1885--1888
Pasteur had the power of concentrating his thoughts to such a degree
that he often, when absorbed in one idea, became absolutely unconscious
of what took place around him. At one of the meetings of the Académie
Française, whilst the Dictionary was being discussed, he scribbled the
following note on a stray sheet of paper--
“I do not know how to hide my ideas from those who work with me; still,
I wish I could have kept those I am going to express a little longer to
myself. The experiments have already begun which will decide them.
“It concerns rabies, but the results might be general.
“I am inclined to think that the virus which is considered rabic may be
accompanied by a substance which, by impregnating the nervous system,
would make it unsuitable for the culture of the microbe. Thence vaccinal
immunity. If that is so, the theory might be a general one: it would be
a stupendous discovery.
“I have just met Chamberland in the Rue Gay-Lussac, and explained to him
this view and my experiments. He was much struck, and asked my
permission to make at once on anthrax the experiment I am about to make
on rabies as soon as the dog and the culture rabbits are dead. Roux, the
day before yesterday, was equally struck.
“_Académie Française, Thursday, January 29, 1885._”
Could that vaccinal substance associated with the rabic virus be
isolated? In the meanwhile a main fact was acquired, that of preventive
inoculation, since Pasteur was sure of his series of dogs rendered
refractory to rabies after a bite. Months were going by without bringing
an answer to the question “Why?” of the antirabic vaccination, as
mysterious as the “Why?” of Jennerian vaccination.
On Monday, July 6, Pasteur saw a little Alsatian boy, Joseph Meister,
enter his laboratory, accompanied by his mother. He was only nine years
old, and had been bitten two days before by a mad dog at Meissengott,
near Schlestadt.
The child, going alone to school by a little by-road, had been attacked
by a furious dog and thrown to the ground. Too small to defend himself,
he had only thought of covering his face with his hands. A bricklayer,
seeing the scene from a distance, arrived, and succeeded in beating the
dog off with an iron bar; he picked up the boy, covered with blood and
saliva. The dog went back to his master, Théodore Vone, a grocer at
Meissengott, whom he bit on the arm. Vone seized a gun and shot the
animal, whose stomach was found to be full of hay, straw, pieces of
wood, etc. When little Meister’s parents heard all these details they
went, full of anxiety, to consult Dr. Weber, at Villé, that same
evening. After cauterizing the wounds with carbolic, Dr. Weber advised
Mme. Meister to start for Paris, where she could relate the facts to one
who was not a physician, but who would be the best judge of what could
be done in such a serious case. Théodore Vone, anxious on his own and on
the child’s account, decided to come also.
Pasteur reassured him; his clothes had wiped off the dog’s saliva, and
his shirt-sleeve was intact. He might safely go back to Alsace, and he
promptly did so.
Pasteur’s emotion was great at the sight of the fourteen wounds of the
little boy, who suffered so much that he could hardly walk. What should
he do for this child? could he risk the preventive treatment which had
been constantly successful on his dogs? Pasteur was divided between his
hopes and his scruples, painful in their acuteness. Before deciding on a
course of action, he made arrangements for the comfort of this poor
woman and her child, alone in Paris, and gave them an appointment for 5
o’clock, after the Institute meeting. He did not wish to attempt
anything without having seen Vulpian and talked it over with him. Since
the Rabies Commission had been constituted, Pasteur had formed a growing
esteem for the great judgment of Vulpian, who, in his lectures on the
general and comparative physiology of the nervous system, had already
mentioned the profit to human clinics to be drawn from experimenting on
animals.
His was a most prudent mind, always seeing all the aspects of a problem.
The man was worthy of the scientist: he was absolutely straightforward,
and of a discreet and active kindness. He was passionately fond of work,
and had recourse to it when smitten by a deep sorrow.
Vulpian expressed the opinion that Pasteur’s experiments on dogs were
sufficiently conclusive to authorize him to foresee the same success in
human pathology. Why not try this treatment? added the professor,
usually so reserved. Was there any other efficacious treatment against
hydrophobia? If at least the cauterizations had been made with a red-hot
iron! but what was the good of carbolic acid twelve hours after the
accident. If the almost certain danger which threatened the boy were
weighed against the chances of snatching him from death, Pasteur would
see that it was more than a right, that it was a duty to apply antirabic
inoculation to little Meister.
This was also the opinion of Dr. Grancher, whom Pasteur consulted. M.
Grancher worked at the laboratory; he and Dr. Straus might claim to be
the two first French physicians who took up the study of bacteriology;
these novel studies fascinated him, and he was drawn to Pasteur by the
deepest admiration and by a strong affection, which Pasteur thoroughly
reciprocated.
Vulpian and M. Grancher examined little Meister in the evening, and,
seeing the number of bites, some of which, on one hand especially, were
very deep, they decided on performing the first inoculation immediately;
the substance chosen was fourteen days old and had quite lost its
virulence: it was to be followed by further inoculations gradually
increasing in strength.
It was a very slight operation, a mere injection into the side (by means
of a Pravaz syringe) of a few drops of a liquid prepared with some
fragments of medulla oblongata. The child, who cried very much before
the operation, soon dried his tears when he found the slight prick was
all that he had to undergo.
Pasteur had had a bedroom comfortably arranged for the mother and child
in the old Rollin College, and the little boy was very happy amidst the
various animals--chickens, rabbits, white mice, guinea-pigs, etc.; he
begged and easily obtained of Pasteur the life of several of the
youngest of them.
“All is going well,” Pasteur wrote to his son-in-law on July 11: “the
child sleeps well, has a good appetite, and the inoculated matter is
absorbed into the system from one day to another without leaving a
trace. It is true that I have not yet come to the test inoculations,
which will take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. If the lad
keeps well during the three following weeks, I think the experiment will
be safe to succeed. I shall send the child and his mother back to
Meissengott (near Schlestadt) in any case on August 1, giving these good
people detailed instruction as to the observations they are to record
for me. I shall make no statement before the end of the vacation.”
But, as the inoculations were becoming more virulent, Pasteur became a
prey to anxiety: “My dear children,” wrote Mme. Pasteur, “your father
has had another bad night; he is dreading the last inoculations on the
child. And yet there can be no drawing back now! The boy continues in
perfect health.”
Renewed hopes were expressed in the following letter from Pasteur--
“My dear René, I think great things are coming to pass. Joseph Meister
has just left the laboratory. The three last inoculations have left some
pink marks under the skin, gradually widening and not at all tender.
There is some action, which is becoming more intense as we approach the
final inoculation, which will take place on Thursday, July 16. The lad
is very well this morning, and has slept well, though slightly restless;
he has a good appetite and no feverishness. He had a slight hysterical
attack yesterday.”
The letter ended with an affectionate invitation. “Perhaps one of the
great medical facts of the century is going to take place; you would
regret not having seen it!”
Pasteur was going through a succession of hopes, fears, anguish, and an
ardent yearning to snatch little Meister from death; he could no longer
work. At nights, feverish visions came to him of this child whom he had
seen playing in the garden, suffocating in the mad struggles of
hydrophobia, like the dying child he had seen at the Hôpital Trousseau
in 1880. Vainly his experimental genius assured him that the virus of
that most terrible of diseases was about to be vanquished, that humanity
was about to be delivered from this dread horror--his human tenderness
was stronger than all, his accustomed ready sympathy for the sufferings
and anxieties of others was for the nonce centred in “the dear lad.”
The treatment lasted ten days; Meister was inoculated twelve times. The
virulence of the medulla used was tested by trephinings on rabbits, and
proved to be gradually stronger. Pasteur even inoculated on July 16, at
11 a.m., some medulla only one day old, bound to give hydrophobia to
rabbits after only seven days’ incubation; it was the surest test of the
immunity and preservation due to the treatment.
