The Life of Pasteur · René Vallery-Radot
At the time when Pasteur received the letter above quoted, which gave him deep gratification, people in France were so far from all that concerned antisepsis and asepsis, that, when he advised surgeons at the Académie de Médecine to put their instruments through a flame before using them, they did not understand what he meant, and he had to explain--
“I mean that surgical instruments should merely be put through a flame, not really heated, and for this reason: if a sound were examined with a microscope, it would be seen that its surface presents grooves where dusts are harboured, which cannot be completely removed even by the most careful cleansing. Fire entirely destroys those organic dusts; in my laboratory, where I am surrounded by dust of all kinds, I never make use of an instrument without previously putting it through a flame.”
Pasteur was ever ready to help others, giving them willing advice or information. In November, 1874, when visiting the Hôtel Dieu with Messrs. Larrey and Gosselin, he had occasion to notice that a certain cotton-wool dressing had been very badly done by a student in one of Guérin’s wards. A wound on the dirty hand of a labouring man had been bandaged with cotton wool without having been washed in any way. When the bandaging was removed in the presence of Guérin, the pus exhaled a repugnant odour, and was found to swarm with vibriones. Pasteur in a sitting of the Académie des Sciences, entered into details as to the precautions which are necessary to get rid of the germs originally present on the surface of the wound or of the cotton wool; he declared that the layers of cotton wool should be heated to a very high temperature. He also suggested the following experiment: “In order to demonstrate the evil influence of ferments and proto-organisms in the suppuration of wounds, I would make two identical wounds on the two symmetrical limbs of an animal under chloroform; on one of those wounds I would apply a cotton-wool dressing with every possible precaution; on the other, on the contrary, I would cultivate, so to speak, micro-organisms abstracted from a strange sore, and offering, more or less, a septic character.
“Finally, I should like to cut open a wound on an animal under chloroform in a very carefully selected part of the body--for the experiment would be a very delicate one--and in absolutely pure air, that is, air absolutely devoid of any kind of germs, afterwards maintaining a pure atmosphere around the wound, and having recourse to no dressing whatever. I am inclined to think that perfect healing would ensue under such conditions, for there would be nothing to hinder the work of repair and reorganization which must be accomplished on the surface of a wound if it is to heal.”
He explained in that way the advantage accruing to hygiene, in hospitals and elsewhere, from infinite precautions of cleanliness and the destroying of infectious germs. Himself a great investigator of new ideas, he intended to compel his colleagues at the Académie de Médecine to include the pathogenic share of the infinitesimally small among matters demanding the attention of medicine and surgery. The struggle was a long, unceasing and painful one. In February, 1875, his presence gave rise to a discussion on ferments, which lasted until the end of March. In the course of this discussion he recalled the experiments he had made fifteen years before, describing how--in a liquid composed of mineral elements, apart from the contact of atmospheric air and previously raised to ebullition--vibriones could be sown and subsequently seen to flourish and multiply, offering the sight of those two important phenomena: life without air, and fermentation.
“They are far behind us now,” he said; “they are now relegated to the rank of chimeras, those theories of fermentation imagined by Berzelius, Mitscherlich, and Liebig, and re-edited with an accompaniment of new hypotheses by Messrs. Pouchet, Frémy, Trécul, and Béchamp. Who would now dare to affirm that fermentations are contact phenomena, phenomena of motion, communicated by an altering albuminoid matter, or phenomena produced by semi-organized materia, transforming themselves into this or into that? All those creations of fancy fall to pieces before this simple and decisive experiment.”
