially from the latter by its physiological properties; it kills

rabbits and sheep, but has no effect on hens.

“II. If inoculated in a state of purity into pigs, in almost

inappreciable doses, it speedily brings the fever and death, with all

the characteristics usual in _spontaneous_ cases. It is most deadly to

the white, so-called improved, race, that which is most sought after by

pork-breeders.

“III. Dr. Klein published in London (1878) an extensive work on swine

fever which he calls _Pneumo-enteritis of Swine_; but that author is

entirely mistaken as to the nature of the parasite. He has described as

the microbe of the rouget a bacillus with spores, more voluminous even

than the bacteridium of splenic fever. Dr. Klein’s microbe is very

different from the true microbe of swine fever, and has, besides, no

relation to the etiology of that disease.

“IV. After having satisfied ourselves by direct tests that the malady

does not recur, we have succeeded in inoculating in a benignant form,

after which the animal has proved refractory to the mortal disease.

“V. Though we consider that further control experiments are necessary,

we have already great confidence in this, that, dating from next spring,

vaccination by the virulent microbe of swine fever, attenuated, will

become the salvation of pigsties.”

Pasteur ended thus his letter of December 3: “We shall start to-morrow,

Monday. Adrien Loir and I shall sleep at Lyons. Thuillier will go

straight to Paris, to take care of ten little pigs which we have bought,

and which he will take with him. In this way they will not be kept

waiting at stations. Pigs, young and old, are very sensitive to cold;

they will be wrapped up in straw. They are very young and quite

charming; one cannot help getting fond of them.”

The next day Pasteur wrote to his son: “Everything has gone off well,

and we much hope, Thuillier and I, that preventive vaccination of this

evil can be established in a practical fashion. It would be a great

boon in pork-breeding countries, where terrible ravages are made by the

rouget (so called because the animals die covered with red or purple

blotches, already developed during the fever which precedes death). In

the United States, over a million swine died of this disease in 1879; it

rages in England and in Germany. This year, it has desolated the

Côtes-du-Nord, the Poitou, and the departments of the Rhone Valley. I

sent to M. Dumas yesterday a _résumé_ in a few lines of our results, to

be read at to-day’s meeting.”

Pasteur, once more in Paris, returned eagerly to his studies on divers

virus and on hydrophobia. If he was told that he over-worked himself, he

replied: “It would seem to me that I was committing a theft if I were to

let one day go by without doing some work.” But he was again disturbed

in the work he enjoyed by the contradictions of his opponents.

Koch’s reply arrived soon after the Bollène episode. The German

scientist had modified his views to a certain extent; instead of denying

the attenuation of virus as in 1881, he now proclaimed it as a discovery

of the first order. But he did not believe much, he said, in the

practical results of the vaccination of charbon.

Pasteur put forward, in response, a report from the veterinary surgeon

Boutet to the Chartres Veterinary and Agricultural School, made in the

preceding October. The sheep vaccinated in Eure et Loir during the last

year formed a total of 79,392. Instead of a mortality which had been

more than nine per cent, on the average in the last ten years, the

mortality had only been 518 sheep, much less than one per cent; 5,700

sheep had therefore been preserved by vaccination. Amongst cattle 4,562

animals had been vaccinated; out of a similar number 300 usually died

every year. Since vaccination, only eleven cows had died.

“Such results appear to us convincing,” wrote M. Boutet. “If our

cultivators of the Beauce understand their own interest, splenic fever

and malignant pustules will soon remain a mere memory, for charbon

diseases never are spontaneous, and, by preventing the death of their

cattle by vaccination, they will destroy all possibility of propagation

of that terrible disease, which will in consequence entirely disappear.”

Koch continued to smile at the discovery on the earthworms’ action in

the etiology of anthrax. “You are mistaken, Sir,” replied Pasteur. “You

are again preparing for yourself a vexing change of opinion.” And he

concluded as follows: “However violent your attacks, Sir, they will not

hinder the success of the method of attenuated virus. I am confidently

awaiting the consequences which it holds in reserve to help humanity in

its struggle against the diseases which assault it.”

This debate was hardly concluded when new polemics arose at the Académie

de Médecine. A new treatment of typhoid fever was under discussion.

In 1870, M. Glénard, a Lyons medical student, who had enlisted, was,

with many others, taken to Stettin as prisoner of war. A German

physician, Dr. Brand, moved with compassion by the sufferings of the

vanquished French soldiers, showed them great kindness and devotion. The

French student attached himself to him, helped him with his work, and

saw him treat typhoid fever with success by baths at 20° C. Brand prided

himself on this cold-bath treatment, which produced numerous cures. M.

Glénard, on his return to Lyons, remembering with confidence this method

of which he had seen the excellent results, persuaded the physician of

the Croix Rousse hospital, where he resided, to attempt the same

treatment. This was done for ten years, and nearly all the Lyons

practitioners became convinced that Brand’s method was efficacious. M.

Glénard came to Paris and read to the Academy of Medicine a paper on the

cold-bath treatment of typhoid fever. The Academy appointed a

commission, composed of civil and military physicians, and the

discussion was opened.

The oratorical display which had struck Pasteur when he first came to

the Académie de Médecine was much to the fore on that occasion; the

merely curious hearers of that discussion had an opportunity of enjoying

medical eloquence, besides acquiring information on the new treatment of

typhoid fever. There were some vehement denunciations of the microbe

which was suspected in typhoid fever. “You aim at the microbe and you

bring down the patient!” exclaimed one of the orators, who added, amidst

great applause, that it was time “to offer an impassable barrier to such

adventurous boldness and thus to preserve patients from the unforeseen

dangers of that therapeutic whirlwind!”

Another orator took up a lighter tone: “I do not much believe in that

invasion of parasites which threatens us like an eleventh plague of

Egypt,” said M. Peter. And attacking the scientists who meddled with

medicine, _chymiasters_ as he called them, “They have come to this,” he

said, “that in typhoid fevers they only see _the_ typhoid fever, in

typhoid fever, fever only, and in fever, increased heat. They have thus

reached that luminous idea that heat must be fought by cold. This

organism is on fire, let us pour water over it; it is a fireman’s

doctrine.”

Vulpian, whose grave mind was not unlike Pasteur’s, intervened, and said

that new attempts should not be discouraged by sneers. Without

pronouncing on the merits of the cold-bath method, which he had not

tried, he looked beyond this discussion, indicating the road which

theoretically seemed to him to lead to a curative treatment. The first

thing was to discover the agent which causes typhoid fever, and then,

when that was known, attempt to destroy or paralyse it in the tissues of

typhoid patients, or else to find drugs capable either of preventing the

aggressions of that agent or of annihilating the effects of that

aggression, “to produce, relatively to typhoid fever, the effect

determined by salicylate of soda in acute rheumatism of the

articulations.”