Cured from his wounds, delighted with all he saw, gaily running about as
if he had been in his own Alsatian farm, little Meister, whose blue eyes
now showed neither fear nor shyness, merrily received the last
inoculation; in the evening, after claiming a kiss from “Dear Monsieur
Pasteur,” as he called him, he went to bed and slept peacefully. Pasteur
spent a terrible night of insomnia; in those slow dark hours of night
when all vision is distorted, Pasteur, losing sight of the accumulation
of experiments which guaranteed his success, imagined that the little
boy would die.
The treatment being now completed, Pasteur left little Meister to the
care of Dr. Grancher (the lad was not to return to Alsace until July 27)
and consented to take a few days’ rest. He spent them with his daughter
in a quiet, almost deserted country place in Burgundy, but without
however finding much restfulness in the beautiful peaceful scenery; he
lived in constant expectation of Dr. Grancher’s daily telegram or letter
containing news of Joseph Meister.
By the time he went to the Jura, Pasteur’s fears had almost disappeared.
He wrote from Arbois to his son August 3, 1885: “Very good news last
night of the bitten lad. I am looking forward with great hopes to the
time when I can draw a conclusion. It will be thirty-one days to-morrow
since he was bitten.”
* * * * *
On August 20, six weeks before the new elections of Deputies, Léon Say,
Pasteur’s colleague at the Académie Française, wrote to him that many
Beauce agricultors were anxious to put his name down on the list of
candidates, as a recognition of the services rendered by science. A few
months before, Jules Simon had thought Pasteur might be elected as a
Life Senator, but Pasteur had refused to be convinced. He now replied to
Léon Say--
“Your proposal touches me very much and it would be agreeable to me to
owe a Deputy’s mandate to electors, several of whom have applied the
results of my investigations. But politics frighten me and I have
already refused a candidature in the Jura and a seat in the Senate in
the course of this year.
“I might be tempted perhaps, if I no longer felt active enough for my
laboratory work. But I still feel equal to further researches, and on my
return to Paris, I shall be organizing a ‘service’ against rabies which
will absorb all my energies. I now possess a very perfect method of
prophylaxis against that terrible disease, a method equally adapted to
human beings and to dogs, and by which your much afflicted Department
will be one of the first to benefit.
“Before my departure for Jura I dared to treat a poor little
nine-year-old lad whose mother brought him to me from Alsace, where he
had been attacked on the 4th ult., and bitten on the thighs, legs, and
hand in such a manner that hydrophobia would have been inevitable. He
remains in perfect health.”
Whilst many political speeches were being prepared, Pasteur was thinking
over a literary speech. He had been requested by the Académie Française
to welcome Joseph Bertrand, elected in place of J. B. Dumas--the
eulogium of a scientist, spoken by one scientist, himself welcomed by
another scientist. This was an unusual programme for the Académie
Française, perhaps too unusual in the eyes of Pasteur, who did not think
himself worthy of speaking in the name of the Académie. Such was his
modesty; he forgot that amongst the savants who had been members of the
Académie, several, such as Fontenelle, Cuvier, J. B. Dumas, etc., had
published immortal pages, and that some extracts from his own works
would one day become classical.
The vacation gave him time to read over the writings of his beloved
teacher, and also to study the life and works of Joseph Bertrand,
already his colleague at the Académie des Sciences.
Bertrand’s election had been simple and easy, like everything he had
undertaken since his birth. It seemed as if a good fairy had leant over
his cradle and whispered to him, “Thou shalt know many things, without
having had to learn them.” It is a fact that he could read without
having held a book in his hands. He was ill and in bed whilst his
brother Alexander was being taught to read; he listened to the lessons
and kept the various combinations of letters in his mind. When he became
convalescent, his parents brought him a book of Natural History so that
he might look at the pictures. He took the volume and read from it
fluently; he was not five years old. He learnt the elements of geometry
very much in the same way.
Pasteur in his speech thus described Joseph Bertrand’s childhood: “At
ten years old you were already celebrated, and it was prophesied that
you would pass at the head of the list into the Ecole Polytechnique and
become a member of the Academy of Sciences? No one doubted this, not
even yourself. You were indeed a child prodigy. Sometimes it amused you
to hide in a class of higher mathematics, and when the Professor
propounded a difficult problem that no one could solve, one of the
students would triumphantly lift you in his arms, stand you on a chair
so that you might reach the board, and you would then give the required
solution with a calm assurance, in the midst of applause from the
professors and pupils.”
Pasteur, whose every progress had been painfully acquired, admired the
ease with which Bertrand had passed through the first stages of his
career. At an age when marbles and india-rubber balls are usually an
important interest, Bertrand walked merrily to the _Jardin des Plantes_
to attend a course of lectures by Gay-Lussac. A few hours later, he
might be seen at the Sorbonne, listening with interest to Saint Marc
Girardin, the literary moralist. The next day, he would go to a lecture
on Comparative Legislation; never was so young a child seen in such
serious places. He borrowed as many books from the Institute library as
Biot himself; he learnt whole passages by heart, merely by glancing at
them. He became a _doctor ès sciences_ at sixteen, and a Member of the
Institute at thirty-four.
Besides his personal works--such as those on Analytic Mechanics, which
place him in the very first rank--his teaching had been brought to bear
during forty years on all branches of mathematics. Bertrand’s life,
apparently so happy, had been saddened by the irreparable loss, during
the Commune, of a great many precious notes, letters, and manuscripts,
which had been burnt with the house where he had left them. Discouraged
by this ruin of ten years’ work, he had given way to a tendency to
writing slight popular articles, of high literary merit, instead of
continuing his deeper scientific work. His eulogy of J. B. Dumas was not
quite seriously enthusiastic enough to please Pasteur, who had a
veritable cult for the memory of his old teacher, and who eagerly
grasped this opportunity of speaking again of J. B. Dumas’ influence on
himself, of his admirable scientific discoveries, and of his political
duties, undertaken in the hope of being useful to Science, but often
proving a source of disappointment.
Pasteur enjoyed looking back on the beloved memory of J. B. Dumas, as he
sat preparing his speech in his study at Arbois, looking out on the
familiar landscape of his childhood, where the progress of practical
science was evidenced by the occasional passing, through the distant
pine woods, of the white smoke of the Switzerland express.
When in his laboratory in Paris, Pasteur hated to be disturbed whilst
making experiments or writing out notes of his work. Any visitor was
unwelcome; one day that some one was attempting to force his way in, M.
Roux was amused at seeing Pasteur--vexed at being disturbed and anxious
not to pain the visitor--come out to say imploringly, “Oh! not now,
please! I am too busy!”
“When Chamberland and I,” writes Dr. Roux, “were engaged in an
interesting occupation, he mounted guard before us, and when, through
the glazed doors, he saw people coming, he himself would go and meet
them in order to send them away. He showed so artlessly that his sole
thought was for the work, that no one ever could be offended.”
But, at Arbois, where he only spent his holidays, he did not exercise so
much severity; any one could come in who liked. He received in the
morning a constant stream of visitors, begging for advice,
recommendations, interviews, etc.
“It is both comical and touching,” wrote M. Girard, a local journalist,
“to see the opinion the vineyard labourers have of him. These good
people have heard M. Pasteur’s name in connection with the diseases of
wine, and they look upon him as a sort of wine doctor. If they notice a
barrel of wine getting sour, they knock at the savant’s door, bottle in
hand; this door is never closed to them. Peasants are not precise in
their language; they do not know how to begin their explanations or how
to finish them. M. Pasteur, ever calm and serious, listens to the very
end, takes the bottle and studies it at his leisure. A week later, the
wine is ‘cured.’”
He was consulted also on many other subjects--virus, silkworms, rabies,
cholera, swine-fever, etc.; many took him for a physician. Whilst
telling them of their mistake, he yet did everything he could for them.
During this summer of 1885, he had the melancholy joy of seeing a bust
erected in the village of Monay to the memory of a beloved friend of
his, J. J. Perraud, a great and inspired sculptor, who had died in 1876.
Perraud, whose magnificent statue of Despair is now at the Louvre, had
had a sad life, and, on his lonely death-bed (he was a widower, with no
children), Pasteur’s tender sympathy had been an unspeakable comfort.
