was invariably adopted by Pasteur.
'Contradictions may retard, although they cannot ultimately prevent,
the recognition of truth,' he once remarked to me when walking in the
gardens of the École Normale; 'that is why it is so important to remove
the obstacles which temporarily clog and hamper it. In scientific
discussions, it is not as in politics,' he added with a smile, 'where
demonstration is often difficult. In the natural sciences, doctrines
must be based on an assemblage of results, of observations, and of
experiments. If a doctrine is challenged, it seldom happens that its
truth or falsehood cannot be established by the application of some
crucial test. Even a single experiment will often suffice either to
refute or consolidate the doctrine.'
Reviewing the labours of the past forty years, Pasteur then called to
mind the numerous controversies in which he had been engaged. Not only
had he been attacked by Pouchet and Joly on the question of spontaneous
generation, by Liebig on the subject of fermentation, by Germans and
Italians regarding the attenuation of virus, but every one of his
assertions had been met with such passionate opposition that, from
sheer weariness, he had invariably ended by referring the matter to
some authorised commission, only asking it to put an end to all strife
by coming to some definite decision.
The upshot was at times somewhat amusing. For instance, when Pasteur
described to the Academy of Medicine how, simply by lowering the
temperature of a hen, he had made her susceptible to inoculation with
splenic fever, the facts were at once denied by M. Colin, a professor
of the school of Alfort. Pasteur immediately requested that a
commission might be named, which should include both himself and his
opponent among its members. This was on a Tuesday, one of the Academy
days of sitting. The following Saturday, in presence of the whole
commission, Pasteur produced four hens that had died of splenic fever.
M. Colin himself conducted the autopsy. It was clear to everyone that
their blood was full of the filaments of the splenic fever parasite.
The _procès-verbal_ was drawn up and signed by all the members of the
commission, necessarily including M. Colin. The following Tuesday it
was read at the sitting of the Academy. To cover his retreat M. Colin
now contended that the hens had taken splenic fever not because they
had been subjected to a chilling process, but because, so as to keep
them in the water, the poor creatures had had their wings and feet tied
to planks. This sentimental objection was disposed of by comparative
experiments that had been made on hens similarly tied and inoculated,
but not chilled. The latter had in no case taken the disease.
At the Academy of Sciences, some days later, a mine was sprung upon
Pasteur by a posthumous publication of Claude Bernard's. He again
submitted this abruptly raised question to the decision of the Academy.
A series of experiments had been found among Bernard's papers, having
as their object the inauguration of a new method of spontaneously
generating the substance which causes the fermentation of the must of
the grape.
'I will start for the Jura,' said Pasteur. 'In the midst of my
vineyard, which,' he proudly added, 'is ten meters square, I will cover
over some stocks with an improvised frame. These stocks will go on
living and bearing grapes, which will ripen. It is now July. At this
time of year, as I have already declared, the germs of the cellules
which form the ferment of the grape in the vats do not yet exist,
either on the green grapes, on the bunches, or on the vine leaves. I
will envelop the bunches of the stocks that are underneath the frame
with a layer of cotton wool that has been raised to a temperature of
150 degrees Centigrade. This done, I will come back to Paris with the
keys of the frame in my pocket, not returning to the Jura until the
vintage season, at the beginning of October. I predict to the Academy,
that the grapes wrapped in cotton wool under the frame, and which will
have grown ripe, may be crushed in the open air, and that the juice
coming from them will not be capable of fermentation.'
This prediction was fulfilled. In October, Pasteur returned to the
Jura, plucked off several of these stocks, laden with ripe bunches,
and brought them with the utmost care to Paris. He had at last the
satisfaction of depositing them intact on the table of the Academy of
Sciences. He then invited M. Berthelot (editor of Bernard's pamphlet),
and all his colleagues, to cut off as many bunches as they pleased.
'Only crush them in contact with pure air,' said he, 'and I defy you to
produce fermentation.'