Beyond the restricted audience, allowed a few seats in the Académie de

Médecine, the general public itself was taking an interest in this

prolonged debate. The very high death rate in the army due to typhoid

fever was the cause of this eager attention. Whilst the German army,

where Brand’s method was employed, hardly lost five men out of a

thousand, the French army lost more than ten per thousand.

Whilst military service was not compulsory, epidemics in barracks were

looked upon with more or less compassionate attention. But the thought

that typhoid fever had been more destructive within the last ten years

than the most sanguinary battle now awakened all minds and hearts. Is

then personal fear necessary to awaken human compassion?

Bouley, who was more given to propagating new doctrines than to

lingering on such philosophical problems, thought it was time to

introduce into the debate certain ideas on the great problems tackled by

medicine since the discovery of what might be called a fourth kingdom in

nature, that of microbia. In a statement read at the Académie de

Médecine, he formulated in broad lines the rôle of the infinitesimally

small and their activity in producing the phenomena of fermentations and

diseases. He showed by the parallel works of Pasteur on the one hand,

and M. Chauveau on the other, that contagion is the function of a living

element. “It is especially,” said Bouley, “on the question of the

prophylaxis of virulent diseases that the microbian doctrine has given

the most marvellous results. To seize upon the most deadly virus, to

submit them to a methodical culture, to cause modifying agents to act

upon them in a measured proportion, and thus to succeed in attenuating

them in divers degrees, so as to utilize their strength, reduced but

still efficacious, in transmitting a benignant malady by means of which

immunity is acquired against the deadly disease: what a beautiful

dream!! And M. Pasteur has made that dream into a reality!!!...”

The debate widened, typhoid fever became a mere incident. The pathogenic

action of the infinitesimally small entered into the discussion;

traditional medicine faced microbian medicine. M. Peter rushed once more

to the front rank for the fight. He declared that he did not apply the

term _chymiaster_ to Pasteur; he recognized that it was but “fair to

proclaim that we owe to M. Pasteur’s researches the most useful

practical applications in surgery and in obstetrics.” But considering

that medicine might claim more independence, he repeated that the

discovery of the material elements of virulent diseases did not throw so

much light as had been said, either on pathological anatomy, on the

evolution, on the treatment or especially on the prophylaxis of virulent

diseases. “Those are but natural history curiosities,” he added,

“interesting no doubt, but of very little profit to medicine, and not

worth either the time given to them or the noise made about them. After

so many laborious researches, nothing will be changed in medicine, there

will only be a few more microbes.”

A newspaper having repeated this last sentence, a professor of the

Faculty of Medicine, M. Cornil, simply recalled how, at the time when

the acarus of itch had been discovered, many partisans of old doctrines

had probably exclaimed, “What is your acarus to me? Will it teach me

more than I know already?” “But,” added M. Cornil, “the physician who

had understood the value of that discovery no longer inflicted internal

medication upon his patients to cure them of what seemed an inveterate

disease, but merely cured them by means of a brush and a little

ointment.”

M. Peter, continuing his violent speech, quoted certain vaccination

failures, and incompletely reported experiments, saying, grandly: “M.

Pasteur’s excuse is that he is a chemist, who has tried, out of a wish

to be useful, to reform medicine, to which he is a complete stranger....

“In the struggle I have undertaken the present discussion is but a

skirmish; but, to judge from the reinforcements which are coming to me,

the _mêlée_ may become general, and victory will remain, I hope, to the

larger battalions, that is to say, to the ‘old medicine.’”

Bouley, amazed that M. Peter should thus scout the notion of microbia

introduced into pathology, valiantly fought this “skirmish” alone. He

recalled the discussions à propos of tuberculosis, so obscure until a

new and vivifying notion came to simplify the solution of the problem.

“And you reject that solution! You say, ‘What does it matter to me?’...

What! M. Koch, of Berlin--who with such discoveries as he has made might

well abstain from envy--M. Koch points out to you the presence of

bacteria in tubercles, and that seems to you of no importance? But that

microbe gives you the explanation of those contagious properties of

tuberculosis so well demonstrated by M. Villemin, for it is the

instrument of virulence itself which is put under your eyes.”

Bouley then went on to refute the arguments of M. Peter, epitomized the

history of the discovery of the attenuation of virus, and all that this

method of cultures possible in an extra-organic medium might suggest

that was hopeful for a vaccine of cholera and of yellow fever, which

might be discovered one day and protect humanity against those terrible

scourges. He concluded thus--“Let M. Peter do what I have done; let him

study M. Pasteur, and penetrate thoroughly into all that is admirable,

through the absolute certainty of the results, in the long series of

researches which have led him from the discovery of ferments to that of

the nature of virus; and then I can assure him that instead of decrying

this great glory of France, of whom we must all be proud, he too will

feel himself carried away by enthusiasm and will bow with admiration and

respect before the chemist, who, though not a physician, illumines

medicine and dispels, in the light of his experiments, a darkness which

had hitherto remained impenetrable.”

A year before this (Peter had not failed to report the fact) an

experiment of anthrax vaccination had completely failed at the Turin

Veterinary School. All the sheep, vaccinated and non-vaccinated, had

succumbed subsequently to the inoculation of the blood of a sheep which

had died of charbon.

This took place in March, 1882. As soon as Pasteur heard of this

extraordinary fiasco, which seemed the counterpart of the

Pouilly-le-Fort experiment, he wrote on April 16 to the director of the

Turin Veterinary School, asking on what day the sheep had died the blood

of which had been used for the virulent inoculation.

The director answered simply that the sheep had died on the morning of

March 22, and that its blood had been inoculated during the course of

the following day. “There has been,” said Pasteur, “a grave scientific

mistake; the blood inoculated was septic as well as full of charbon.”

Though the director of the Turin Veterinary School affirmed that the

blood had been carefully examined and that it was in no wise septic,

Pasteur looked back on his 1877 experiments on anthrax and septicæmia,

and maintained before the Paris Central Veterinary Society on June 8,

1882, that the Turin School had done wrong in using the blood of an

animal at least twenty-four hours after its death, for the blood must

have been septic besides containing anthrax. The six professors of the

Turin School protested unanimously against such an interpretation. “We

hold it marvellous,” they wrote ironically, “that your Illustrious

Lordship should have recognized so surely, from Paris, the disease which

made such havoc amongst the animals vaccinated and non-vaccinated and

inoculated with blood containing anthrax in our school on March 23,

1882.

“It does not seem to us possible that a scientist should affirm the

existence of septicæmia in an animal he has not even seen....”

