Pasteur Institute

“ Pasteur is a name reverenced by one and all in France. The first question asked when you are introduced as a scientist to Frenchmen is, "Do you know our Pasteur and his work?" and when you reply in the affirmative they beam on you and look as if they wanted to kiss you.
The Pasteur Institute was devoted entirely to putting up the various sera, vaccines and other material required by the army in the field. ”

“ Louis Pasteur, of France (b. December 17, 1822; d. September 28, 1895) , gave new direction and impulse to chemistry and pathology by the discovery711 that fermentation arose from micro-organisms, and also that disease was, in many instances, due to the presence of bacilli in blood or tissue. He followed this with his system of culture and inoculation, by means of which he performed most miraculous cures of even such a vicious disease as hydrophobia. The Pasteur Institute in Paris stands a monument to his genius and philanthropy. ”

“ Of the work of the men who form the regular staff of the Pasteur Institute only a few words need be said here. Doctors Roux, Grancher, Metchnikoff, and Chamberland all had the privilege of sharing Pasteur's labors during the later years of the master's life, and each of them is a worthy follower of the beloved leader and at the same time a brilliant original investigator.*1* Roux is known everywhere in connection with the serum treatment of diphtheria, which he was so largely instrumental in developing. Grancher directs the anti-rabic department and allied fields. ”

“ In 1915, on the occasion of Metchnikoff’s seventieth anniversary, M. Roux, in a Jubilee speech, gave of him and of his work the following appreciation which describes, better than anything I could say, what his part was in the Pasteur Institute:
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In Paris as in Petrograd, as in Odessa, you have become a leader of thought, and you have kindled in this Institute a scientific focus which has radiated afar.
Your laboratory is more alive than any in the house; workers come to it in crowds. ”

“ The Pasteur Institute is very poorly endowed. Its yearly income is only about twenty-four thousand dollars. This revenue comes from three sources: the small appropriations made by the government, the income from the remnant of the private subscription with which it was built, and the product of the sales of vaccine. The fact that we can partly support ourselves,” added the doctor, laughingly, “is the best proof one can have of the practicability of bacteriology. ”

“ Instead of multiplying such institutions, it would be wise to create scientific institutes for the larger and more important branches of science. In this direction the benefactors of education and science have still almost everything to do. It is, in fact, the field that promises the greatest returns and the greatest blessings to mankind. As examples of what such institutes signify, may be mentioned the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Zoölogical Station at Naples, the Lick Observatory, and the Smithsonian Institution. ”

“ Of these many are already organised into large and well-established Secular orders, such as the various institutes of public health, sanitation, &c., to be found in every large city. Others, less directly but still more vitally, are beginning to influence both civic and national policy through great institutions of the more regular type of order, such as the Pasteur Institute, and similar organisations incipient elsewhere. ”

“ Medicine, surgery, and hygiene have all been powerfully affected by M. Pasteur's work, which has culminated in his method of treating hydrophobia. I cannot conceive that any competently instructed person can consider M. Pasteur's labours in this direction without arriving at the conclusion that, if any man has earned the praise and honour of his fellows, he has. I find it no less difficult to imagine that our wealthy country should be other than ashamed to continue to allow its citizens to profit by the treatment freely given at the Institute without contributing to its support. ”

“ In these days, among the too familiar scourges of the hospital, his work was perpetually putting questions to him; to a man whose mind was open the answer might come at any moment and from any quarter.
As a fact, already, far from his own circle and for a long while out of his ken, there was working in France the most remarkable scientist of the century, Louis Pasteur, who more than once put his scientific ability at the disposal of a stricken industry, and in his quiet laboratory revived the industrial life of a teeming population. ”

“ Such astonishing recognition could not come except for what the public, as well as scientific men, deemed good reasons. These reasons were his services for humanity. For Pasteur was one of the men whose nature compels them to make practical use of whatever knowledge they gain, whether from books or from experiment. Though men of science had long known something of his ability, his lecture in 1868 on the madness which follows the bite of dogs afflicted with rabies first brought him to the notice of the public. ”

“ Mon cher enfant, j'ai tant aimé les sciences dans ma vie que cela me fait battre le cœur." Thus at one step Pasteur gained a place of honour among the chemists of the day, and was immediately appointed professor of chemistry at the Faculté of Science at Strasburg, where he soon afterwards married Mile Laurent, who proved herself to be a true and noble helpmeet. ”

“ Developing in one direction, it was the germ of a new science—stereo-chemistry; in another it transformed medicine and agriculture from empirical practises into true sciences; and incidentally it enriched the world by a number of other discoveries of unparalleled practical value. Done at the age of twenty-five, this first great work of Pasteur's was a prophecy of that brilliant career throughout which he continued to manifest the same marvelous capacity for seeing the unseeable. It led to his appointment at once as professor of chemistry in the college of Dijon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As one goes from room to room, and talks with one and another of the busy, courteous savants, he realizes finally that it is here that Pasteur the scientist is to be found. The labors that made the great savant famous are all summed up here. Here his methods are at work, here is his spirit alive in the men who have best comprehended him, and whom he has been able most deeply to inspire. It is a great thing to achieve. It is a greater thing to inspire others to achieve. Louis Pasteur has done both. ”