Pasteur ended up his speech by an unexpected attack on the pompous etiquette of the Academy’s usual proceedings, urging his colleagues to remain within the bounds of a scientific discussion instead of making flowery speeches. He was much applauded, and his exhortation taken in good part. His colleagues also probably sympathized with his irritation in hearing a member of the assembly, M. Poggiale, formerly apothecary in chief to the Val de Grâce, give a somewhat sceptical dissertation on such a subject as spontaneous generation, saying disdainfully--
“M. Pasteur has told us that he had looked for spontaneous generation for twenty years without finding it; he will long continue to look for it, and, in spite of his courage, perseverance and sagacity, I doubt whether he ever will find it. It is almost an unsolvable question. However those who, like me, have no fixed opinion on the question of spontaneous generation reserve the right of verifying, of sifting and of disputing new facts, as they appear, one by one and wherever they are produced.”
“What!” cried Pasteur, wrathful whenever those great questions were thoughtlessly tackled, “what! I have been for twenty years engaged in one subject and I am not to have an opinion! and the right of verifying, sifting, and disputing the facts is to belong to him who does nothing to become enlightened but merely to read our works more or less attentively, his feet on his study fender!!!
“You have no opinion on spontaneous generation, my dear colleague; I can well believe that, while regretting it. I am not speaking, of course, of those sentimental opinions that everybody has, more or less, in questions of this nature, for in this assembly we do not go in for sentiment. You say that, in the present state of science, it is wiser to have no opinion: well, I have an opinion, not a sentimental one, but a rational one, having acquired a right to it by twenty years of assiduous labour, and it would be wise in every impartial mind to share it. My opinion--nay, more, my conviction--is that, in the present state of science, as you rightly say, spontaneous generation is a chimera; and it would be impossible for you to contradict me, for my experiments all stand forth to prove that spontaneous generation is a chimera. What is then your judgment on my experiments? Have I not a hundred times placed organic matter in contact with pure air in the best conditions for it to produce life spontaneously? Have I not practised on those organic materia which are most favourable, according to all accounts, to the genesis of spontaneity, such as blood, urine, and grape juice? How is it that you do not see the essential difference between my opponents and myself? Not only have I contradicted, proof in hand, every one of their assertions, while they have never dared to seriously contradict one of mine, but, for them, every cause of error benefits their opinion. For me, affirming as I do that there are no spontaneous fermentations, I am bound to eliminate every cause of error, every perturbing influence, I can maintain my results only by means of most irreproachable experiments; their opinions, on the contrary, profit by every insufficient experiment and that is where they find their support.”
Pasteur having been abruptly addressed by a colleague, who remarked that there were yet many unexplained facts in connection with fermentation, he answered by thus apostrophizing his adversaries--
“What is then your idea of the progress of Science? Science advances one step, then another, and then draws back and meditates before taking a third. Does the impossibility of taking that last step suppress the success acquired by the two others? Would you say to an infant who hesitated before a third step, having ventured on two previous ones; ‘Thy former efforts are of no avail; never shalt thou walk’?
“You wish to upset what you call my theory, apparently in order to defend another; allow me to tell you by what signs these theories are recognized: the characteristic of erroneous theories is the impossibility of ever foreseeing new facts; whenever such a fact is discovered, those theories have to be grafted with further hypotheses in order to account for them. True theories, on the contrary, are the expression of actual facts and are characterized by being able to predict new facts, a natural consequence of those already known. In a word, the characteristic of a true theory is its fruitfulness.”
“Science,” said he again at the following sitting of the Academy, “should not concern itself in any way with the philosophical consequences of its discoveries. If through the development of my experimental studies I come to demonstrate that matter can organize itself of its own accord into a cell or into a living being, I would come here to proclaim it with the legitimate pride of an inventor conscious of having made a great discovery, and I would add, if provoked to do so, ‘All the worse for those whose doctrines or systems do not fit in with the truth of the natural facts.’
“It was with similar pride that I defied my opponents to contradict me when I said, ‘In the present state of science the doctrine of spontaneous generation is a chimera.’ And I add, with similar independence, ‘All the worse for those whose philosophical or political ideas are hindered by my studies.’
“This is not to be taken to mean that, in my beliefs and in the conduct of my life, I only take account of acquired science: if I would, I could not do so, for I should then have to strip myself of a part of myself. There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observation, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in that hope, the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die. The two domains are distinct, and woe to him who tries to let them trespass on each other in the so imperfect state of human knowledge.”