The quarrel with the Turin School had now lasted a year. On April 9,

1883, Pasteur appealed to the Academy of Sciences to judge of the Turin

incident and to put an end to this agitation, which threatened to cover

truth with a veil. He read out the letter he had just addressed to the

Turin professors.

“Gentlemen, a dispute having arisen between you and myself respecting

the interpretation to be given to the absolute failure of your control

experiment of March 23, 1882, I have the honour to inform you that, if

you will accept the suggestion, I will go to Turin any day you may

choose; you shall inoculate in my presence some virulent charbon into

any number of sheep you like. The exact moment of death in each case

shall be determined, and I will demonstrate to you that in every case

the blood of the corpse containing only charbon at the first will also

be septic on the next day. It will thus be established with absolute

certainty that the assertion formulated by me on June 8, 1882, against

which you have protested on two occasions, arises, not as you say, from

an arbitrary opinion, but from an immovable scientific principle; and

that I have legitimately affirmed from Paris the presence of septicæmia

without it being in the least necessary that I should have seen the

corpse of the sheep you utilized for your experiments.

“Minutes of the facts as they are produced shall be drawn up day by day,

and signed by the professors of the Turin Veterinary School and by the

other persons, physicians or veterinary surgeons, who may have been

present at the experiments; these minutes will then be published both at

the Academies of Turin and of Paris.”

Pasteur contented himself with reading this letter to the Academy of

Sciences. For months he had not attended the Academy of Medicine; he was

tired of incessant and barren struggles; he often used to come away from

the discussions worn out and excited. He would say to Messrs.

Chamberland and Roux, who waited for him after the meetings, “How is it

that certain doctors do not understand the range, the value, of our

experiments? How is it that they do not foresee the great future of all

these studies?”

The day after the Académie des Sciences meeting, judging that his letter

to Turin sufficiently closed the incident, Pasteur started for Arbois.

He wanted to set up a laboratory adjoining his house. Where the father

had worked with his hands, the son would work at his great

light-emitting studies.

On April 3 a letter from M. Peter had been read at the Academy of

Medicine, declaring that he did not give up the struggle and that

nothing would be lost by waiting.

At the following sitting, another physician, M. Fauvel, while declaring

himself an admirer of Pasteur’s work and full of respect for his person,

thought it well not to accept blindly all the inductions into which

Pasteur might find himself drawn, and to oppose those which were

contradictory to acquired facts. After M. Fauvel, M. Peter violently

attacked what he called “microbicidal drugs which may become homicidal,”

he said. When reading the account of this meeting, Pasteur had an

impulse of anger. His resolutions not to return to the Academy of

Medicine gave way before the desire not to leave Bouley alone to lead

the defensive campaign; he started for Paris.

As his family was then at Arbois, and the doors of his flat at the Ecole

Normale closed, the simplest thing for Pasteur was to go to the Hôtel du

Louvre, accompanied by a member of his family. The next morning he

carefully prepared his speech, and, at three o’clock in the afternoon,

he entered the Academy of Medicine. The President, M. Hardy, welcomed

him in these words--“Allow me, before you begin to speak, to tell you

that it is with great pleasure that we see you once again among us, and

that the Academy hopes that, now that you have once more found your way

to its precincts, you will not forget it again.”

After isolating and rectifying the points of discussion, Pasteur advised

M. Peter to make a more searching inquiry into the subject of anthrax

vaccination, and to trust to Time, the only sovereign judge. Should not

the recollection of the violent hostility encountered at first by Jenner

put people on their guard against hasty judgments? There was not one of

the doctors present who could not remember what had been written at one

time against vaccination!!!

He went on to oppose the false idea that each science should restrict

itself within its own limitations. “What do I, a physician, says M.

Peter, want with the minds of the chemist, the physicist and the

physiologist?

“On hearing him speak with so much disdain of the chemists and

physiologists who touch upon questions of disease, you might verily

think that he is speaking in the name of a science whose principles are

founded on a rock! Does he want proofs of the slow progress of

therapeutics? It is now six months since, in this assembly of the

greatest medical men, the question was discussed whether it is better to

treat typhoid fever with cold lotions or with quinine, with alcohol or

salicylic acid, or even not to treat it at all.

“And, when we are perhaps on the eve of solving the question of the

etiology of that disease by a microbe, M. Peter commits the medical

blasphemy of saying, ‘What do your microbes matter to me? It will only

be one microbe the more!’”

Amazed that sarcasm should be levelled against new studies which opened

such wide horizons, he denounced the flippancy with which a professor

of the Faculty of Medicine allowed himself to speak of vaccinations by

attenuated virus.

He ended by rejoicing once more that this great discovery should have

been a French one.

* * * * *

Pasteur went back to Arbois for a few days. On his return to Paris, he

was beginning some new experiments, when he received a long letter from

the Turin professors. Instead of accepting his offer, they enumerated

their experiments, asked some questions in an offended and ironical

manner, and concluded by praising an Italian national vaccine, which

produced absolute immunity in the future--when it did not kill.

“They cannot get out of this dilemma,” said Pasteur; “either they knew

my 1877 notes, unravelling the contradictory statements of Davaine,

Jaillard and Leplat, and Paul Bert, or they did not know them. If they

did not know them on March 22, 1882, there is nothing more to say; they

were not guilty in acting as they did, but they should have owned it

freely. If they did know them, why ever did they inoculate blood taken

from a sheep twenty-four hours after its death? They say that this blood

was not septic; but how do they know? They have done nothing to find

out. They should have inoculated some guinea-pigs, by choice, and then

tried some cultures in a vacuum to compare them with cultures in contact

with air. Why will they not receive me? A meeting between truth-seeking

men would be the most natural thing in the world!”

Still hoping to persuade his adversaries to meet him at Turin and be

convinced, Pasteur wrote to them. “_Paris, May 9, 1883._ Gentlemen--Your

letter of April 30 surprises me very much. What is in question between

you and me? That I should go to Turin, if you will allow me, to

demonstrate that sheep, dead of charbon, as numerous as you like, will,

for a few hours after their death, be exclusively infected with anthrax,

and that the day after their death they will present both anthrax and

septic infection; and that therefore, when, on March 23, 1882, wishing

to inoculate blood infected with anthrax only into sheep vaccinated and

non-vaccinated, you took blood from a carcase twenty-four hours after

death, you committed a grave scientific mistake.

“Instead of answering yes or no, instead of saying to me ‘Come to

Turin,’ or ‘Do not come,’ you ask me, in a manuscript letter of

seventeen pages, to send you from Paris, in writing, preliminary

explanations of all that I should have to demonstrate in Turin.

“Really, what is the good? Would not that lead to endless discussions?

It is because of the uselessness of a written controversy that I have

placed myself at your disposal.