Pasteur now took a leading part in the celebration of his friend’s fame,
and was glad to speak to the assembled villagers at Monay of the great
and disinterested artist who had been born in their midst.
* * * * *
On his return to Paris, Pasteur found himself obliged to hasten the
organization of a “service” for the preventive treatment of hydrophobia
after a bite. The Mayors of Villers-Farlay, in the Jura, wrote to him
that, on October 14, a shepherd had been cruelly bitten by a rabid dog.
Six little shepherd boys were watching over their sheep in a meadow;
suddenly they saw a large dog passing along the road, with hanging,
foaming jaws.
“A mad dog!” they exclaimed. The dog, seeing the children, left the road
and charged them; they ran away shrieking, but the eldest of them, J. B.
Jupille, fourteen years of age, bravely turned back in order to protect
the flight of his comrades. Armed with his whip, he confronted the
infuriated animal, who flew at him and seized his left hand. Jupille,
wrestling with the dog, succeeded in kneeling on him, and forcing its
jaws open in order to disengage his left hand; in so doing, his right
hand was seriously bitten in its turn; finally, having been able to get
hold of the animal by the neck, Jupille called to his little brother to
pick up his whip, which had fallen during the struggle, and securely
fastened the dog’s jaws with the lash. He then took his wooden _sabot_,
with which he battered the dog’s head, after which, in order to be sure
that it could do no further harm, he dragged the body down to a little
stream in the meadow, and held the head under water for several minutes.
Death being now certain, and all danger removed from his comrades,
Jupille returned to Villers-Farlay.
Whilst the boy’s wounds were being bandaged, the dog’s carcase was
fetched, and a necropsy took place the next day. The two veterinary
surgeons who examined the body had not the slightest hesitation in
declaring that the dog was rabid.
The Mayor of Villers-Farlay, who had been to see Pasteur during the
summer, wrote to tell him that this lad would die a victim of his own
courage unless the new treatment intervened. The answer came
immediately: Pasteur declared that, after five years’ study, he had
succeeded in making dogs refractory to rabies, even six or eight days
after being bitten; that he had only once yet applied his method to a
human being, but that once with success, in the case of little Meister,
and that, if Jupille’s family consented, the boy might be sent to him.
“I shall keep him near me in a room of my laboratory; he will be watched
and need not go to bed; he will merely receive a daily prick, not more
painful than a pin-prick.”
The family, on hearing this letter, came to an immediate decision; but,
between the day when he was bitten and Jupille’s arrival in Paris, six
whole days had elapsed, whilst in Meister’s case there had only been two
and a half!
Yet, however great were Pasteur’s fears for the life of this tall lad,
who seemed quite surprised when congratulated on his courageous conduct,
they were not what they had been in the first instance--he felt much
greater confidence.
A few days later, on October 26, Pasteur in a statement at the Academy
of Sciences described the treatment followed for Meister. Three months
and three days had passed, and the child remained perfectly well. Then
he spoke of his new attempt. Vulpian rose--
“The Academy will not be surprised,” he said, “if, as a member of the
Medical and Surgical Section, I ask to be allowed to express the
feelings of admiration inspired in me by M. Pasteur’s statement. I feel
certain that those feelings will be shared by the whole of the medical
profession.
“Hydrophobia, that dread disease against which all therapeutic measures
had hitherto failed, has at last found a remedy. M. Pasteur, who has
been preceded by no one in this path, has been led by a series of
investigations unceasingly carried on for several years, to create a
method of treatment, by means of which the development of hydrophobia
can _infallibly_ be prevented in a patient recently bitten by a rabid
dog. I say infallibly, because, after what I have seen in M. Pasteur’s
laboratory, I do not doubt the constant success of this treatment when
it is put into full practice a few days only after a rabic bite.
“It is now necessary to see about organizing an installation for the
treatment of hydrophobia by M. Pasteur’s method. Every person bitten by
a rabid dog must be given the opportunity of benefiting by this great
discovery, which will seal the fame of our illustrious colleague and
bring glory to our whole country.”
Pasteur had ended his reading by a touching description of Jupille’s
action, leaving the Assembly under the impression of that boy of
fourteen, sacrificing himself to save his companions. An Academician,
Baron Larrey, whose authority was rendered all the greater by his
calmness, dignity, and moderation, rose to speak. After acknowledging
the importance of Pasteur’s discovery, Larrey continued, “The sudden
inspiration, agility and courage, with which the ferocious dog was
muzzled, and thus made incapable of committing further injury to
bystanders, ... such an act of bravery deserves to be rewarded. I
therefore have the honour of begging the Académie des Sciences to
recommend to the Académie Française this young shepherd, who, by giving
such a generous example of courage and devotion, has well deserved a
Montyon prize.”
Bouley, then chairman of the Academy, rose to speak in his turn--
“We are entitled to say that the date of the present meeting will remain
for ever memorable in the history of medicine, and glorious for French
science; for it is that of one of the greatest steps ever accomplished
in the medical order of things--a progress realized by the discovery of
an efficacious means of preventive treatment for a disease, the
incurable nature of which was a legacy handed down by one century to
another. From this day, humanity is armed with a means of fighting the
fatal disease of hydrophobia and of preventing its onset. It is to M.
Pasteur that we owe this, and we could not feel too much admiration or
too much gratitude for the efforts on his part which have led to such a
magnificent result....”
Five years previously, Bouley, in the annual combined public meeting of
the five Academies, had proclaimed his enthusiasm for the discovery of
the vaccination of anthrax. But on hearing him again on this October
day, in 1885, his colleagues could not but be painfully struck by the
change in him; his voice was weak, his face thin and pale. He was dying
of an affection of the heart, and quite aware of it, but he was
sustained by a wonderful energy, and ready to forget his sufferings in
his joy at the thought that the sum of human sorrows would be diminished
by Pasteur’s victory. He went to the Académie de Médecine the next day
to enjoy the echo of the great sitting of the Académie des Sciences. He
died on November 29.
The chairman of the Academy of Medicine, M. Jules Bergeron, applauded
Pasteur’s statement all the more that he too had publicly deplored (in
1862) the impotence of medical science in the presence of this cruel
disease.
But while M. Bergeron shared the admiration felt by Vulpian and Dr.
Grancher for the experiments which had transformed the rabic virus into
its own vaccine, other medical men were divided into several categories:
some were full of enthusiasm, others reserved their opinion, many were
sceptical, and a few even positively hostile.
As soon as Pasteur’s paper was published, people bitten by rabid dogs
began to arrive from all sides to the laboratory. The “service” of
hydrophobia became the chief business of the day. Every morning was
spent by Eugène Viala in preparing the fragments of marrow used for
inoculations: in a little room permanently kept at a temperature of 20°
to 23° C., stood rows of sterilized flasks, their tubular openings
closed by plugs of cotton-wool. Each flask contained a rabic marrow,
hanging from the stopper by a thread and gradually drying up by the
action of some fragments of caustic potash lying at the bottom of the
flask. Viala cut those marrows into small pieces by means of scissors
previously put through a flame, and placed them in small sterilized
glasses; he then added a few drops of veal broth and pounded the mixture
with a glass rod. The vaccinal liquid was now ready; each glass was
covered with a paper cover, and bore the date of the medulla used, the
earliest of which was fourteen days old. For each patient under
treatment from a certain date, there was a whole series of little
glasses. Pasteur always attended these operations personally.
In the large hall of the laboratory, Pasteur’s collaborators, Messrs.