And that separation, as he understood it, caused in him none of those conflicts which often determine a crisis in a human soul. As a scientist, he claimed absolute liberty of research; he considered, with Claude Bernard and Littré, that it was a mistaken waste of time to endeavour to penetrate primary causes; “we can only note correlations,” he said. But, with the spiritual sentiment which caused him to claim for the inner moral life the same liberty os for scientific research, he could not understand certain givers of easy explanations who affirm that matter has organized itself, and who, considering as perfectly simple the spectacle of the Universe of which Earth is but an infinitesimal part, are in no wise moved by the Infinite Power who created the worlds. With his whole heart he proclaimed the immortality of the soul.
His mode of looking upon human life, in spite of sorrows, of struggles, of heavy burdens, had in it a strong element of consolation: “No effort is wasted,” he said, giving thus a most virile lesson of philosophy to those inferior minds who only see immediate results in the work they undertake and are discouraged by the first disappointment. In his respect for the great phenomenon of Conscience, by which almost all men, enveloped as they are in the mystery of the Universe, have the prescience of an Ideal, of a God, he considered that “the greatness of human actions can be measured by the inspirations which give them birth.” He was convinced that there are no vain prayers. If all is simple to the simple, all is great to the great; it was through “the Divine regions of Knowledge and of Light” that he had visions of those who are no more.
It was very seldom that he spoke of such things, though he was sometimes induced to do so in the course of a discussion so as to manifest his repugnance for vainglorious negations and barren irony; sometimes too he would enter into such feelings when speaking to an assembly of young men.
Those discussions at the Academy of Medicine had the advantage of inciting medical men to the research of the infinitesimally small, described by the Annual Secretary Roger as “those subtle artisans of many disorders in the living economy.”
M. Roger, at the end of a brief account of his colleague’s work, wrote, “To the signal services rendered by M. Pasteur to science and to our country, it was but fair that a signal recompense should be given: the National Assembly has undertaken that care.”
That recompense, voted a few months previously, was the third national recompense accorded to French scientists since the beginning of the century. In 1837, Arago, before the Chamber of Deputies, and Gay Lussac, before the Chamber of Peers, had obtained a glorious recognition of the services rendered by Daguerre and Niepce. In 1845 another national recompense was accorded, to M. Vicat, the engineer. In 1874, Paul Bert, a member of the National Assembly, gladly reporting on the projected law tending to offer a national recompense to Pasteur, wrote quoting those precedents:
“Such an assurance of gratitude, given by a nation to men who have made it richer and more illustrious, honours it at least as much as it does them....” Paul Bert continued by enumerating Pasteur’s discoveries, and spoke of the millions Pasteur had assured to France, “without retaining the least share of them for himself.” In sericiculture alone, the losses in twenty years, before Pasteur’s interference, rose to 1,500 millions of francs.
“M. Pasteur’s discoveries, gentlemen,” concluded Paul Bert, “after throwing a new light on the obscure question of fermentations and of the mode of appearance of microscopic beings, have revolutionized certain branches of industry, of agriculture, and of pathology. One is struck with admiration when seeing that so many, and such divers results, proceed--through an unbroken chain of facts, nothing being left to hypothesis--from theoretical studies on the manner in which tartaric acid deviates polarized light. Never was the famous saying, ‘Genius consists in sufficient patience,’ more amply justified. The Government now proposes that you should honour this admirable combination of theoretical and practical study by a national recompense; your Commission unanimously approves of this proposition.
“The suggested recompense consists in a life annuity of 12,000 francs, which is the approximate amount of the salary of the Sorbonne professorship, which M. Pasteur’s ill health has compelled him to give up. It is indeed small when compared with the value of the services rendered, and your Commission much regrets that the state of our finances does not allow us to increase that amount. But the Commission agrees with its learned chairman (M. Marès) ‘that the economic and hygienic results of M. Pasteur’s discoveries will presently become so considerable that the French nation will desire to increase later on its testimony of gratitude towards him and towards Science, of which he is one of the most glorious representatives.’”