“I have once more the honour of asking you to inform me whether you

accept the proposal made to you on April 9, that I should go to Turin to

place before your eyes the proofs of the facts I have just mentioned.

“P.S.--In order not to complicate the debate, I do not dwell upon the

many erroneous quotations and statements contained in your letter.”

M. Roux began to prepare an interesting curriculum of experiments to be

carried out at Turin. But the Turin professors wrote a disagreeable

letter, published a little pamphlet entitled _Of the Scientific

Dogmatism of the Illustrious Professor Pasteur_, and things remained as

they were.

All these discussions, renewed on so many divers points, were not

altogether a waste of time; some of them bore fruitful results by

causing most decisive proofs to be sought for. It has also made the path

of Pasteur’s followers wider and smoother that he himself should have

borne the brunt of the first opposition.

In the meanwhile, testimonials of gratitude continued to pour in from

the agricultors and veterinary surgeons who had seen the results of two

years’ practice of the vaccination against anthrax.

In the year 1882, 613,740 sheep and 83,946 oxen had been vaccinated. The

Department of the Cantal which had before lost about 3,000,000 fr. every

year, desired in June, 1883, on the occasion of an agricultural show, to

give M. Pasteur a special acknowledgement of their gratitude. It

consisted of a cup of silver-plated bronze, ornamented with a group of

cattle. Behind the group--imitating in this the town of Aubenas, who had

made a microscope figure as an attribute of honour--was represented, in

small proportions, an instrument which found itself for the first time

raised to such an exalted position, the little syringe used for

inoculations.

Pasteur was much pressed to come himself and receive this offering from

a land which would henceforth owe its fortune to him. He allowed

himself to be persuaded, and arrived, accompanied as usual by his

family.

The Mayor, surrounded by the municipal councillors, greeted him in these

words: “Our town of Aurillac is very small, and you will not find here

the brilliant population which inhabits great cities; but you will find

minds capable of understanding the scientific and humanitarian mission

which you have so generously undertaken. You will also find hearts

capable of appreciating your benefits and of preserving the memory of

them; your name has been on all our lips for a long time.”

Pasteur, visiting that local exhibition, did not resemble the official

personages who listen wearily to the details given them by a staff of

functionaries. He thought but of acquiring knowledge, going straight to

this or that exhibitor and questioning him, not with perfunctory

politeness, but with a real desire for practical information; no detail

seemed to him insignificant. “Nothing should be neglected,” he said;

“and a remark from a rough labourer who does well what he has to do is

infinitely precious.”

After visiting the products and agricultural implements, Pasteur was met

in the street by a peasant who stopped and waved his large hat,

shouting, “Long live Pasteur!”... “You have saved my cattle,” continued

the man, coming up to shake hands with him.

Physicians in their turn desired to celebrate and to honour him who,

though not a physician, had rendered such service to medicine.

Thirty-two of them assembled to drink his health. The head physician of

the Aurillac Hospital, Dr. Fleys, said in proposing the toast: “What the

mechanism of the heavens owes to Newton, chemistry to Lavoisier, geology

to Cuvier, general anatomy to Bichat, physiology to Claude Bernard,

pathology and hygiene will owe to Pasteur. Unite with me, dear

colleagues, and let us drink to the fame of the illustrious Pasteur, the

precursor of the medicine of the future, a benefactor to humanity.”

* * * * *

This glorious title was now associated with his name. In the first rank

of his enthusiastic admirers came the scientists, who, from the point of

view of pure science, admired the achievements, within those thirty-five

years, of that great man whose perseverance equalled his penetration.

Then came the manufacturers, the sericicultors, and the agricultors, who

owed their fortune to him who had placed every process he discovered

into the public domain. Finally, France could quote the words of the

English physiologist, Huxley, in a public lecture at the London Royal

Society: “Pasteur’s discoveries alone would suffice to cover the war

indemnity of five milliards paid by France to Germany in 1870.”

To that capital was added the inestimable price of human lives saved.

Since the antiseptic method had been adopted in surgical operations, the

mortality had fallen from 50 per 100 to 5 per 100.

In the lying-in hospitals, more than decimated formerly (for the

statistics had shown a death-rate of not only 100 but 200 per 1,000),

the number of fatalities was now reduced to 3 per 1,000 and soon

afterwards fell to 1 per 1,000. And, in consequence of the principles

established by Pasteur, hygiene was growing, developing, and at last

taking its proper place in the public view. So much progress

accomplished had brought Pasteur a daily growing acknowledgment of

gratitude, his country was more than proud of him. His powerful mind,

allied with his very tender heart, had brought to French glory an

aureole of charity.

The Government of the Republic remembered that England had voted two

national rewards to Jenner, one in 1802 and one in 1807, the first of

£10,000, and the second of £20,000. It was at the time of that

deliberation that Pitt, the great orator, exclaimed, “Vote, gentlemen,

your gratitude will never reach the amount of the service rendered.”

The French Ministry proposed to augment the 12,000 fr. pension accorded

to Pasteur in 1874 as a national recompense, and to make it 25,000 fr.,

to revert first to Pasteur’s widow, and then to his children. A

Commission was formed and Paul Bert again chosen to draw up the report.

On several occasions at the meetings of the commission one of its

members, Benjamin Raspail, exalted the parasitic theory propounded in

1843 by his own father. His filial pleading went so far as to accuse

Pasteur of plagiarism. Paul Bert, whilst recognizing the share

attributed by F. V. Raspail to microscopic beings, recalled the fact

that his attempt in favour of epidemic and contagious diseases had not

been adopted by scientists. “No doubt,” he said, “the parasitic origin

of the itch was now definitely accepted, thanks in a great measure to

the efforts of Raspail; but generalizations were considered as out of

proportion to the fact they were supposed to rest on. It seemed

excessive to conclude from the existence of the acarus of itch, visible

to the naked eye or with the weakest magnifying glass, the presence of

microscopic parasites in the humours of virulent diseases.... Such

hypotheses can be considered but as a sort of intuition.”

“Hypotheses,” said Pasteur, “come into our laboratories in armfuls; they

fill our registers with projected experiments, they stimulate us to

research--and that is all.” One thing only counted for him: experimental

verification.

Paul Bert, in his very complete report, quoted Huxley’s words to the

Royal Society and Pitt’s words to the House of Commons. He stated that

since the first Bill had been voted, a new series of discoveries, no

less marvellous from a theoretical point of view and yet more important

from a practical point of view, had come to strike the world of Science

with astonishment and admiration.” Recapitulating Pasteur’s works, he

said--

“They may be classed in three series, constituting three great

discoveries.

“The first one may be formulated thus: _Each fermentation is produced by

the development of a special microbe_.