Chamberland and Roux, carried on investigations into contagious diseases
under the master’s directions; the place was full of flasks, pipets,
phials, containing culture broths. Etienne Wasserzug, another curator,
hardly more than a boy, fresh from the Ecole Normale, where his bright
intelligence and affectionate heart had made him very popular,
translated (for he knew the English, German, Italian, Hungarian and
Spanish languages, and was awaiting a favourable opportunity of learning
Russian) the letters which arrived from all parts of the world; he also
entertained foreign scientists. Pasteur had in him a most valuable
interpreter. Physicians came from all parts of the world asking to be
allowed to study the details of the method. One morning, Dr. Grancher
found Pasteur listening to a physician who was gravely and solemnly
holding forth his objections to microbian doctrines, and in particular
to the treatment of hydrophobia. Pasteur having heard this long
monologue, rose and said, “Sir, your language is not very intelligible
to me. I am not a physician and do not desire to be one. Never speak to
me of your dogma of morbid spontaneity. I am a chemist; I carry out
experiments and I try to understand what they teach me. What do you
think, doctor?” he added, turning to M. Grancher. The latter smilingly
answered that the hour for inoculations had struck. They took place at
eleven, in Pasteur’s study; he, standing by the open door, called out
the names of the patients. The date and circumstances of the bites and
the veterinary surgeon’s certificate were entered in a register, and the
patients were divided into series according to the degree of virulence
which was to be inoculated on each day of the period of treatment.
Pasteur took a personal interest in each of his patients, helping those
who were poor and illiterate to find suitable lodgings in the great
capital. Children especially inspired him with a loving solicitude. But
his pity was mingled with terror, when, on November 9, a little girl of
ten was brought to him who had been severely bitten on the head by a
mountain dog, on October 3, thirty-seven days before!! The wound was
still suppurating. He said to himself, “This is a hopeless case:
hydrophobia is no doubt about to appear immediately; it is much too late
for the preventive treatment to have the least chance of success. Should
I not, in the scientific interest of the method, refuse to treat this
child? If the issue is fatal, all those who have already been treated
will be frightened, and many bitten persons, discouraged from coming to
the laboratory, may succumb to the disease!” These thoughts rapidly
crossed Pasteur’s mind. But he found himself unable to resist his
compassion for the father and mother, begging him to try and save their
child.
After the treatment was over, Louise Pelletier had returned to school,
when fits of breathlessness appeared, soon followed by convulsive
spasms; she could swallow nothing. Pasteur hastened to her side when
these symptoms began, and new inoculations were attempted. On December
2, there was a respite of a few hours, moments of calm which inspired
Pasteur with the vain hope that she might yet be saved. This delusion
was a short-lived one. After attending Bouley’s funeral, his heart full
of sorrow, Pasteur spent the day by little Louise’s bedside, in her
parents’ rooms in the Rue Dauphine. He could not tear himself away; she
herself, full of affection for him, gasped out a desire that he should
not go away, that he should stay with her! She felt for his hand between
two spasms. Pasteur shared the grief of the father and mother. When all
hope had to be abandoned: “I did so wish I could have saved your little
one!” he said. And as he came down the staircase, he burst into tears.
He was obliged, a few days later, to preside at the reception of Joseph
Bertrand at the Académie Française; his sad feelings little in harmony
with the occasion. He read in a mournful and troubled voice the speech
he had prepared during his peaceful and happy holidays at Arbois. Henry
Houssaye, reporting on this ceremony in the _Journal des Débats_, wrote,
“M. Pasteur ended his speech amidst a torrent of applause, he received a
veritable ovation. He seemed unaccountably moved. How can M. Pasteur,
who has received every mark of admiration, every supreme honour, whose
name is consecrated by universal renown, still be touched by anything
save the discoveries of his powerful genius?” People did not realize
that Pasteur’s thoughts were far away from himself and from his
brilliant discovery. He was thinking of Dumas, his master, of Bouley,
his faithful friend and colleague, and of the child he had been unable
to snatch from the jaws of death; his mind was not with the living, but
with the dead.
A telegram from New York having announced that four children, bitten by
rabid dogs, were starting for Paris, many adversaries who had heard of
Louise Pelletier’s death were saying triumphantly that, if those
children’s parents had known of her fate, they would have spared them so
long and useless a journey.
The four little Americans belonged to workmen’s families and were sent
to Paris by means of a public subscription opened in the columns of the
_New York Herald_; they were accompanied by a doctor and by the mother
of the youngest of them, a boy only five years old. After the first
inoculation, this little boy, astonished at the insignificant prick,
could not help saying, “Is this all we have come such a long journey
for?” The children were received with enthusiasm on their return to New
York, and were asked “many questions about the great man who had taken
such care of them.”
A letter dated from that time (January 14, 1886) shows that Pasteur yet
found time for kindness, in the midst of his world-famed occupations.
“My dear Jupille, I have received your letters, and I am much pleased
with the news you give me of your health. Mme. Pasteur thanks you for
remembering her. She, and every one at the laboratory, join with me in
wishing that you may keep well and improve as much as possible in
reading, writing and arithmetic. Your writing is already much better
than it was, but you should take some pains with your spelling. Where do
you go to school? Who teaches you? Do you work at home as much as you
might? You know that Joseph Meister, who was first to be vaccinated,
often writes to me; well, I think he is improving more quickly than you
are, though he is only ten years old. So, mind you take pains, do not
waste your time with other boys, and listen to the advice of your
teachers, and of your father and mother. Remember me to M. Perrot, the
Mayor of Villers-Farlay. Perhaps, without him, you would have become
ill, and to be ill of hydrophobia means inevitable death; therefore you
owe him much gratitude. Good-bye. Keep well.”
Pasteur’s solicitude did not confine itself to his two first patients,
Joseph Meister and the fearless Jupille, but was extended to all those
who had come under his care; his kindness was like a living flame. The
very little ones who then only saw in him a “kind gentleman” bending
over them understood later in life, when recalling the sweet smile
lighting up his serious face, that Science, thus understood, unites
moral with intellectual grandeur.
* * * * *
Good, like evil, is infectious; Pasteur’s science and devotion inspired
an act of generosity which was to be followed by many others. He
received a visit from one of his colleagues at the Académie Française,
Edouard Hervé, who looked upon journalism as a great responsibility and
as a school of mutual respect between adversaries. He was bringing to
Pasteur, from the Comte de Laubespin, a generous philanthropist, a sum
of 40,000 fr. destined to meet the expenses necessitated by the
organization of the hydrophobia treatment. Pasteur, when questioned by
Hervé, answered that his intention was to found a model establishment in
Paris, supported by donations and international subscriptions, without
having recourse to the State. But he added that he wanted to wait a
little longer until the success of the treatment was undoubted.
Statistics came to support it; Bouley, who had been entrusted with an
official inquiry on the subject under the Empire, had found that the
proportion of deaths after bites from rabid dogs had been 40 per 100,
320 cases having been watched. The proportion often was greater still:
whilst Joseph Meister was under Pasteur’s care, five persons were bitten
by a rabid dog on the Pantin Road, near Paris, and every one of them
succumbed to hydrophobia.
Pasteur, instead of referring to Bouley’s statistics, preferred to adopt
those of M. Leblanc, a veterinary surgeon and a member of the Academy of
Medicine, who had for a long time been head of the sanitary department
of the _Préfecture de Police_. These statistics only gave a proportion
of deaths of 16 per 100, and had been carefully and accurately kept.
On March 1, he was able to affirm, before the Academy, that the new
method had given proofs of its merit, for, out of 350 persons treated,
only one death had taken place, that of the little Pelletier. He
concluded thus--
“It may be seen, by comparison with the most rigorous statistics, that a
very large number of persons have already been saved from death.
“The prophylaxis of hydrophobia after a bite is established.
“It is advisable to create a vaccinal institute against hydrophobia.”
The Academy of Sciences appointed a Commission who unanimously adopted
the suggestion that an establishment for the preventive treatment of
hydrophobia after a bite should be created in Paris, under the name of
_Institut Pasteur_. A subscription was about to be opened in France and
abroad. The spending of the funds would be directed by a special
Committee.