Half the amount of the annuity was to revert to Pasteur’s widow. The Bill was passed by 532 votes against 24.
“Where is the government which has secured such a majority?” wrote Pasteur’s old friend Chappuis, now Rector of the Grenoble Academy. The value of the recompense was certainly much enhanced by the fact that the Assembly, divided upon so many subjects, had been almost unanimous in its feeling of gratitude towards him who had laboured so hard for Science, for the country and for Humanity.
“Bravo, my dear Pasteur: I am glad for you and for myself, and proud for us all. Your devoted friend, Sainte Claire Deville.”
“You are going to be a happy scientist,” wrote M. Duclaux, “for you can already see, and you will see more and more, the triumph of your doctrines and of your discoveries.”
Those who imagined that this national recompense was the close of a great chapter, perhaps even the last chapter of the book of his life, gave him, in their well-meaning ignorance, some advice which highly irritated him: they advised him to rest. It is true that his cerebral hæmorrhage had left him with a certain degree of lameness and a slight stiffness of the left hand, those external signs reminding him only too well of the threatening possibility of another stroke; but his mighty soul was more than ever powerful to master his infirm body. It was therefore evident that Nisard, usually very subtle in his insight into character, did not thoroughly understand Pasteur when he wrote to him, “Now, dear friend, you must give up your energies to living for your family, for all those who love you, and a little too for yourself.”
In spite of his deep, even passionate tenderness for his family, Pasteur had other desires than to limit his life to such a narrow circle. Every man who knows he has a mission to fulfil feels that there are rays of a light purer and more exalted than that proceeding from the hearth. As to the suggestion that Pasteur should take care of his own health, it was as useless as it would be to advise certain men to take care of that of others.
Dr. Andral had vainly said and written that he should forbid Pasteur any assiduous labour. Pasteur considered that not to work was to lose the object of living at all. If, however, a certain equilibrium was established between the anxious solicitude of friends, the prohibitions of medical advisers and the great amount of work which Pasteur insisted on doing, it was owing to her who with a discreet activity watched in silence to see that nothing outside his work should complicate Pasteur’s life, herself his most precious collaborator, the confidante of every experiment.
Everything was subordinate to the laboratory; Pasteur never accepted an invitation to those large social gatherings which are a tax laid by those who have nothing to do on the time of those who are busy, especially if they be celebrated. Pasteur’s name, known throughout the world, was never mentioned in fashionable journals; he did not even go to theatres. In the evening, after dinner, he usually perambulated the hall and corridor of his rooms at the Ecole Normale, cogitating over various details of his work. At ten o’clock, he went to bed, and at eight the next morning, whether he had had a good night or a bad one, he resumed his work in the laboratory.
That regular life, preserving its even tenor through so many polemics and discussions, was momentarily perturbed by politics in January, 1876. Pasteur, who, in his extraordinary, almost disconcerting modesty, believed that a medical diploma would have facilitated his scientific revolution, imagined--after the pressing overtures made to him by some of his proud compatriots--that he would be able to serve more usefully the cause of higher education if he were to obtain a seat at the Senate.
He addressed from Paris a letter to the senatorial electors of the department of Jura. “I am not a political man,” he said, “I am bound to no party; not having studied politics I am ignorant of many things, but I do know this, that I love my country and have served her with all my strength.” Like many good citizens, he thought that a renewal of the national grandeur and prosperity might be sought in a serious experimental trial of the Republic. If honoured with the suffrages of his countrymen, he would “represent in the Senate, Science in all its purity, dignity and independence.” Two Jura newspapers, of different opinions, agreed in regretting that Pasteur should leave “the peaceful altitudes of science,” and come down into the Jura to solicit the electors’ suffrages.