“_The second one may be given this formula: Each infectious disease_

(those at least that M. Pasteur and his immediate followers have

studied) _is produced by the development within the organism of a

special microbe_.

“The third one may be expressed in this way: _The microbe of an

infectious disease, cultivated under certain detrimental conditions, is

attenuated in its pathogenic activity; from a virus it has become a

vaccine_.

“As a practical consequence of the first discovery, M. Pasteur has given

rules for the manufacture of beer and of vinegar, and shown how beer and

wine may be preserved against secondary fermentations which would turn

them sour, bitter or slimy, and which render difficult their transport

and even their preservation on the spot.

“As a practical consequence of the second discovery, M. Pasteur has

given rules to be followed to preserve cattle from splenic fever

contamination, and silkworms from the diseases which decimated them.

Surgeons, on the other hand, have succeeded, by means of the guidance it

afforded, in effecting almost completely the disappearance of erysipelas

and of the purulent infections which formerly brought about the death

of so many patients after operations.

“As a practical consequence of the third discovery, M. Pasteur has given

rules for, and indeed has effected, the preservation of horses, oxen,

and sheep from the anthrax disease which every year kills in France

about 20,000,000 francs’ worth. Swine will also be preserved from the

rouget disease which decimates them, and poultry from the cholera which

makes such terrible havoc among them. Everything leads us to hope that

rabies will also soon be conquered.” When Paul Bert was congratulated on

his report, he said, “Admiration is such a good, wholesome thing!!”

The Bill was voted by the Chamber, and a fortnight later by the Senate,

unanimously. Pasteur heard the first news through the newspapers, for he

had just gone to the Jura. On July 14, he left Arbois for Dôle, where he

had promised to be present at a double ceremony.

* * * * *

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

memorial plate placed on the house where Pasteur was born; truly a

harmonious association of ideas. The prefect of the Jura evidently felt

it when, while unveiling the statue in the presence of Pasteur, he said:

“This is Peace, who has inspired Genius and the great services it has

rendered.” The official procession, followed by popular acclamation,

went on to the narrow Rue des Tanneurs. When Pasteur, who had not seen

his native place since his childhood, found himself before that tannery,

in the low humble rooms of which his father and mother had lived, he

felt himself the prey to a strong emotion.

The mayor quoted these words from the resolutions of the Municipal

Council: “M. Pasteur is a benefactor of Humanity, one of the great men

of France; he will remain for all Dôlois and in particular those who,

like him, have risen from the ranks of the people, an object of respect

as well as an example to follow; we consider that it is our duty to

perpetuate his name in our town.”

The Director of Fine Arts, M. Kaempfen, representing the Government at

the ceremony, pronounced these simple words: “In the name of the

Government of the Republic, I salute the inscription which commemorates

the fact that in this little house, in this little street, was born, on

December 27, 1822, he who was to become one of the greatest scientists

of this century so great in science, and who has, by his admirable

labours, increased the glory of France and deserved well of the whole of

humanity.”

The feelings in Pasteur’s heart burst forth in these terms: “Gentlemen,

I am profoundly moved by the honour done to me by the town of Dôle; but

allow me, while expressing my gratitude, to protest against this excess

of praise. By according to me a homage rendered usually but to the

illustrious dead, you anticipate too much the judgment of posterity.

Will it ratify your decision? and should not you, Mr. Mayor, have

prudently warned the Municipal Council against such a hasty resolution?

“But after protesting, gentlemen, against the brilliant testimony of an

admiration which is more than I deserve, let me tell you that I am

touched, moved to the bottom of my soul. Your sympathy has joined on

that memorial plate the two great things which have been the passion and

the delight of my life: the love of Science and the cult of the home.

“Oh! my father, my mother, dear departed ones, who lived so humbly in

this little house, it is to you that I owe everything. Thy enthusiasm,

my brave-hearted mother, thou hast instilled it into me. If I have

always associated the greatness of Science with the greatness of France,

it is because I was impregnated with the feelings that thou hadst

inspired. And thou, dearest father, whose life was as hard as thy hard

trade, thou hast shown to me what patience and protracted effort can

accomplish. It is to thee that I owe perseverance in daily work. Not

only hadst thou the qualities which go to make a useful life, but also

admiration for great men and great things. To look upwards, learn to the

utmost, to seek to rise ever higher, such was thy teaching. I can see

thee now, after a hard day’s work, reading in the evening some story of

the battles in the glorious epoch of which thou wast a witness. Whilst

teaching me to read, thy care was that I should learn the greatness of

France.

“Be ye blessed, my dear parents, for what ye have been, and may the

homage done to-day to your little house be yours!

“I thank you, gentlemen, for the opportunity of saying aloud what I have

thought for sixty years. I thank you for this fête and for your welcome,

and I thank the town of Dôle, which loses sight of none of her

children, and which has kept such a remembrance of me.”

“Nothing is more exquisite,” wrote Bouley to Pasteur, “than those

feelings of a noble heart, giving credit to the parents’ influence for

all the glory with which their son has covered their name. All your

friends recognized you, and you appeared under quite a new light to

those who may have misjudged your heart by knowing of you only the

somewhat bitter words of some of your Academy speeches, when the love of

truth has sometimes made you forgetful of gentleness.”

It might have seemed that after so much homage, especially when offered

in such a delicate way as on this last occasion, Pasteur had indeed

reached a pinnacle of fame. His ambition however was not satisfied. Was

it then boundless, in spite of the modesty which drew all hearts towards

him? What more did he wish? Two great things: to complete his studies on

hydrophobia and to establish the position of his collaborators--whose

name he ever associated with his work--as his acknowledged successors.

* * * * *

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

The English declared that it was but endemic cholera, and opposed the

quarantines. They had with them the majority of the Alexandria Sanitary

Council, and could easily prevent sanitary measures from being taken. If

the English, voluntarily closing their eyes to the dangers of the

epidemic, had wished to furnish a new proof of the importation of

cholera, they could not have succeeded better. The cholera spread, and

by July 14 it had reached Cairo. Between the 14th and 22nd there were

five hundred deaths per day.

Alexandria was threatened. Pasteur, before leaving Paris for Arbois,

submitted to the Consulting Committee of Public Hygiene the idea of a

French Scientific Mission to Alexandria. “Since the last epidemic in

1865,” he said, “science has made great progress on the subject of

transmissible diseases. Every one of those diseases which has been

subjected to a thorough study has been found by biologists to be

produced by a microscopic being developing within the body of man or of

animals, and causing therein ravages which are generally mortal. All the

symptoms of the disease, all the causes of death depend directly upon

the physiological properties of the microbe.... What is wanted at this

moment to satisfy the preoccupations of science is to inquire into the

primary cause of the scourge. Now the present state of knowledge demands

that attention should be drawn to the possible existence within the

blood, or within some organ, of a micro-organism whose nature and

properties would account in all probability for all the peculiarities of

cholera, both as to the morbid symptoms and the mode of its propagation.