A great wave of enthusiasm and generosity swept from one end of France
to another and reached foreign countries. A newspaper of Milan, the
_Perseveranza_, which had opened a subscription, collected 6,000 fr. in
its first list. The _Journal d’Alsace_ headed a propaganda in favour of
this work, “sprung from Science and Charity.” It reminded its readers
that Pasteur had occupied a professor’s chair in the former brilliant
Faculty of Science of Strasburg, and that his first inoculation was made
on an Alsatian boy, Joseph Meister. The newspaper intended to send the
subscriptions to Pasteur with these words: “Offerings from
Alsace-Lorraine to the Pasteur Institute.”
The war of 1870 still darkened the memories of nations. Amongst eager
and numerous inventions of instruments of death and destruction,
humanity breathed when fresh news came from the laboratory, where a
continued struggle was taking place against diseases. The most
mysterious, the most cruel of all was going to be reduced to impotence.
Yet the method was about to meet with a few more cases like Louise
Pelletier’s; accidents would result, either from delay or from
exceptionally serious wounds. Happy days were still in store for those
who sowed doubt and hatred.
* * * * *
During the early part of March, Pasteur received nineteen Russians,
coming from the province of Smolensk. They had been attacked by a rabid
wolf and most of them had terrible wounds: one of them, a priest, had
been surprised by the infuriated beast as he was going into church, his
upper lip and right cheek had been torn off, his face was one gaping
wound. Another, the youngest of them, had had the skin of his forehead
torn off by the wolf’s teeth; other bites were like knife cuts. Five of
these unhappy wretches were in such a condition that they had to be
carried to the Hôtel Dieu Hospital as soon as they arrived.
The Russian doctor who had accompanied these mujiks related how the wolf
had wandered for two days and two nights, tearing to pieces every one he
met, and how he had finally been struck down with an axe by one of those
he had bitten most severely.
Because of the gravity of the wounds, and in order to make up for the
time lost by the Russians before they started, Pasteur decided on making
two inoculations every day, one in the morning and one in the evening;
the patients at the Hôtel Dieu could be inoculated upon at the hospital.
The fourteen others came every morning in their _touloupes_ and fur
caps, with their wounds bandaged, and joined without a word the motley
groups awaiting treatment at the laboratory--an English family, a Basque
peasant, a Hungarian in his national costume, etc., etc.
In the evening, the dumb and resigned band of mujiks came again to the
laboratory door. They seemed led by Fate, heedless of the struggle
between life and death of which they were the prize. “Pasteur” was the
only French word they knew, and their set and melancholy faces
brightened in his presence as with a ray of hope and gratitude.
Their condition was the more alarming that a whole fortnight had elapsed
between their being bitten and the date of the first inoculations.
Statistics were terrifying as to the results of wolf-bites, the average
proportion of deaths being 82 per 100. General anxiety and excitement
prevailed concerning the hapless Russians, and the news of the death of
three of them produced an intense emotion.
Pasteur had unceasingly continued his visits to the Hôtel Dieu. He was
overwhelmed with grief. His confidence in his method was in no wise
shaken, the general results would not allow it. But questions of
statistics were of little account in his eyes when he was the witness of
a misfortune; his charity was not of that kind which is exhausted by
collective generalities: each individual appealed to his heart. As he
passed through the wards at the Hôtel Dieu, each patient in his bed
inspired him with deep compassion. And that is why so many who only saw
him pass, heard his voice, met his pitiful eyes resting on them, have
preserved of him a memory such as the poor had of St. Vincent de Paul.
“The other Russians are keeping well so far,” declared Pasteur at the
Academy sitting of April 12, 1886. Whilst certain opponents in France
continued to discuss the three deaths and apparently saw nought but
those failures, the return of the sixteen survivors was greeted with an
almost religious emotion. Other Russians had come before them and were
saved, and the Tsar, knowing these things, desired his brother, the
Grand Duke Vladimir, to bring to Pasteur an imperial gift, the Cross of
the Order of St. Anne of Russia, in diamonds. He did more, he gave
100,000 fr. in aid of the proposed Pasteur Institute.
In April, 1886, the English Government, seeing the practical results of
the method for the prophylaxis of hydrophobia, appointed a Commission to
study and verify the facts. Sir James Paget was the president of it, and
the other members were:--Dr. Lauder-Brunton, Mr. Fleming, Sir Joseph
Lister, Dr. Quain, Sir Henry Roscoe, Professor Burdon Sanderson, and
Mr. Victor Horsley, secretary. The _résumé_ of the programme was as
follows--
Development of the rabic virus in the medulla oblongata of animals dying
of rabies.
Transmission of this virus by subdural or subcutaneous inoculation.
Intensification of this virus by successive passages from rabbit to
rabbit.
Possibility either of protecting healthy animals from ulterior bites
from rabid animals, or of preventing the onset of rabies in animals
already bitten, by means of vaccinal inoculations.
Applications of this method to man and value of its results.
Burdon Sanderson and Horsley came to Paris, and two rabbits, inoculated
on by Pasteur, were taken to England; a series of experiments was to be
begun on them, and an inquiry was to take place afterwards concerning
patients treated both in France and in England. Pasteur, who lost his
temper at prejudices and ill-timed levity, approved and solicited
inquiry and careful examination.
Long lists of subscribers appeared in the _Journal
Officiel_--millionaires, poor workmen, students, women, etc. A great
festival was organized at the Trocadéro in favour of the Pasteur
Institute; the greatest artistes offered their services. Coquelin
recited verses written for the occasion which excited loud applause from
the immense audience. Gounod, who had conducted his _Ave Maria_, turned
round after the closing bars, and, in an impulse of heartfelt
enthusiasm, kissed both his hands to the savant.
In the evening at a banquet, Pasteur thanked his colleagues and the
organizers of this incomparable performance. “Was it not,” he said, “a
touching sight, that of those immortal composers, those great charmers
of fortunate humanity coming to the assistance of those who wish to
study and to serve suffering humanity? And you too come, great artistes,
great actors, like so many generals re-entering the ranks to give
greater vigour to a common feeling. I cannot easily describe what I
felt. Dare I confess that I was hearing most of you for the first time?
I do not think I have spent more than ten evenings of my whole life at a
theatre. But I can have no regrets now that you have given me, in a few
hours’ interval, as in an exquisite synthesis, the feelings that so many
others scatter over several months, or rather several years.”
A few days later, the subscription from Alsace-Lorraine brought in
43,000 fr. Pasteur received it with grateful emotion, and was pleased
and touched to find the name of little Joseph Meister among the list of
private subscribers. It was now eleven months since he had been bitten
so cruelly by the dog, whose rabic condition had immediately been
recognized by the German authorities. Pasteur ever kept a corner of his
heart for the boy who had caused him such anxiety.
* * * * *
Pasteur’s name was now familiar to all those who were trying to benefit
humanity; his presence at charitable gatherings was considered as a
happy omen, and he was asked to preside on many such occasions. He was
ever ready with his help and sympathy, speaking in public, answering
letters from private individuals, giving wholesome advice to young
people who came to him for it, and doing nothing by halves. If he found
the time, even during that period when the study of rabies was absorbing
him, to undertake so many things and to achieve so many tasks, he owed
it to Mme. Pasteur, who watched over his peace, keeping him safe from
intrusions and interruptions. This retired, almost recluse life, enabled
him to complete many works, a few of which would have sufficed to make
several scientists celebrated.
Every morning, between ten and eleven o’clock, Pasteur walked down the
Rue Claude-Bernard to the Rue Vauquelin, where a few temporary buildings
had been erected to facilitate the treatment of hydrophobia, close to
the rabbit hutches, hencoops, and dog kennels which occupied the yard of
the old Collège Rollin. The patients under treatment walked about
cheerfully amidst these surroundings, looking like holiday makers in a
Zoological Garden. Children, whose tears were already dried at the
second inoculation, ran about merrily. Pasteur, who loved the little
ones, always kept sweets or new copper coins for them in his drawer. One
little girl amused herself by having holes bored in those coins, and
hung them round her neck like a necklace; she was wearing this ornament
on the day of her departure, when she ran to kiss the great man as she
would have kissed her grandfather.