In his answers to such articles, letters dictated to his son--who acted as his secretary during that electoral campaign and accompanied him to Lons-le-Saulnier, where they spent a week, published addresses, posters, etc.--Pasteur invoked the following motto, “Science et Patrie.” Why had France been victorious in 1792? “Because Science had given to our fathers the material means of fighting.” And he recalled the names of Monge, of Carnot, of Fourcroy, of Guyton de Morveau, of Berthollet, that concourse of men of science, thanks to whom it had been possible--during that grandiose epoch--to hasten the working of steel and the preparation of leather for soldiers’ boots, and to find means of extracting saltpetre for gunpowder from plaster rubbish, of making use of reconnoitring balloons and of perfecting telegraphy.
The senatorial electors numbered 650. Jules Grévy came to Lons-le-Saulnier to support the candidature of MM. Tamisier and Thurel. In a meeting which took place the day before the election he said, “You will give them your suffrage to-morrow, and in so doing you will have deserved well of the Republic and of France.” He mentioned, incidentally, that “M. Pasteur’s character and scientific work entitle him to universal respect and esteem; but Science has its natural place at the Institute,” he added, insisting on the Senate’s political attributes. Grévy’s intervention in favour of his two candidates was decisive. M. Tamisier obtained 446 votes, M. Thurel 445, General Picard 113, M. Besson, a monarchist, 153, Pasteur 62 only.
He had received on that very morning a letter from his daughter, wishing him a failure--a bright, girlish letter, frankly expressing the opinion that her father could be most useful to his country by confining himself to laboratory work, and that politics would necessarily hinder such work.
It was easy to be absolutely frank with Pasteur, who willingly accepted every truthful statement. No man was ever more beloved, more admired and less flattered in his own home than he was.
“What a wise judge you are, my dearest girl!” answered Pasteur the same evening; “you are perfectly right. But I am not sorry to have seen all this, and that your brother should have seen it; all knowledge is useful.”
That little incursion into the domain of politics was rendered insignificant in Pasteur’s life by the fact that his long-desired object was almost reached. Three months later, at the distribution of prizes of the Concours Général, the Minister of Public Instruction pronounced a speech, of which Pasteur preserved the text, underlining with his own hand the following passages: “Soon, I hope, we shall see the Schools of Medicine and of Pharmacy reconstructed; the Collège de France provided with new laboratories; the Faculty of Medicine transferred and enlarged, and the ancient Sorbonne itself restored and extended.”
And while the Minister spoke of “those higher studies of Philosophy, of History, of disinterested Science which are the glory of a nation and an honour to the human mind ... which must retain the first rank to shed their serene light over inferior studies, and to remind men of the true goal and the true grandeur of human intelligence....” Pasteur could say to himself that the great cause which he had pleaded since he was made Dean of Faculty at Lille in 1854, which he had supported in 1868 and again on the morrow of the war, was at last about to be won in 1876.
He had a patriotic treat during the summer holidays of that same year. A great international congress of sericiculture was gathered at Milan; there were delegates from Russia, Austria, Italy and France, and Pasteur represented France. He was accompanied by his former pupils, his associates in his silkworm studies, Duclaux and Raulin, both of whom had become professors at the Lyons Faculty of Sciences, and Maillot, who was then manager of the silkworm establishment of Montpellier. The members of the Congress had been previously informed of the programme of questions, and each intending speaker was armed with facts and observations. The open discussions allowed Duclaux, Raulin and Maillot to demonstrate the strictness and perfection of the experimental method which they had learned from their master and which they were teaching in their turn.
Excursions formed a delightful interlude; one on the lake of Como was an enchantment. Then the French delegates were offered the pleasant surprise of a visit to an immense seeding establishment in the neighbourhood of Milan, which had been named after Pasteur. We have an account of this visit in a letter to J. B. Dumas (September 17).