The proved existence of such a microbe would soon take precedence over

the whole question of the measures to be taken to arrest the evil in its

course, and might perhaps suggest new methods of treatment.”

Not only did the Committee of Hygiene approve of Pasteur’s project, but

they asked him to choose some young men whose knowledge would be

equalled by their devotion. Pasteur only had to look around him. When,

on his return to the laboratory, he mentioned what had taken place at

the Committee of Hygiene, M. Roux immediately offered to start. A

professor at the Faculty of Medicine who had some hospital practice, M.

Straus, and a professor at the Alfort Veterinary School, M. Nocard, both

of whom had been authorised to work in the laboratory, asked permission

to accompany M. Roux. Thuillier had the same desire, but asked for

twenty-four hours to think over it.

The thought of his father and mother, who had made a great many

sacrifices for his education, and whose only joy was to receive him at

Amiens, where they lived, during his short holidays, made him hesitate.

But the thought of duty overcame his regrets; he put his papers and

notes in order and went to see his dear ones again. He told his father

of his intention, but his mother did not know of it. At the time when

the papers spoke of a French commission to study cholera, his elder

sister, who loved him with an almost motherly tenderness, said to him

suddenly, “You are not going to Egypt, Louis? swear that you are not!”

“I am not going to swear anything,” he answered, with absolute calm;

adding that he might some time go to Russia to proceed to some

vaccination of anthrax, as he had done at Buda-Pesth in 1881. When he

left Amiens nothing in his farewells revealed his deep emotion; it was

only from Marseilles that he wrote the truth.

Administrative difficulties retarded the departure of the Commission,

which only reached Egypt on August 15. Dr. Koch had also come to study

cholera. The head physician of the European hospital, Dr. Ardouin,

placed his wards at the entire disposal of the French savants. In a

certain number of cases, it was possible to proceed to post-mortem

examinations immediately after death, before putrefaction had begun. It

was a great thing from the point of view of the search after a

pathogenic micro-organism as well as from the anatomo-pathological point

of view.

The contents of the intestines and the characteristic stools of the

cholera patients offered a great variety of micro-organisms. But which

was really the cause of cholera? The most varied modes of culture were

attempted in vain. The same negative results followed inoculations into

divers animal species, cats, dogs, swine, monkeys, pigeons, rabbits,

guinea-pigs, etc., made with the blood of cholerics or with the contents

of their bowels. Experiments were made with twenty-four corpses. The

epidemic ceased unexpectedly. Not to waste time, while waiting for a

reappearance of the disease, the French Commission took up some

researches on cattle plague. Suddenly a telegram from M. Roux informed

Pasteur that Thuillier had succumbed to an attack of cholera.

“I have just heard the news of a great misfortune,” wrote Pasteur to J.

B. Dumas on September 19; “M. Thuillier died yesterday at Alexandria of

cholera. I have telegraphed to the Mayor of Amiens asking him to break

the news to the family.

“Science loses in Thuillier a courageous representative with a great

future before him. I lose a much-loved and devoted pupil; my laboratory

one of its principal supports.

“I can only console myself for this death by thinking of our beloved

country and all he has done for it.”

Thuillier was only twenty-six. How had this happened? Had he neglected

any of the precautions which Pasteur had written down before the

departure of the Commission, and which were so minute as to be thought

exaggerated?

Pasteur remained silent all day, absolutely overcome. The head of the

laboratory, M. Chamberland, divining his master’s grief, came to Arbois.

They exchanged their sorrowful thoughts, and Pasteur fell back into his

sad broodings.

A few days later, a letter from M. Roux related the sad story:

“_Alexandria, September 21._ Sir and dear master--Having just heard that

an Italian ship is going to start, I am writing a few lines without

waiting for the French mail. The telegraph has told you of the terrible

misfortune which has befallen us.”

M. Roux then proceeded to relate in detail the symptoms presented by the

unfortunate young man, who, after going to bed at ten o’clock,

apparently in perfect health, had suddenly been taken ill about three

o’clock in the morning of Saturday, September 15. At eight o’clock, all

the horrible symptoms of the most violent form of cholera were apparent,

and his friends gave him up for lost. They continued their desperate

endeavours however, assisted by the whole staff of French and Italian

doctors.

“By dint of all our strength, all our energy, we protracted the struggle

until seven o’clock on Wednesday morning, the 19th. The asphyxia, which

had then lasted twenty-four hours, was stronger than our efforts.

“Your own feelings will help you to imagine our grief.

“The French colony and the medical staff are thunderstruck. Splendid

funeral honours have been rendered to our poor Thuillier.

“He was buried at four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, with the finest

and most imposing manifestation Alexandria had seen for a long time.

“One very precious and affecting homage was rendered by the German

Commission with a noble simplicity which touched us all very much.

“M. Koch and his collaborators arrived when the news spread in the town.

They gave utterance to beautiful and touching words to the memory of our

dead friend. When the funeral took place, those gentlemen brought two

wreaths which they themselves nailed on the coffin. ‘They are simple,’

said M. Koch, ‘but they are of laurel, such as are given to the brave.’

“M. Koch hold one corner of the pall. We embalmed our comrade’s body; he

lies in a sealed zinc coffin. All formalities have been complied with,

so that his remains may be brought back to France when the necessary

time has expired. In Egypt the period of delay is a whole year.

“The French colony desires to erect a monument to the memory of Louis

Thuillier.

“Dear master, how much more I should like to tell you! The recital of

the sad event which happened so quickly would take pages. This blow is

altogether incomprehensible. It was more than a fortnight since we had

seen a single case of cholera; we were beginning to study cattle-plague.

“Of us all, Thuillier was the one who took most precautions; he was

irreproachably careful.

“We are writing by this post a few lines to his family, in the names of

all of us.

“Such are the blows cholera can strike at the end of an epidemic! Want

of time forces me to close this letter. Pray believe in our respectful

affection.”

The whole of the French colony, who received great marks of sympathy

from the Italians and other foreigners, wished to perpetuate the memory

of Thuillier. Pasteur wrote, on October 16, to a French physician at

Alexandria, who had informed him of this project:

“I am touched with the generous resolution of the French colony at

Alexandria to erect a monument to the memory of Louis Thuillier. That

valiant and beloved young man was deserving of every honour. I know,

perhaps better than any one, the loss inflicted on science by his cruel

death. I cannot console myself, and I am already dreading the sight of

the dear fellow’s empty place in my laboratory.”