Drs. Grancher, Roux, Chantemesse, and Charrin came by turns to perform
the inoculations. A surgery ward had been installed to treat the
numerous wounds of the patients, and entrusted to the young and
energetic Dr. Terrillon.
In August, 1886, while staying at Arbois, Pasteur spent much time over
his notes and registers; he was sometimes tempted to read over certain
articles of passionate criticism. “How difficult it is to obtain the
triumph of truth!” he would say. “Opposition is a useful stimulant, but
bad faith is such a pitiable thing. How is it that they are not struck
with the results as shown by statistics? From 1880 to 1885, sixty
persons are stated to have died of hydrophobia in the Paris hospitals;
well, since November 1, 1885, when the prophylactic method was started
in my laboratory, only three deaths have occurred in those hospitals,
two of which were cases which had not been treated. It is evident that
very few people who had been bitten did not come to be treated. In
France, out of that unknown but very restricted number, seventeen cases
of death have been noted, whilst out of the 1,726 French and Algerians
who came to the laboratory only ten died after the treatment.”
But Pasteur was not yet satisfied with this proportion, already so low;
he was trying to forestall the outburst of hydrophobia by a greater
rapidity and intensity of the treatment. He read a paper on the subject
to the Academy of Sciences on November 2, 1886. Admiral Jurien de la
Gravière, who was in the chair, said to him, “All great discoveries have
gone through a time of trial. May your health withstand the troubles and
difficulties in your way.”
Pasteur’s health had indeed suffered from so much work and anxiety, and
there were symptoms of some heart trouble. Drs. Villemin and Grancher
persuaded him to interrupt his work and to think of spending a restful
winter in the south of France. M. Raphael Bischoffsheim, a great lover
of science, placed at Pasteur’s disposal his beautiful villa at
Bordighera, close to the French frontier, which he had on divers
occasions lent to other distinguished guests, the Queen of Italy, Henri
Sainte-Claire Deville, Gambetta, etc.
Pasteur consented to leave his work at the end of November, and started
one evening from the Gare de Lyon with his wife, his daughter and her
husband, and his two grandchildren; eighteen friends came to the station
to see him off, including his pupils, M. Bischoffsheim, and some foreign
physicians who were staying in Paris to study the prophylactic treatment
of hydrophobia.
The bright dawn and the sunshine already appearing at Avignon
contrasted with the foggy November weather left behind in Paris and
brought a feeling of comfort, almost of returning health; a delegation
of doctors met the train at Nice, bringing Pasteur their good wishes.
The travelling party drove from Vintimille to Bordighera under the deep
blue sky reflected in a sea of a yet deeper blue, along a road bordered
with cacti, palms and other tropical plants. The sight of the lovely
gardens of the Villa Bischoffsheim gave Pasteur a delicious feeling of
rest.
His health soon improved sufficiently for him to be able to take some
short walks. But his thoughts constantly recurred to the laboratory. M.
Duclaux was then thinking of starting a monthly periodical entitled
_Annals of the Pasteur Institute_. Pasteur, writing to him on December
27, 1887, to express his approbation, suggested various experiments to
be attempted. He attributed the action of the preventive inoculations to
a vaccinal matter associated with the rabic microbe. Pasteur had thought
at first that the first development of the pathogenic microbe caused the
disappearance from the organism of an element necessary to the life of
that microbe. It was, in other words, a theory of exhaustion. But since
1885, he adopted the other idea, supported indeed by biologists, that
immunity was due to a substance left in the body by the culture of the
microbe and which opposed the invasion--a theory of addition.
“I am happy to learn,” wrote Villemin, his friend and his medical
adviser, “that your health is improving; continue to rest in that
beautiful country, you have well deserved it, and rest is _absolutely_
necessary to you. You have overtaxed yourself beyond all reason and you
must make up for it. Repairs to the nervous system are worked chiefly by
relaxation from the mental storms and moral anxieties which your _rabid_
work has occasioned in you. Give the Bordighera sun a chance!”
But Pasteur was not allowed the rest he so much needed; on January 4,
1887, referring to a death which had occurred after treatment in the
preceding December, M. Peter declared that the antirabic cure was
useless; at the following meeting he called it dangerous when applied in
the “intensive” form. Dujardin-Beaumetz, Chauveau and Verneuil
immediately intervened, declaring that the alleged fact was “devoid of
any scientific character.” A week later, MM. Grancher and Brouardel bore
the brunt of the discussion. Grancher, Pasteur’s representative on this
occasion, disproved certain allegations, and added: “The medical men
who have been chosen by M. Pasteur to assist him in his work have not
hesitated to practise the antirabic inoculation on themselves, as a
safeguard against an accidental inoculation of the virus which they are
constantly handling. What greater proof can they give of their bonâ fide
convictions?” He showed that the mortality amongst the cases treated
remained below 1 per 100. “M. Pasteur will soon publish foreign
statistics from Samara, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Warsaw and
Vienna: they are all absolutely favourable.”
As it was insinuated that the laboratory of the Ecole Normale kept its
failures a secret, it was decided that the _Annals of the Pasteur
Institute_ would publish a monthly list and bulletin of patients under
treatment.
Vulpian, at another meeting (it was almost the last time he was heard at
the Académie de Médecine), said, à propos of what he called an
inexcusable opposition, “This new benefit adds to the number of those
which our illustrious Pasteur has already rendered to humanity.... Our
works and our names will soon be buried under the rising tide of
oblivion: the name and the works of M. Pasteur will continue to stand on
heights too great to be reached by its sullen waves.” Pasteur was much
disturbed by the noise of these discussions; every post increased his
feverishness, and he spoke every morning of returning to Paris to answer
his opponents.
It was a pitiful thing to note on his worn countenance the visible signs
of the necessity of the peace and rest offered by this beautiful land of
serene sunshine; and to hear at the same time a constant echo of those
angry debates. Anonymous letters were sent to him, insulting newspaper
articles--all that envy and hatred can invent; the seamy side of human
nature was being revealed to him. “I did not know I had so many
enemies,” he said mournfully. He was consoled to some extent by the
ardent support of the greatest medical men in France.
Vulpian, in a statement to the Académie des Sciences, constituted
himself Pasteur’s champion. Pasteur indeed was safe from attacks in that
centre, but certain low slanderers who attended the public meetings of
the Académie continued to accuse Pasteur of concealing the failures of
his method. Vulpian--who was furiously angry at such an insinuation
against “a man like M. Pasteur, whose good faith, loyalty and scientific
integrity should be an example to his adversaries as they are to his
friends”--thought that it was in the interest both of science and of
humanity to state once more the facts recently confirmed by new
statistics; the public is so impressionable and so mobile in its
opinions that one article is often enough to shake general confidence.
He was therefore anxious to reassure all those who had been inoculated
on and who might be induced by those discussions to wonder with anguish
whether they really were saved. The Academy of Sciences decided that
Vulpian’s statement should be inserted _in extenso_ in all the reports
and a copy of it sent to every village in France. Vulpian wrote to
Pasteur at the same time, “All your admirers hope that those interested
attacks will merely excite your contempt. Fine weather is no doubt
reigning at Bordighera: you must take advantage of it and become quite
well.... The Academy of Medicine is almost entirely on your side; there
are at the most but four or five exceptions.”
* * * * *
Pasteur had a few calm days after these debates. Whilst planning out new
investigations, he was much interested in the plans for his Institute
which were now submitted to him. His thoughts were always away from
Bordighera, which he seemed to look upon as a sort of exile. This
impression was partly due to the situation of the town, so close to the
frontier, and the haunt of so many homeless wanderers. He once met a
sad-faced, still beautiful woman, in mourning robes, and recognized the
Empress Eugénie.
Shortly afterwards, he received a visit from Prince Napoleon, who
dragged his haughty _ennui_ from town to town. He presented himself at
the Villa Bischoffsheim under the name of Count Moncalieri, coming, he
said, to greet his colleague of the Institute. Rabies formed the subject
of their conversation. The next day, Pasteur called on the Prince, in
his commonplace hotel rooms, a mere temporary resting place for the
exiled Bonaparte, whose mysterious, uncompleted destiny was made more
enigmatical by his startling resemblance to the great Emperor.