How often was Pasteur obliged to return to facts already proved, not
only at the Academy of Sciences, but at the Academy of Medicine, where
M. Jules Guérin, at the age of eighty, challenged him to a duel as his
scientific ultimatum! If M. Pasteur at times pleaded his cause with
too much passion, it was the passion of truth, the burning desire to
convince, which lent such power and defiance to his vibrating voice.
He could not endure his work to be attacked--not from pride, none was
more modest than he--but from irritation at the denial of positive
facts; facts of which he was a thousand times assured, and which all
the world might verify. No one now remembers these discussions. Time
has passed, and opposition has been overthrown. It has been granted
to Pasteur to see, everywhere around him, the beneficent results of
his discoveries. From all parts, from his own as well as from foreign
countries, such proofs of admiration and gratitude have been showered
upon him as are usually granted only to those whose death has atoned
for their genius. He has opened up such sources of wealth to industry
and agriculture that, as the learned English professor Huxley has truly
said, 'Pasteur's discoveries suffice, of themselves, to cover the war
indemnity of five milliards of francs paid by France to Germany.'
His investigations of contagious diseases have revealed immense
possibilities in prophylaxy. But Pasteur considered these marvellous
discoveries as a mere beginning. 'You will see,' he often said, 'how it
will all grow by-and-by. Would that my time were longer!'
_THE LABORATORY OF THE ÉCOLE NORMALE._
VARIOUS STUDIES. HYDROPHOBIA.
Since the day when a minister told Pasteur, that there were not 1,500
francs in the budget to allow for the expenses of his laboratory,
science has obtained a little more consideration. At the present time
she has nothing to complain of: her sovereignty is recognised; her
schools are becoming palaces; she has an amply sufficient civil list:
she is rich enough, in short, to pay for her researches. M. Pasteur's
laboratory has had its full share of the well-bestowed generosity of
the State. The municipal council of Paris even wished to attach vast
dependencies to this laboratory. The old garden of the ancient Collège
Rollin was placed at the disposal of Pasteur; who at once hastened
to build stables for lodging horses attacked by glanders, stalls for
sheltering splenic fever sheep, and kennels for the reception of mad
dogs. But, while taking advantage of these hospitable premises, Pasteur
still retained, in the basement of his laboratory in the Rue d'Ulm, a
whole population of animals under experiment. Isolated in round cages
which impart some sense of security, are the rabid dogs; some attacked
with furious madness, biting their bars, devouring hay, uttering
doleful howls which those who have once heard can never forget; others
carrying the germ of this terrible disease, still fawning with a humble
look of tenderness, as if imploring attention. Hens and chickens pass
their heads through the wooden bars of their coops. From time to time
a cock from the bottom of his den crows 'a gloomy dawn.' Rabbits eat
peaceably, while little families of guinea-pigs cluster together,
and at the least alarm utter a frightened cry. All these animals are
destined to be shortly inoculated. Each morning a round of inspection
is made in this little hospital of condemned animals. The dead are
taken out, carried to one of the upper rooms, and placed on the
dissecting-boards.
* * * * *
It is also to such boards that living animals are fastened when it is
necessary to experiment upon them. Certainly when one sees a dog lying
with a forlorn look, its feet tied, its body trembling from fright, on
the point of undergoing, though in full health, a bloody operation,
one cannot suppress the feelings of pity. But a single visit to a
physiological laboratory suffices to reveal vivisection in its only
and true light; that of the interest it offers to science, and the
results it may have in store for the benefit of humanity. Moreover,
in Pasteur's laboratory, every dog subjected to vivisection is
chloroformed. The persons who take up the controversy about vivisection
are careful that the outside world shall see only the suffering and
anguish of the animal, where the solution of a problem should be
the object kept in view. Would the English physiologist Harvey have
discovered the circulation of the blood, if he had not practised
vivisection on deer in the park of Charles I.? Would Claude Bernard
have been able, without vivisection, to demonstrate the glycogenic
function of the liver? If Pasteur had not sacrificed some fowls and
sheep, would the great scientific fact of the attenuation of virus
have been discovered? If 500 dogs had to perish, what would that be,
compared with the discovery tomorrow of the cause of hydrophobia, and
of the means of protecting humanity against this frightful scourge?