On his return to Paris, Pasteur read a paper to the Academy of Sciences,

in his own name and in that of Thuillier, on the now well-ascertained

mode of vaccination for swine-fever. He began by recalling Thuillier’s

worth:

“Thuillier entered my laboratory after taking the first rank at the

Physical Science Agrégation competition at the Ecole Normale. His was a

deeply meditative, silent nature; his whole person breathed a virile

energy which struck all those who knew him. An indefatigable worker, he

was ever ready for self-sacrifice.”

A few days before, M. Straus had given to the Biology Society a summary

statement of the studies of the Cholera Commission, concluding thus:

“The documents collected during those two months are far from solving

the etiological problem of cholera, but will perhaps not be useless for

the orientation of future research.”

The cholera bacillus was put in evidence, later on, by Dr. Koch, who had

already suspected it during his researches in Egypt.

* * * * *

Glory, which had been seen in the battlefield at the beginning of the

nineteenth century, now seemed to elect to dwell in the laboratory,

that “temple of the future” as Pasteur called it. From every part of the

world, letters reached Pasteur, appeals, requests for consultations.

Many took him for a physician. “He does not cure individuals,” answered

Edmond About one day to a foreigner who was under that misapprehension;

“he only tries to cure humanity.” Some sceptical minds were predicting

failure to his studies on hydrophobia. This problem was complicated by

the fact that Pasteur was trying in vain to discover and isolate the

specific microbe.

He was endeavouring to evade that difficulty; the idea pursued him that

human medicine might avail itself of “the long period of incubation of

hydrophobia, by attempting to establish, during that interval before the

appearance of the first rabic symptoms, a refractory condition in the

subjects bitten.”

At the beginning of the year 1884, J. B. Dumas enjoyed following from a

distance Pasteur’s readings at the Académie des Sciences. His failing

health and advancing age (he was more than eighty years old) had forced

him to spend the winter in the South of France. On January 26, 1884, he

wrote to Pasteur for the last time, à propos of a book[32] which was a

short summary of Pasteur’s discoveries and their concatenation:

“Dear colleague and friend,--I have read with a great and sincere

emotion the picture of your scientific life drawn by a faithful and

loving hand.

“Myself a witness and a sincere admirer of your happy efforts, your

fruitful genius and your imperturbable method, I consider it a great

service rendered to Science, that the accurate and complete whole should

be put before the eyes of young people.

“It will make a wholesome impression on the public in general; to young

scientists, it will be an initiation, and to those who, like me, have

passed the age of labour it will bring happy memories of youthful

enthusiasm.

“May Providence long spare you to France, and maintain in you that

admirable equilibrium between the mind that observes, the genius that

conceives, and the hand that executes with a perfection unknown until

now.”

This was a last proof of Dumas’ affection for Pasteur. Although his life

was now fast drawing to its close, his mental faculties were in no wise

impaired, for we find him three weeks later, on February 20, using his

influence as Permanent Secretary of the Academy to obtain the Lacaze

prize for M. Cailletet, the inventor of the well-known apparatus for the

liquefaction of gases.

J. B. Dumas died on April 11, 1884. Pasteur was then about to start for

Edinburgh on the occasion of the tercentenary of the celebrated Scotch

University. The “Institut de France,” invited to take part in these

celebrations, had selected representatives from each of the five

Academies: the Académie Française was sending M. Caro; the Academy of

Sciences, Pasteur and de Lesseps; the Academy of Moral Sciences, M.

Gréard; the Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, M. Perrot; and the

Academy of Fine Arts, M. Eugène Guillaume. The Collège de France sent M.

Guillaume Guizot, and the Academy of Medicine Dr. Henry Gueneau de

Mussy.

Pasteur much wished to relinquish this official journey; the idea that

he would not be able to follow to the grave the incomparable teacher of

his youth, the counsellor and confidant of his life, was infinitely

painful to him.

He was however reconciled to it by one of his colleagues, M. Mézières,

who was going to Edinburgh on behalf of the Minister of Public

Instruction, and who pointed out to him that the best way of honouring

Dumas’ memory lay in remembering Dumas’ chief object in life--the

interests of France. Pasteur went, hoping that he would have an

opportunity of speaking of Dumas to the Edinburgh students.

In London, the French delegates had the pleasant surprise of finding

that a private saloon had been reserved to take Pasteur and his friends

to Edinburgh. This hospitality was offered to Pasteur by one of his

numerous admirers, Mr. Younger, an Edinburgh brewer, as a token of

gratitude for his discoveries in the manufacture of beer. He and his

wife and children welcomed Pasteur with the warmest cordiality, when the

train reached Edinburgh; the principal inhabitants of the great Scotch

city vied with each other in entertaining the French delegates, who were

delighted with their reception.

The next morning, they, and the various representatives from all parts

of the world, assembled in the Cathedral of St. Giles, where, with the

exalted feeling which, in the Scotch people, mingles religious with

political life, the Town Council had decided that a service should

inaugurate the rejoicings. The Rev. Robert Flint, mounting that pulpit

from which the impetuous John Knox, Calvin’s friend and disciple, had

breathed forth his violent fanaticism, preached to the immense assembly

with a full consciousness of the importance of his discourse. He spoke

of the relations between Science and Faith, of the absolute liberty of

science in the realm of facts, of the thought of God considered as a

stimulant to research, progress being but a Divine impulse.

In the afternoon, the students imparted life and merriment into the

proceedings; they had organized a dramatic performance, the members of

the orchestra, even, being undergraduates.

The French delegates took great interest in the system of this

University. Accustomed as they were to look upon the State as sole

master and dispenser, they now saw an independent institution, owing its

fortune to voluntary contributions, revealing in every point the power

of private enterprise. Unlike what takes place in France, where

administrative unity makes itself felt in the smallest village, the

British Government effaces itself, and merely endeavours to inspire

faith in political unity. Absolutely her own mistress, the University of

Edinburgh is free to confer high honorary degrees on her distinguished

visitors. However, these honorary diplomas are but of two kinds, viz.:

Doctor of Divinity (D.D.) and Doctor of Laws (LL.D.). In 1884, seventeen

degrees of D.D. and 122 degrees of LL.D. were reserved for the various

delegates. “The only laws I know,” smilingly said the learned Helmholtz,

“are the laws of Physics.”

The solemn proclamation of the University degrees took place on

Thursday, April 17. The streets and monuments of the beautiful city were

decorated with flags, and an air of rejoicing pervaded the whole

atmosphere.