On February 23, the day after the carnival, early in the morning, a
violent earthquake cast terror over that peaceful land where nature
hides with flowers the spectre of death. At 6.20 a.m. a low and distant
rumbling sound was heard, coming from the depths of the earth and
resembling the noise of a train passing in an underground tunnel; houses
began to rock and ominous cracks were heard. This first shock lasted
more than a minute, during which the sense of solidity disappeared
altogether, to be succeeded by a feeling of absolute, hopeless,
impotence. No doubt, in every household, families gathered together,
with a sudden yearning not to be divided. Pasteur’s wife, children and
grandchildren had barely had time to come to him when another shock took
place, more terrible than the first; everything seemed about to be
engulfed in an abyss. Never had morning been more radiant; there was not
a breath of wind, the air was absolutely transparent.
An early departure was necessary: the broken ceilings were dropping to
pieces, shaken off by an incessant vibration of the ground which
continued after the second shock, and of which Pasteur observed the
effect on glass windows with much interest. Pasteur and his family dove
off to Vintimille in a carriage, along a road lined with ruined houses,
crowded with sick people in quest of carriages and peasants coming down
from their mountain dwellings, destroyed by the shock, leading donkeys
loaded with bedding, the women followed by little children hastily wrapt
in blankets and odd clothes. At Vintimille station, terrified travellers
were trying to leave France for Italy or Italy for France, fancying that
the danger would cease on the other side of the frontier.
“We have resolved to go to Arbois,” wrote Mme. Pasteur to her son from
Marseilles; “your father will be better able there than anywhere else to
recover from this shock to his heart.”
After a few weeks’ stay at Arbois, Pasteur seemed quite well again. He
was received with respect and veneration on his return to the Academies
of Sciences and of Medicine. His best and greatest colleagues had
realized what the loss of him would mean to France and to the world, and
surrounded him with an anxious solicitude.
At the beginning of July, Pasteur received the report presented to the
House of Commons by the English Commission after a fourteen months’
study of the prophylactic method against hydrophobia. The English
scientists had verified every one of the facts upon which the method was
founded, but they had not been satisfied with their experimental
researches in Mr. Horsley’s laboratory, and had carried out a long and
minute inquiry in France. After noting on Pasteur’s registers the names
of ninety persons treated, who had come from the same neighbourhood,
they had interviewed each one of them in their own homes. “It may
therefore be considered as certain”--thus ran the report--“that M.
Pasteur has discovered a prophylactic method against hydrophobia which
may be compared with that of vaccination against small-pox. It would be
difficult to overestimate the utility of this discovery, both from the
point of view of its practical side and of its application to general
pathology. We have here a new method of inoculation, or vaccination, as
M. Pasteur sometimes calls it, and similar means might be employed to
protect man and domestic animals against other virus as active as that
of hydrophobia.”
Pasteur laid this report on the desk of the Academy of Sciences on July
4. He spoke of its spirit of entire and unanimous confidence, and
added--
“Thus fall to the ground the contradictions which have been published. I
leave on one side the passionate attacks which were not justified by the
least attempt at experiment, the slightest observation of facts in my
laboratory, or even an exchange of words and ideas with the Director of
the Hydrophobia Clinic, Professor Grancher, and his medical assistants.
“But, however deep is my satisfaction as a Frenchman, I cannot but feel
a sense of deepest sadness at the thought that this high testimony from
a commission of illustrious scientists was not known by him who, at the
very beginning of the application of this method, supported me by his
counsels and his authority, and who later on, when I was ill and absent,
knew so well how to champion truth and justice; I mean our beloved
colleague Vulpian.”
Vulpian had succumbed to a few days’ illness. His speech in favour of
Pasteur was almost the farewell to the Academy of this great-hearted
scientist.
The discussion threatened to revive. Other colleagues defended Pasteur
at the Academy of Medicine on July 12. Professor Brouardel spoke, also
M. Villemin, and then Charcot, who insisted on quoting word for word
Vulpian’s true and simple phrase: “The discovery of the preventive
treatment of hydrophobia after a bite, entirely due to M. Pasteur’s
experimental genius, is one of the finest discoveries ever made, both
from the scientific and the humanitarian point of view.” And Charcot
continued: “I am persuaded that I express in these words the opinion of
all the medical men who have studied the question with an open mind,
free from prejudice; the inventor of antirabic vaccination may, now
more than ever, hold his head high and continue to accomplish his
glorious task, heedless of the clamour of systematic contradiction or of
the insidious murmurs of slander.”
The Academy of Sciences begged Pasteur to become its Life Secretary in
Vulpian’s place. Pasteur did not reply at once to this offer, but went
to see M. Berthelot: “This high position,” he said, “would be more
suitable to you than to me.” M. Berthelot, much touched, refused
unconditionally, and Pasteur accepted. He was elected on July 18. He
said, in thanking his colleagues, “I would now spend what time remains
before me, on the one hand in encouraging to research and in training
for scientific studies,--the future of which seems to me most
promising,--pupils worthy of French science; and, on the other hand, in
following attentively the work incited and encouraged by this Academy.
“Our only consolation, as we feel our own strength failing us, is to
feel that we may help those who come after us to do more and to do
better than ourselves, fixing their eyes as they can on the great
horizons of which we only had a glimpse.”
He did not long fulfil his new duties. On October 23, Sunday morning,
after writing a letter in his room, he tried to speak to Mme. Pasteur
and could not pronounce a word; his tongue was paralyzed. He had
promised to lunch with his daughter on that day, and, fearing that she
might be alarmed, he drove to her house. After spending a few hours in
an easy chair, he consented to remain at her house with Mme. Pasteur. In
the evening his speech returned, and two days later, when he went back
to the Ecole Normale, no one would have noticed any change in him. But,
on the following Saturday morning, he had another almost similar attack,
without any premonitory symptoms. His speech remained somewhat
difficult, and his deep powerful voice completely lost its strength. In
January, 1888, he was obliged to resign his secretaryship.
Ill-health had emaciated his features. A portrait of him by Carolus
Duran represents him looking ill and weary, a sad look in his eyes. But
goodness predominates in those worn features, revealing that lovable
soul, full of pity for all human sufferings, and of which the painter
has rendered the unspeakable thrill.
Pasteur’s various portraits, compared with one another, show us
different aspects of his physiognomy. A luminous profile, painted by
Henner ten years before, brings out the powerful harmony of the
forehead. In 1886, Bonnat painted, for the brewer Jacobsen, who wished
to present it to Mme. Pasteur, a large portrait which may be called an
official one. Pasteur is standing in rather an artificial attitude,
which might be imperious, if his left hand was not resting on the
shoulder of his granddaughter, a child of six, with clear pensive eyes.
In that same year, Edelfeldt, the Finnish painter, begged to be allowed
to come into the laboratory for a few sketches. Pasteur came and went,
attending to his work and taking no notice of the painter. One day that
Edelfeldt was watching him thus, deep in observation, his forehead lined
with almost painful thoughts, he undertook to portray the savant in his
meditative attitude. Pasteur is standing clad in a short brown coat, an
experimental card in his left hand, in his right, a phial containing a
fragment of rabic marrow, the expression in his eyes entirely
concentrated on the scientific problem.
During the year 1888, Pasteur, after spending the morning with his
patients, used to go and watch the buildings for the Pasteur Institute
which were being erected in the Rue Dutot. 11,000 square yards of ground
had been acquired in the midst of some market gardens. Instead of rows
of hand-lights and young lettuces, a stone building, with a Louis XIII
façade, was now being constructed. An interior gallery connected the
main building with the large wings. The Pasteur Institute was to be at
the same time a great dispensary for the treatment of hydrophobia, a
centre of research on virulent and contagious diseases, and also a
teaching centre. M. Duclaux’s class of biological chemistry, held at the
Sorbonne, was about to be transferred to the Pasteur Institute, where
Dr. Roux would also give a course of lectures on technical microbia. The
“service” of vaccinations against anthrax was entrusted to M.