“My dear Master ... I very much regret that you are not here: you would have shared my satisfaction. I am dating my letter from Milan, but in reality, the congress being ended, we are staying at Signor Susani’s country house for a few days. Here, from July 4, sixty or seventy women are busy for ten hours every day with microscopic examinations of absolute accuracy. I never saw a better arranged establishment. 400,000 moth cells are put under the microscope every day. The order and cleanliness are admirable; any error is made impossible by the organization of a second test following the first.
“I felt, in seeing my name in large letters on the façade of that splendid establishment, a joy which compensates for much of the frivolous opposition I have encountered from some of my countrymen these last few years; it is a spontaneous homage from the proprietor to my studies. Many sericicultors do their seeding themselves, by selection, or have it done by competent workers accustomed to the operation. The harvest from that excellent seed depends on the climate only; in a moderately favourable season the production often reaches fifty or seventy kilogrammes per ounce of twenty-five grammes.”
Signor Susani was looking forward to producing for that one year 30,000 ounces of seed. In the presence of the prodigious activity of this veritable factory--where, besides the microscope women, more than one hundred persons were occupied in various ways, washing the mortars with which the moths are pounded before being put under the microscopes, cleansing the slides, etc.; in fact, doing those various delicate but simple operations which had formerly been pronounced to be impracticable--Pasteur’s thoughts went back to his experiments in the Pont-Gisquet greenhouse, to the modest beginnings of his process, now so magnificently applied in Italy. A month before this, J. B. Dumas, presiding at a scientific meeting at Clermont Ferrand, had said--
“The future belongs to Science; woe to the nations who close their eyes to this fact.... Let us call to our aid on this neutral and pacific ground of Natural Philosophy, where defeats cost neither blood nor tears, those hearts which are moved by their country’s grandeur; it is by the exaltation of science that France will recover her prestige.”
Those same ideas were expressed in a toast given by Pasteur in the name of France at a farewell banquet, when the 300 members of the Sericiculture Congress were present.
“Gentlemen, I propose a toast--To the peaceful strife of Science. It is the first time that I have the honour of being present on foreign soil at an international congress; I ask myself what are the impressions produced in me, besides these courteous discussions, by the brilliant hospitality of the noble Milanese city, and I find myself deeply impressed by two propositions. First, that Science is of no nationality; and secondly, in apparent, but only in apparent, contradiction, that Science is the highest personification of nationality. Science has no nationality because knowledge is the patrimony of humanity, the torch which gives light to the world. Science should be the highest personification of nationality because, of all the nations, that one will always be foremost which shall be first to progress by the labours of thought and of intelligence.
“Let us therefore strive in the pacific field of Science for the pre-eminence of our several countries. Let us strive, for strife is effort, strife is life when progress is the goal.
“You Italians, try to multiply on the soil of your beautiful and glorious country the Tecchi, the Brioschi, the Tacchini, the Sella, the Cornalia.... You, proud children of Austria-Hungary, follow even more firmly than in the past the fruitful impulse which an eminent statesman, now your representative at the Court of England, has given to Science and Agriculture. We, who are here present, do not forget that the first sericiculture establishment was founded in Austria. As to you, Japanese, may the cultivation of Science be numbered among the chief objects of your care in the amazing social and political transformation of which you are giving the marvellous spectacle to the world. We Frenchmen, bending under the sorrow of our mutilated country, should show once again that great trials may give rise to great thoughts and great actions.
“I drink to the peaceful strife of Science.”
“You will find,” wrote Pasteur to Dumas, telling him of this toast, which had been received with enthusiastic applause, “an echo of the feelings with which you have inspired your pupils on the grandeur and the destiny of Science in modern society.”
The tender and delicate side of this powerful spirit was thus once again apparent in this deference to his master in the midst of acclamations, and in those deep and noble ideas expressed in the middle of a noisy banquet. But it was chiefly in his private life that his open-heartedness, his desire to love and to be loved, became apparent. That great genius had a childlike heart, and the charm of this was incomparable.
