Louis Pasteur: His Life and Labours

Part 1

LOUIS PASTEUR

LOUIS PASTEUR HIS LIFE AND LABOURS

BY HIS SON-IN-LAW

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY LADY CLAUD HAMILTON

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN TYNDALL

NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET 1886.

PREFACE.

In the salon of a distinguished man, or of a great writer, there is often to be found a person who, without being either a fellow-worker or a disciple, without even possessing the scientific or literary qualities which might explain his habitual presence, lives nevertheless in complete familiarity with the man whom all around him call 'dear master.' Whence comes this intimate one? who is he? what is his business? He is only known as a friend of the house. He has no other title, and he is almost proud of having no other. Stripped of his own personality, he speaks only of the labours and the success of his illustrious friend, in the radiance of whose glory he moves with delight.

The author of this work is a person of this description. Intimately connected with the life of M. Pasteur, and a constant inmate of his laboratory, he has passed happy years near this great investigator, who has discovered a new world--the world of the infinitely little. Since the first studies of M. Pasteur on molecular dissymmetry, down to his most recent investigations on hydrophobia, on virulent diseases, and on the artificial cultures of living contagia, which have been converted by such cultures into veritable vaccines--passing by the intermediate celebrated experiments on spontaneous generation, fermentation, the diseases of wine, the manufacture of beer and vinegar, and the diseases of silkworms--the author of these pages has been able, if not to witness all, at least to follow in its principal developments this uninterrupted series of scientific conquests.

'What a beautiful book,' he remarked one day to M. Pasteur, 'might be written about all this!'

'But it is all in the Comptes-rendus of the Academy of Sciences.'

'It is not for the readers of the Comptes-rendus that such a book needs to be written, but for the great public, who know that you have done great things, but who know it only vaguely, by the records of journals, or by fragments of biography. The persons are few who know the history of your discoveries. What was your point of departure? How have you arrived at such and such principles, and at the consequences which flow from these principles? What is the connection and rigorous bond of your method? These are the things which it would be interesting to put together in a book which would have some chance of enduring as an historic document.'

'I could not waste my time in going back upon things already accomplished.'

'No; but my desire is that someone else should consecrate his time to the work. And listen,' added this friend, with audacious frankness--'do you know by whom, in my opinion, this book ought to be written? By a man who, without having been in any way trained to follow in your footsteps, is animated by the most lively desire to understand the course which you have pursued; who, while living at your side, has been each day impregnated with your method and your ideas; who, having had the happiness of comprehending your life and its achievements, does not wish to confine the pleasure thus derived to himself alone.'

'Where, then,' interrupted Pasteur with a kindly smile, not without a tinge of irony, 'is this man, at once so happy, and so impatient to share his happiness with others?'

'He is now pleading his cause before you. Yes, I would gladly attempt such a work. I have seen your efforts and observed your success. The experiments which I have not witnessed you have always freely explained to me, with that gift of clearness which Vauvenargues called the "polish" of masters. Initiated by affection, I would make myself initiator by admiration. It would be the history of a learned man by an ignorant one. My ignorance would save me from dwelling too strictly or too long on technical details. With the exposition of your doctrine I would mingle some fragments of your biography. I would pass from a discovery to an anecdote, and so arrange matters as to give the book not only the character of a familiar scientific conversation, which would hardly be more than the echo of what I have learnt while near you, but also to make it a reflex of your life.'

'You should postpone that until I am no longer here.'

'Why so? Why, before assigning to them their places, should we wait till those whose names will endure have disappeared from the scene? No; it is you, living, that I wish to paint--you, in full work, in the midst of your laboratory. And, in addition to all other considerations, I would add, that your presence in the flesh will be the guarantee of my exactitude.'

July 1883.

FOOTNOTE:

'Vernis des maîtres.'