Chamberland. (The statistics of 1882--1887 gave a total of 1,600,000
sheep and nearly 200,000 oxen.) There would also be, under M.
Metchnikoff’s direction, some private laboratories, the monkish cells of
the Pastorians.
At the end of October, the work was almost completed; Pasteur invited
the President of the Republic to come and inaugurate the Institute. “I
shall certainly not fail to do so,” answered Carnot; “your Institute is
a credit to France.”
On November 14, politicians, colleagues, friends, collaborators, pupils
assembled in the large library of the new Institute. Pasteur had the
pleasure of seeing before him, in the first rank, Duruy and Jules
Simon; it was a great day for these former Ministers of Public
Instruction. Like them, Pasteur had all his life been deeply interested
in higher education. “If that teaching is but for a small number,” he
said, “it is with this small number, this élite that the prosperity,
glory and supremacy of a nation rest.”
Joseph Bertrand, chairman of the Institute Committee, knowing that by so
doing he responded to Pasteur’s dearest wishes, spoke of the past and
recalled the memories of Biot, Senarmont, Claude Bernard, Balard, and J.
B. Dumas.
Professor Grancher, Secretary of the Committee, alluded to the way in
which not only Vulpian but Breuardel, Charcot, Verneuil, Chauveau and
Villemin had recently honoured themselves by supporting the cause of
progress and preparing its triumph. These memories of early friends,
associated with that of recent champions, brought before the audience a
vision of the procession of years. After speaking of the obstacles
Pasteur had so often encountered amongst the medical world--
“You know,” said M. Grancher, “that M. Pasteur is an innovator, and that
his creative imagination, kept in check by rigorous observation of
facts, has overturned many errors and built up in their place an
entirely new science. His discoveries on ferments, on the generation of
the infinitesimally small, on microbes, the cause of contagious
diseases, and on the vaccination of those diseases, have been for
biological chemistry, for the veterinary art and for medicine, not a
regular progress, but a complete revolution. Now, revolutions, even
those imposed by scientific demonstration, ever leave behind them
vanquished ones who do not easily forgive. M. Pasteur has therefore many
adversaries in the world, without counting those Athenian French who do
not like to see one man always right or always fortunate. And, as if he
had not enough adversaries, M. Pasteur makes himself new ones by the
rigorous implacability of his dialectics and the absolute form he
sometimes gives to his thought.”
Going on to the most recently acquired results, M. Grancher stated that
the mortality amongst persons treated after bites from rabid dogs
remained under 1 per 100.
“If those figures are indeed eloquent,” said M. Christophle, the
treasurer, who spoke after M. Grancher, “other figures are touching. I
would advise those who only see the dark side of humanity,” he remarked,
before entering upon the statement of accounts--“those who go about
repeating that everything here below is for the worst, that there is no
disinterestedness, no devotion in this world--to cast their eyes over
the ‘human documents’ of the Pasteur Institute. They would learn
therein, beginning at the beginning, that Academies contain colleagues
who are not offended, but proud and happy in the fame of another; that
politicians and journalists often have a passion for what is good and
true; that at no former epoch have great men been more beloved in
France; that justice is already rendered to them during their lifetime,
which is very much the best way of doing so; that we have cheered Victor
Hugo’s birthday, Chevreul’s centenary, and the inauguration of the
Pasteur Institute. When a Frenchman runs himself down, said one of M.
Pasteur’s colleagues, do not believe him; he is boasting! Reversing a
celebrated and pessimistic phrase, it might be said that in this public
subscription all the virtues flow into unselfishness like rivers into
the sea.”
M. Christophle went on to show how rich and poor had joined in this
subscription and raised an amount of 2,586,680 fr. The French Chambers
had voted 200,000 fr., to which had been added international gifts from
the Tsar, the Emperor of Brazil, and the Sultan. The total expenses
would probably reach 1,563,786 fr., leaving a little more than a million
to form an endowment for the Pasteur Institute, a fund which was to be
increased every year by the product of the sale of vaccines from the
laboratory, which Pasteur and Messrs. Chamberland and Roux agreed to
give up to the Institute.
“It is thus, Sir,” concluded the treasurer, directly addressing Pasteur,
“that public generosity, practical help from the Government, and your
own disinterestedness have founded and consolidated the establishment
which we are to-day inaugurating.” And, persuaded that the solicitude of
the public would never fail to support this great work, “This is for
you, Sir, a rare and almost unhoped for happiness; let it console you
for the passionate struggles, the terrible anxiety and the many emotions
you have gone through.”
Pasteur, overcome by his feelings, had to ask his son to read his
speech. It began by a rapid summary of what France had done for
education in all its degrees. “From village schools to laboratories,
everything has been founded or renovated.” After acknowledging the help
given him in later years by the public authorities, he continued--
“And when the day came that, foreseeing the future which would be opened
by the discovery of the attenuation of virus, I appealed to my country,
so that we should be allowed, through the strength and impulse of
private initiative, to build laboratories to be devoted, not only to the
prophylactic treatment of hydrophobia, but also to the study of virulent
and contagious diseases--on that day again, France gave in handfuls....
It is now finished, this great building, of which it might be said that
there is not a stone but what is the material sign of a generous
thought. All the virtues have subscribed to build this dwelling place
for work.
“Alas! mine is the bitter grief that I enter it, a man ‘vanquished by
Time,’ deprived of my masters, even of my companions in the struggle,
Dumas, Bouley, Paul Bert, and lastly Vulpian, who, after having been
with you, my dear Grancher, my counsellor at the very first, became the
most energetic, the most convinced champion of this method.
“However, if I have the sorrow of thinking that they are no more, after
having valiantly taken their part in discussions which I have never
provoked but have had to endure; if they cannot hear me proclaim all
that I owe to their counsels and support; if I feel their absence as
deeply as on the morrow of their death, I have at least the consolation
of believing that all that we struggled for together will not perish.
The collaborators and pupils who are now here share our scientific
faith....” He continued, as in a sort of testament: “Keep your early
enthusiasm, dear collaborators, but let it ever be regulated by rigorous
examinations and tests. Never advance anything which cannot be proved in
a simple and decisive fashion.
“Worship the spirit of criticism. If reduced to itself, it is not an
awakener of ideas or a stimulant to great things, but, without it,
everything is fallible; it always has the last word. What I am now
asking you, and you will ask of your pupils later on, is what is most
difficult to an inventor.
“It is indeed a hard task, when you believe you have found an important
scientific fact and are feverishly anxious to publish it, to constrain
yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, to fight with yourself, to
try and ruin your own experiments and only to proclaim your discovery
after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses.
“But when, after so many efforts, you have at last arrived at a
certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human
soul, and the thought that you will have contributed to the honour of
your country renders that joy still deeper.
“If science has no country, the scientist should have one, and ascribe
to it the influence which his works may have in this world. If I might
be allowed, M. le Président, to conclude by a philosophical remark
inspired by your presence in this Home of Work, I should say that two
contrary laws seem to be wrestling with each other nowadays; the one, a
law of blood and of death, ever imagining new means of destruction and
forcing nations to be constantly ready for the battlefield--the other, a
law of peace, work and health, ever evolving new means of delivering man
from the scourges which beset him.
“The one seeks violent conquests, the other the relief of humanity. The
latter places one human life above any victory; while the former would
sacrifice hundreds and thousands of lives to the ambition of one. The
law of which we are the instruments seeks, even in the midst of carnage,
to cure the sanguinary ills of the law of war; the treatment inspired by
our antiseptic methods may preserve thousands of soldiers. Which of
those two laws will ultimately prevail, God alone knows. But we may
assert that French Science will have tried, by obeying the law of
Humanity, to extend the frontiers of Life.”