“ Pasteur's faith was as genuine as his science. In his panegyric of Littré, whose fauteuil he took, he said: "Happy the man who bears within him a divinity, an ideal of beauty and obeys it; an ideal of art, an ideal of science, an ideal of country, an ideal of the virtues of the Gospel". These words are graven above his tomb in the Institut Pasteur. In his address Pasteur said further "These are the living springs of great thoughts and great, actions. Everything grows clear in the reflections from the Infinite". ”

“ 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. ”

“ It must always be remembered that Pasteur was trained as a chemist—was, in fact, a chemist. In afterlife he attacked problems proper to the biologist, the physiologist, the physician, the manufacturer; but he brought to bear on these problems, not the intellect of one trained in the traditions of natural science, medicine, or commerce, but the untrammelled intelligence of a richly-endowed mind, ‘organized common sense’ of the highest order. After the legal, there is, perhaps, no learned profession so dominated by tradition, by what our fathers have taught us, as the medical ”

“ There being no professor of philosophy at Arbois, Louis Pasteur moved to Besançon, where he received the degree of bachelier ès lettres and was at once appointed as one of the tutors. Here he studied the course in mathematics necessary for admission into the École Normale, in Paris, which he entered in October, 1843. Already his passion for chemistry had shown itself, and he took the lectures in that science delivered by M. Dumas at the Sorbonne, and by M. Balard at the École Normale. ”

“ Like Pasteur, he entered the realm of medicine by crossing the frontier of another science. Any man who pursues a straight line of thought will find that it leads him across many of those imaginary lines which have been drawn between the sciences, just as an aviator crossing Europe in an air line pays no attention to the artificial and historic boundaries which divide state from state. Pasteur was a chemist, an inorganic chemist at that, and he was running down the cause of asymmetry in crystals when he found himself over in the field of biology. ”

“ In 1892 his professional career was drawing to a close. In that year he received the heartiest recognition that France could give to his work, when he went there officially to represent the Royal Society at the Pasteur celebration. A great gathering of scientists and others, presided over by President Carnot, came together at the Sorbonne to honour Pasteur's seventieth birthday. It was a dramatic scene such as our neighbours love, when the two illustrious fellow workers embraced one another in public, and the audience rose to the occasion. ”

“ Pasteur, the man, is, however, if possible, even more interesting than Pasteur, the greatest of living scientists. In the midst of all his work and his wonderful success, amid the plaudits of the world, Pasteur remained one of the simplest of men and the kindest of friends to those who knew him. ”

“ Again, in the column of School, corresponding to Work, we have the evolution of craft knowledge into the applied sciences, an historic process which specialist men of science and their public are alike apt to overlook, but which is none the less vitally important. For we cannot really understand, say Pasteur, save primarily as a thinking peasant ”

“ Two years later he passed the examination for the "baccalauréat ès sciences" enabling him to become candidate for the École normale. But here something (probably the examiner) was at fault, for a note was attached to Pasteur's diploma stating that he was only " mediocre " in chemistry. In those early days and early trials the dominant note of Pasteur's life was sounded. To his sisters he writes: " Ces trois choses, la volonté, le travail, le succès, se partagent toute l'existence humaine. La volonté ouvre la porte aux carrier es brill antes et heureuses ”

“ Higher motives dominate the life and actions of Pasteur himself. In the midst of his panegyric of the great positivist the greatest scientist of his age makes his confession of faith in the things that are above and beyond the domain of the senses--his ideals and his God.
There is said to exist a constant, unappeasable warfare between science and religion. Perhaps it does exist, but surely only in the narrow minds of the lesser lights. In no century has science developed as in the one that has just closed. ”

“ About four thousand students receive instruction each year at the Institute. Many go out as teachers to other schools all over the country. As the founder said in his last address, "The world goes on, and Pratt Institute, if it fulfils the hopes and expectations of its founder, must go on, and as the years pass, the field of its influence should grow wider and wider." ”

“ Any account of the scientific progress of this century which omits the name of Louis Pasteur would be lamentably incomplete. In that part of science which relates strictly to human life and the means of preserving it, the work of this great man must be placed in the first rank. Indeed, we believe that no other stride in biological investigation from the beginning of time has been so great in its immediate and prospective results as has been the increment contributed by Pasteur and his contemporary Koch. ”

“ He was seized by a series of apoplectic attacks which for a time threatened to put an end to his invaluable career. When he did begin to recover his health one of the most serious problems in his regard was to keep him from hindering his convalescence by a return to his old-time absorption in the important problems of the cure and the prevention of disease, at which he had been so happily engaged. The keynote of Pasteur's life was to prevent human suffering as far as possible, and any time not given to this important duty seemed to him to be utterly wasted. ”

“ It is not unlikely that these would have been made even without Pasteur, There is no doubt, however, that their discovery {320} would have been very much delayed and that as a consequence almost untold human suffering that has been prevented would have occurred. It must never be forgotten that such men as Lister and Koch derived their most fertile suggestions from the discoveries made by Pasteur.
Pasteur's life may very well be held up, then, as a model to the present and future generations of what the highest ideals of a scientific career can be. Dr. ”