On one occasion, in presence of a large assembly, Pasteur made an
experiment on atmospheric oxygen. He placed under a glass bell a bird,
which in a short time, after having consumed the oxygen contained in
the bell, gathered itself up into a ball, opened its beak, and shut its
eyes, as if it were going to die. At this moment Pasteur introduced a
second sparrow, which, passing directly from the ordinary air into the
bell, without any gradual preparation, immediately fell, asphyxiated.
There was a little exclamation of horror and a movement of pity in the
audience. While the first sparrow, which had gone through the ordeal
unharmed, was set free, and gradually revived, Pasteur turned towards
the assembly and said--
'I never had the courage to kill a bird in sport, but when it is a
question of experiment I am deterred by no scruple. Science has the
right to assert the sovereignty of its aims.'
* * * * *
But to return to the animals of the laboratory: From the little white
mice, which hide themselves in a packet of wadding, to the dogs which
bark furiously in their iron cages, all are devoted to death. But it is
not only the inmates of the laboratory which daily succeed each other
upon the operating and dissecting tables. From divers parts of France,
hampers full of fowls which have died of cholera, or of some other
disease, are sent to Pasteur. Here is an enormous basket packed with
straw containing the dead body of a pig which had died of measles. This
fragment of lung, packed in a tin box, belonged to a cow which died of
peripneumonia. Other packets are still more precious. Since Pasteur
went to Pauillac two years ago, to watch for the return of a ship
which was to bring back some passengers attacked with yellow fever,
he sometimes receives from a distant country a bottled dose of _vomito
negro_.
Everywhere, on the work tables, are to be seen tubes filled with blood,
microscope slides carrying little drops. In the stoves are ranged
the cultivating flasks, which resemble little flasks of liqueur. The
point of a needle dipped into one of these flasks is sufficient to
cause death. Enclosed in their glass prison, millions upon millions of
microbes live and multiply.
It is really a curious spectacle this workshop of research and
discovery. How numerous and varied are the subjects which are being
studied, and with what energy and patience does Pasteur attack them!
It is not only to the most dreaded diseases that he has applied the
germ theory. He has extended it to certain common disorders. Everything
to him is a subject for experiment. In May 1879, a person who was
working in the laboratory was troubled with boils, which reappeared, as
usually happens, at short intervals, sometimes on one part of the body,
sometimes on another. Pasteur, whose mind was constantly dwelling on
the part played by microscopic organisms, asked himself if the pus of
the boils did not contain a parasite, the presence and development of
which, and its accidental transport here and there in the body, might
be the cause of the local inflammation and of the formation of the pus.
The constant reappearance of the evil would be thus accounted for.
The pus of the first boil, which was situated on the nape of the
neck, was collected in great purity; some days afterwards, the pus of
a second boil, then of a third boil, was collected. The pus, or the
blood-stained lymph of the red swelling which preceded the formation of
the pus, were sown in a sterilised infusion, and each time a microbe,
formed of little spherical points connected in pairs, frequently united
in small clusters, was seen to develop itself. The cultivating liquid
was sometimes infusion of fowl, sometimes of yeast. In the infusion of
yeast the little grains are suspended in pairs throughout the liquid,
which is uniformly thickened with them. In the fowl infusion, the
grains are united into little clusters, which cover the sides of the
vessels, the liquid remaining clear as long as it is not shaken.
New observations were made upon a series of boils, in the case of a
man sent to Pasteur by Dr. Maurice Raynaud. The same parasite was
again found--a unique parasite, distinct from all others. At the
Hospital Lariboisière, a woman whose back was covered with boils,
offered another opportunity for experiment, and with the same result.
It appears certain, then, that every boil contains a microscopic
aerobic microbe, and that to it are due the local inflammation and the
consequent formation of pus.