He once said: “The recompense and the ambition of a scientist is to conquer the approbation of his peers and of the masters whom he venerates.” He had already known that recompense and could satisfy that ambition. Dumas had known and appreciated him for thirty years; Lister had proclaimed his gratitude; Tyndall--an indefatigable excursionist, who loved to survey wide horizons, and who in his celebrated classes was wont to make use of comparisons with altitudes and heights and everything which opens a clear and vast outlook--had a great admiration for the wide development of Pasteur’s work. Now, Pasteur’s experiments had been strongly attacked by a young English physician, Dr. Bastian, who had excited in the English and American public a bitter prejudice against the results announced by Pasteur on the subject of spontaneous generation.
“The confusion and uncertainty,” wrote Tyndall to Pasteur, “have finally become such that, six months ago, I thought that it would be rendering a service to Science, at the same time as justice to yourself, if the question were subjected to a fresh investigation.
“Putting into practice an idea which I had entertained six years ago--the details of which are set out in the article in the British Medical Journal which I had the pleasure to send you--I went over a large portion of the ground on which Dr. Bastian had taken up his stand, and refuted, I think, many of the fallacies which had misled the public.
“The change which has taken place since then in the tone of the English medical journals is quite remarkable, and I am disposed to think that the general confidence of the public in the accuracy of Dr. Bastian’s experiments has been considerably shaken.
“In taking up these investigations, I have had the opportunity of refreshing my memory about your labours; they have reawakened in me all the admiration which I felt for them when I first read of them. I intend to continue these investigations until I have dispersed all the doubts which may have arisen as to the indisputable accuracy of your conclusions.”
And Tyndall added a paragraph for which Pasteur modestly substituted asterisks in communicating this letter to the Academy.
“For the first time in the history of Science we have the right to cherish the sure and certain hope that, as regards epidemic diseases, medicine will soon be delivered from quackery and placed on a real scientific basis. When that day arrives, Humanity, in my opinion, will know how to recognize that it is to you that will be due the largest share of her gratitude.”
Tyndall was indeed qualified to sign this passport to immortality. But in the meanwhile a struggle was necessary, and Pasteur did not wish to leave the burden of the discussion even on such shoulders as Tyndall’s! Moreover he was interested in his opponent.
“Dr. Bastian,” writes M. Duclaux, “had some tenacity, a fertile mind, and the love, if not the gift, of the experimental method.” The discussion was destined to last for months. In general (according to J. B. Dumas’ calculation) “at the end of ten years, judgment on a great thing is usually formed; it is by then an accomplished fact, an idea adopted by Science or irrevocably repudiated.” Pasteur, on the morrow of the Milan Congress, might feel that it had been so for the adoption of his system of cellular seeding, but such was not the case in this question of spontaneous generation. The quarrel had started again at the Academy of Sciences and at the Academy of Medicine; it was now being revived in England, and Bastian proposed to come himself and experiment in the laboratory of the Ecole Normale.
“For nearly twenty years,” said Pasteur, “I have pursued, without finding it, a proof of life existing without an anterior and similar life. The consequences of such a discovery would be incalculable; natural science in general, and medicine and philosophy in particular, would receive therefrom an impulse which cannot be foreseen. Therefore, whenever I hear that this discovery has been made, I hasten to verify the assertions of my fortunate rival. It is true that I hasten towards him with some degree of mistrust, so many times have I experienced that, in the difficult art of experimenting, the very cleverest stagger at every step, and that the interpretation of facts is no less perilous.”
Dr. Bastian operated on acid urine, boiled and neutralized by a solution of potash heated to a temperature of 120° C. If, after the flask of urine had cooled down, it was heated to a temperature of 50° C. in order to facilitate the development of germs, the liquid in ten hours’ time swarmed with bacteria. “Those facts prove spontaneous generation,” said Dr. Bastian.