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION, BY PROFESSOR TYNDALL xi

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH--FIRST DISCOVERIES 1

FERMENTATION 40

ACETIC FERMENTATION-- THE MANUFACTURE OF VINEGAR 66

THE QUESTION OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 89

Part 2

STUDIES ON WINE 112

THE SILKWORM-DISEASE 127

DECISIVE EXPERIMENTS 164

STUDIES ON BEER 168

VIRULENT DISEASES--SPLENIC FEVER, SEPTICÆMIA 176

FOWL CHOLERA 212

ATTENUATED VIRUS, OR VACCINATION-- THE FOWL CHOLERA VACCINE 220

THE VACCINE OF SPLENIC FEVER 231

THE RETURN TO VIRULENCE 246

ETIOLOGY OF SPLENIC FEVER 250

METHOD OF DISCUSSION AND CONTRADICTIONS 262

THE LABORATORY OF THE ÉCOLE NORMALE-- VARIOUS STUDIES--HYDROPHOBIA 271

INTRODUCTION.

In the early part of the present year the French original of this work was sent to me from Paris by its author. It was accompanied by a letter from M. Pasteur, expressing his desire to have the work translated and published in England. Responding to this desire, I placed the book in the hands of the Messrs. Longman, who, in the exercise of their own judgment, decided on publication. The translation was confided, at my suggestion, to Lady Claud Hamilton.

The translator's task was not always an easy one, but it has, I think, been well executed. A few slight abbreviations, for which I am responsible, have been introduced, but in no case do they affect the sense. It was, moreover, found difficult to render into suitable English the title of the original: 'M. Pasteur, Histoire d'un Savant par un Ignorant.' A less piquant and antithetical English title was, therefore, substituted for the French one.

This filial tribute, for such it is, was written, under the immediate supervision of M. Pasteur, by his devoted and admiring son-in-law, M. Valery Radot. It is the record of a life of extraordinary scientific ardour and success, the picture of a mind on which facts fall like germs upon a nutritive soil, and, like germs so favoured, undergo rapid increase and multiplication. One hardly knows which to admire most--the intuitive vision which discerns in advance the new issues to which existing data point, or the skill in device, the adaptation of means to ends, whereby the intuition is brought to the test and ordeal of experiment.

In the investigation of microscopic organisms--the 'infinitely little,' as Pouchet loved to call them--and their doings in this our world, M. Pasteur has found his true vocation. In this broad field it has been his good fortune to alight upon a crowd of connected problems of the highest public and scientific interest, ripe for solution, and requiring for their successful treatment the precise culture and capacities which he has brought to bear upon them. He may regret his abandonment of molecular physics; he may look fondly back upon the hopes with which his researches on the tartrates and paratartrates inspired him; he may think that great things awaited him had he continued to labour in this line. I do not doubt it. But this does not shake my conviction that he yielded to the natural affinities of his intellect, that he obeyed its truest impulses, and reaped its richest rewards, in pursuing the line that he has chosen, and in which his labours have rendered him one of the most conspicuous scientific figures of this age.

With regard to the earliest labours of M. Pasteur, a few remarks supplementary to those of M. Radot may be introduced here. The days when angels whispered into the hearkening human ear, secrets which had no root in man's previous knowledge or experience, are gone for ever. The only revelation--and surely it deserves the name--now open to the wise arises from 'intending the mind' on acquired knowledge. When, therefore, M. Radot, following M. Pasteur, speaks with such emphasis about 'preconceived ideas,' he does not mean ideas without antecedents. Preconceived ideas, if out of deference to M. Pasteur the term be admitted, are the vintage of garnered facts. We in England should rather call them inductions, which, as M. Pasteur truly says, inspire the mind, and shape its course, in the subsequent work of deduction and verification.

At the time when M. Pasteur undertook his investigation of the diseases of silkworms, which led to such admirable results, he had never seen a silkworm; but, so far from this being considered a disqualification, M. Dumas regarded his freedom from preconceived ideas a positive advantage. His first care was to make himself acquainted with what others had done. To their observations he added his own, and then, surveying all, came to the conclusion that the origin of the disease was to be sought, not in the worms, not in the eggs, but in the moths which laid the eggs. I am not sure that this conclusion is happily described as 'a preconceived idea.' Every whipster may have his preconceived ideas; but the divine power, so largely shared by M. Pasteur, of distilling from facts their essences--of extracting from them the principles from which they flow--is given only to a few.

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