When guinea-pigs or rabbits are inoculated with the cultivating
liquids, little abscesses are formed, which, however, quickly
disappear. As long as the cure of these little abscesses is not quite
completed, one can extract from them the microscopic organism which
has formed them. When the little parasite is sought for in the general
blood of those attacked with boils it is not found. The cause of this,
no doubt, is that an aerobic parasite has always some difficulty in
developing itself in the blood. The blood corpuscles appropriate, and
do not willingly give up to a foreign organism, the oxygen which they
require. There is a struggle for life, and in the struggle against the
boils the victory is not doubtful. It might be thought, then, that
the little organism of boils does not exist in the blood, but there
is no doubt that if, instead of a small drop of blood, one could put
several grammes or more into cultivation fruitful results would follow.
The little parasite is no doubt conveyed by the blood at one time or
other. It is transported from a boil, in the process of development, to
another point of the body, where it may be fortuitously arrested, there
to cultivate itself and form a new boil.
'It is to be wished,' said Pasteur, 'that a patient would submit to a
number of punctures on different parts of the body, distant from boils
already formed or in process of formation, and that with the blood thus
taken from the general circulation a multitude of cultivations might be
carried on. I am persuaded,' he added, 'that, among these cultivations,
we should find some fruitful in the little organism of the boils.'
But whilst Dr. Maurice Raynaud gave Pasteur the means of studying
boils, Dr. Lannelongue enabled him to investigate that serious
disease of the bones and marrow called 'osteomyelitis.' In February
1880 that skilful surgeon, who has published a highly esteemed work
on osteomyelitis, and on the possibility of its cure by trepanning
the bone, followed by washings and antiseptic dressings, conducted
Pasteur to the Hospice Trousseau. A little girl twelve years of age,
attacked with this cruel malady, was about to be operated upon. The
right knee was much swollen, as was also all the leg to below the calf,
and a part of the thigh above the knee. After having chloroformed
the child, Dr. Lannelongue made a long incision below the knee, from
which pus flowed abundantly. The bone of the tibia was laid bare for
a considerable length. Three trepanning perforations were then made
in the bone, from each of which the pus issued in great quantities.
Pasteur carefully collected, with all the conditions necessary to the
preservation of their purity, the pus of the exterior and the pus of
the interior of the bone, and, returning to his laboratory, he examined
them attentively. The direct observation, by a microscope, of the two
specimens of pus was extremely interesting. It was obvious that they
contained, in large quantities, an organism like that of boils, in
pairs of two or four, and also in parcels, some with a clearly defined
outline, others scarcely visible, and with very faint outlines. The
external pus showed an abundance of pus globules, but that of the
interior did not show any. It was like a paste entirely composed of
microbes, so numerous and fertile that, in less than six hours after
sowing them in the cultivating liquid, the development of the little
microbe had commenced, and was rendered visible to the naked eye by a
slight but general turbidity of the liquid.
Its close resemblance to the organism of the boil might lead to the
assertion that they are identical, if it were not known how great
are the physiological differences that may exist between microscopic
parasites of the same appearance and the same dimensions.
I.
As Pasteur advanced in these studies, he found at the Academy of
Medicine some fellow labourers, who being keenly interested in such
researches did all they could to promote them. Thus M. Villemin,
the chief medical officer of the Val de Grâce (who had with so much
sagacity discovered the contagion of tuberculosis) when typhoid fever
was raging in Paris two years ago, never allowed a case of the fever
to pass through his hands without informing Pasteur, who habitually
went himself to collect specimens of the blood of those who had died.
How numerous were the drops of blood thus enclosed in little tubes, and
how frequent the attempts at cultivation, as yet without result, in the
hope of finding the cause of a disease which claims so many victims!