The ceremony began by a special prayer, alluding to the past, looking

forward to the future, and asking for God’s blessing on the delegates

and their countries. The large assembly filled the immense hall where

the Synod of the Presbyterian Church holds its meetings. The Chancellor

and the Rector of the University were seated on a platform with a large

number of professors; those who were about to receive honorary degrees

occupied seats in the centre of the hall; about three thousand students

found seats in various parts of the hall.

The Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh had arranged that the new

graduates should be called in alphabetical order. As each of them heard

his name, he rose and mounted the platform. The students took great

pleasure in heartily cheering those savants who had had most influence

on their studies. When Pasteur’s name was pronounced, a great silence

ensued; every one was trying to obtain a sight of him as he walked

towards the platform. His appearance was the signal for a perfect

outburst of applause; five thousand men rose and cheered him. It was

indeed a splendid ovation.

In the evening, a banquet was set out in the hall, which was hung with

the blue and white colours of the University; there were a thousand

guests, seated round twenty-eight tables, one of which, the high table,

was reserved for the speakers who were to propose the toasts, which were

to last four hours. Pasteur was seated next to Virchow; they talked

together of the question of rabies, and Virchow owned that, when he saw

Pasteur in 1881 about to tackle this question, he much doubted the

possibility of a solution. This friendly chat between two such men

proves the desirability of such gatherings; intercourse between the

greatest scientists can but lead to general peace and fraternity between

nations. After having read a telegram from the Queen, congratulating the

University and welcoming the guests, a toast was drunk to the Queen and

to the Royal Family, and a few words spoken by the representative of the

Emperor of Brazil. Pasteur then rose to speak:

“My Lord Chancellor, Gentlemen, the city of Edinburgh is now offering a

sight of which she may be proud. All the great scientific institutions,

meeting here, appear as an immense Congress of hopes and

congratulations. The honour and glory of this international rendezvous

deservedly belong to you, for it is centuries since Scotland united her

destinies with those of the human mind. She was one of the first among

the nations to understand that intellect leads the world. And the world

of intellect, gladly answering your call, lays a well-merited homage at

your feet. When, yesterday, the eminent Professor Robert Flint,

addressing the Edinburgh University from the pulpit of St. Giles,

exclaimed, ‘Remember the past and look to the future,’ all the

delegates, seated like judges at a great tribunal, evoked a vision of

past centuries and joined in a unanimous wish for a yet more glorious

future.

“Amongst the illustrious delegates of all nations who bring you an

assurance of cordial good wishes, France has sent to represent her those

of her institutions which are most representative of the French spirit

and the best part of French glory. France is ready to applaud whenever a

source of light appears in the world; and when death strikes down a man

of genius, France is ready to weep as for one of her own children. This

noble spirit of solidarity was brought home to me when I heard some of

you speak feelingly of the death of the illustrious chemist, J. B.

Dumas, a celebrated member of all your Academies, and only a few years

ago an eloquent panegyrist of your great Faraday. It was a bitter grief

to me that I had to leave Paris before his funeral ceremony; but the

hope of rendering here a last and solemn homage to that revered master

helped me to conquer my affliction. Moreover, gentlemen, men may pass,

but their works remain; we all are but passing guests of these great

homes of intellect, which, like all the Universities who have come to

greet you in this solemn day, are assured of immortality.”

Pasteur, having thus rendered homage to J. B. Dumas, and having

glorified his country by his presence, his speech and the great honours

conferred on him, would have returned home at once; but the

undergraduates begged to be allowed to entertain, the next day, some of

those men whom they looked upon as examples and whom they might never

see again.

Pasteur thanked the students for this invitation, which filled him with

pride and pleasure, for he had always loved young people, he said, and

continued, in his deep, stirring voice:

“Ever since I can remember my life as a man, I do not think I have ever

spoken for the first time with a student without saying to him, ‘Work

perseveringly; work can be made into a pleasure, and alone is profitable

to man, to his city, to his country.’ It is even more natural that I

should thus speak to you. The common soul (if I may so speak) of an

assembly of young men is wholly formed of the most generous feelings,

being yet illumined with the divine spark which is in every man as he

enters this world. You have just given a proof of this assurance, and I

have felt moved to the heart in hearing you applaud, as you have just

been doing, such men as de Lesseps, Helmholtz and Virchow. Your language

has borrowed from ours the beautiful word _enthusiasm_, bequeathed to us

by the Greeks: εν θεός, an inward God. It was almost with a divine

feeling that you just now cheered those great men.

“One of those of our writers who have best made known to France and to

Europe the philosophy of Robert Reid and Dugald Stewart said, addressing

young men in the preface of one of his works:--

“‘Whatever career you may embrace, look up to an exalted goal; worship

great men and great things.’

“Great things! You have indeed seen them. Will not this centenary remain

one of Scotland’s glorious memories? As to great men, in no country is

their memory better honoured than in yours. But, if work should be the

very life of your life, if the cult for great men and great things

should be associated with your every thought, that is still not enough.

Try to bring into everything you undertake the spirit of scientific

method, founded on the immortal works of Galileo, Descartes and Newton.

“You especially, medical students of this celebrated University of

Edinburgh--who, trained as you are by eminent masters, may aspire to the

highest scientific ambition--be you inspired by the experimental method.

To its principles, Scotland owes such men as Brewster, Thomson and

Lister.”

The speaker who had to respond on behalf of the students to the foreign

delegates expressed himself thus, directly addressing Pasteur:

“Monsieur Pasteur, you have snatched from nature secrets too carefully,

almost maliciously hidden. We greet in you a benefactor of humanity, all

the more so because we know that you admit the existence of spiritual

secrets, revealed to us by what you have just called the work of God in

us.

“Representatives of France, we beg you to tell your great country that

we are following with admiration the great reforms now being introduced

into every branch of your education, reforms which we look upon as

tokens of a beneficent rivalry and of a more and more cordial

intercourse--for misunderstandings result from ignorance, a darkness

lightened by the work of scientists.”

The next morning, at ten o’clock, crowds gathered on the station

platform with waving handkerchiefs. People were showing each other a

great Edinburgh daily paper, in which Pasteur’s speech to the

undergraduates was reproduced and which also contained the following

announcement in large print:

“In memory of M. Pasteur’s visit to Edinburgh, Mr. Younger offers to the

Edinburgh University a donation of £500.”

Livingstone’s daughter, Mrs. Bruce, on whom Pasteur had called the

preceding day, came to the station a few moments before the departure

of the train, bringing him a book entitled _The Life of Livingstone_.

The saloon carriage awaited Pasteur and his friends. They departed,

delighted with the hospitality they had received, and much struck with

the prominent place given to science and the welcome accorded to

Pasteur. “This is indeed glory,” said one of them. “Believe me,” said

Pasteur, “I only look upon it as a reason for continuing to go forward

as long as my strength does not fail me.”