Pasteur invited him to replace his boiled solution of potash by a fragment of solid potash, after heating it to 110° C., in order to avoid the bacteria germs which might be contained in the aqueous solution. This question of the germs of inferior organisms possibly contained in water was--during the course of that protracted discussion--studied by Pasteur with the assistance of M. Joubert, Professor of Physics at the Collège Rollin. Such germs were to be found even in the distilled water of laboratories; it was sufficient that the water should be poured in a thin stream through the air to become contaminated. Spring water, if slowly filtered through a solid mass of ground, alone contained no germs.
There was also the question of the urine and that of the recipient. The urine, collected by Dr. Bastian in a vase and placed into a retort, neither of which had been put through a flame, might contain spores of a bacillus called bacillus subtilis, which offer a great resistance to the action of heat. Those spores do not develop in notably acid liquids, but the liquid having been neutralized or rendered slightly alkaline by the potash, the development of germs took place. The thing therefore to be done was to collect the urine in a vase and introduce it into a retort both of which had been put through a flame. After that, no organisms were produced, as was stated in the thesis of M. Chamberland, then a curator at the laboratory, and who took an active part in these experiments.
A chapter might well have been written by a moralist “On the use of certain opponents”; for it was through that discussion with Bastian that it was discovered how it was that--at the time of the celebrated discussions on spontaneous generation--the heterogenists, Pouchet, Joly, and Musset, operating as Pasteur did, but in a different medium, obtained results apparently contradictory to Pasteur’s. If their flasks, filled with a decoction of hay, almost constantly showed germs, whilst Pasteur’s, full of yeast water, were always sterile, it was because the hay water contained spores of the bacillus subtilis. The spores remained inactive as long as the liquid was preserved from the contact of air, but as soon as oxygen re-entered the flask they were able to develop.
The custom of raising liquids to a temperature of 120° C. in order to sterilize them dates from that conflict with Bastian. “But,” writes M. Duclaux, “the heating to 120° of a flask half filled with liquid can sterilize the liquid part only, allowing life to persist in those regions which are not in contact with the liquid. In order to destroy everything, the dry walls must be heated to 180° C.”
A former pupil of the Ecole Normale, who had been a curator in Pasteur’s laboratory since October, 1876, Boutroux by name, who witnessed all these researches, wrote in his thesis: “The knowledge of these facts makes it possible to obtain absolutely pure neutral culture mediums, and, in consequence, to study as many generations as are required of one unmixed micro-organism, whenever pure seed has been procured.”
Pasteur has defined what he meant by putting tubes, cotton, vases, etc., through a flame. “In order to get rid of the microscopic germs which the dusts of air and of the water used for the washing of vessels deposit on every object, the best means is to place the vessels (their openings closed with pads of cotton wool) during half an hour in a gas stove, heating the air in which the articles stand to a temperature of about 150° C. to 200° C. The vessels, tubes, etc., are then ready for use. The cotton wool is enclosed in tubes or in blotting-paper.”
What Pasteur had recommended to surgeons, when he advised them to pass through a flame all the instruments they used, had become a current practice in the laboratory; the least pad of cotton wool used as a stopper was previously sterilized. Thus was an entirely new technique rising fully armed and ready to repel new attacks and ensure new victories.
If Pasteur was so anxious to drive Dr. Bastian to the wall, it was because he saw behind that so-called experiment on spontaneous generation a cause of perpetual conflict with physicians and surgeons. Some of them desired to repel purely and simply the whole theory of germs. Others, disposed to admit the results of Pasteur’s researches, as laboratory work, did not admit his experimental incursions on clinical ground. Pasteur therefore wrote to Dr. Bastian in the early part of July, 1877--
“Do you know why I desire so much to fight and conquer you? it is because you are one of the principal adepts of a medical doctrine which I believe to be fatal to progress in the art of healing--the doctrine of the spontaneity of all diseases.... That is an error which, I repeat it, is harmful to medical progress. From the prophylactic as well as from the therapeutic point of view, the fate of the physician and surgeon depends upon the adoption of the one or the other of these two doctrines.”
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End of part 14 of 24
Continue readingChapter 9: 1877-1879 (Part 1)
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