There is another malady to which Dr. Hervieux especially called
Pasteur's attention, and by which so many women are attacked--puerperal
fever. He went with M. Hervieux to the Maternity Hospital, to visit a
woman under his charge who had contracted puerperal fever some days
after her confinement. By means of a pin a prick was made in the
forefinger of the left hand, which had been washed previously with
dilute alcohol and carbolic acid, and dried with singed linen. The
drop of blood taken in this way was sown in an infusion of fowl. For
some days the cultivation remained sterile. Next day blood was taken
from a fresh puncture, and this time it proved fertile. The woman
died three days after. The blood, therefore, already at the time when
Pasteur had taken it, three days at least before death, contained a
microscopic parasite capable of cultivation. Eighteen hours before this
woman died, some blood taken from the left foot had been sown, and,
like the former, it had proved productive; but--and this fact deserves
to be noted--while the first productive cultivation only contained a
microbe resembling that of boils, the other cultivation contained long
flexible chaplets clustered together like tangled strings of beads.
At the post-mortem examination of this woman large quantities of pus
were found in the peritoneum and the uterus. This pus was sown with all
due precaution. Some blood taken from the basilic and femoral veins was
likewise sown. It was everywhere easy to recognise the long chaplets
in little tangled parcels, and always without admixture of other
organisms, except in the cultivation of the peritoneal pus, which,
besides the long strings of grains, showed also the little pyogenic
vibrios to which Pasteur had already assigned the name of the pus
organism.
From the Maternity Hospital Pasteur went to the Hôpital Lariboisière,
where he had been informed that another woman had just died of the same
fever. From a puncture in the peritoneum he collected some pus which
was found there in great abundance. He sowed this, as well as some
blood taken from a vein in the arm. The culture of the pus furnished
the long strings of grains and the little pyogenic vibrio. The culture
of the blood exhibited only the long strings quite pure.
Pasteur made many other observations of the same kind in cases of
puerperal fever. He arrived at the conclusion that, under the name
of puerperal fever, diseases of different symptoms were classed, but
which all appear to be the result of the invasion of common organisms,
which develop themselves on the surface of wounded parts, and from
thence spread themselves, in one form or another, by the medium of the
blood or of the lymphatics, over different parts of the body. Here the
various morbid symptoms are determined by the nature of the parasite
and the general constitution of the patient. Pasteur is convinced that,
with the possible exception of cases where, by the presence either of
internal or external abscesses, the body, before confinement, contains
microscopic organisms, the antiseptic treatment ought to be infallible
in preventing puerperal fever from declaring itself. The employment
of carbolic acid may be of great service; but its smell, and often
the melancholy association of ideas which it awakens, might render
it unsuitable for women in labour. There is not the same objection
to concentrated solutions of boric acid, which, at the ordinary
temperature, contain from thirty to forty grammes of acid to one litre
of water.
'Would it not be very useful,' said Pasteur one day, when developing
his ideas and observations before the Academy of Sciences, 'to place
always by the bedside of each patient the concentrated and warm
solution of boric acid, with compresses to be very frequently renewed,
after having been soaked in the solution, these applications being
begun immediately after the confinement? It would also be prudent,
before using the compresses, to put them into a hot-air stove, at a
temperature of 150 degrees, which is more than sufficient to kill all
the germs of common organisms.
'I have,' he added, 'represented the facts as they have appeared to me,
and I have hazarded the interpretation of them; but I do not disguise
from myself that, in the domain of medicine, it is difficult to
withdraw oneself entirely from a pre-existing subjective bias; neither
do I forget that the medical and veterinary studies are foreign to
myself: therefore I earnestly desire judgment and criticism. While I am
little tolerant of frivolous contradiction or of prejudice, despising
as I do that vulgar scepticism which would erect doubt into a system,
I honour that militant scepticism which makes doubt the basis of a
method, whose motto is "More light."'
Since these ideas have penetrated further into practice; puerperal
fever, I was told lately by a distinguished medical man, is hardly
known in the Maternity Hospital. The employment of a solution of one
to a thousandth of corrosive sublimate, which is one of the best
antiseptics, gives excellent results, and keeps off all danger. May
it not be permitted to hope that puerperal fever will soon disappear
in the same way that purulent infection has disappeared in hospitals,
since the introduction of Lister's dressings?
II.