Agricultural societies, governments, all the world was preoccupied with this scourge and its invading march. It was said to be some malady like cholera which attacked the silkworms. Hundreds of pamphlets were published each year. The most foolish remedies were proposed, as quite infallible—from flowers of sulphur, cinders, and soot spread over the worms, or over the leaves of the mulberry, to gaseous fumigations of chlorine, of tar, and of sulphurous acid. Wine, rum, absinthe, were prescribed for the worms, and after the absinthe it was advised to try creosote and nitrate of silver. In 1863 the Minister of Agriculture signed an agreement with an Italian who had offered for purchase a process destined to combat the disease of the silkworms, by which he (the Minister) engaged himself, in case the efficacy of the remedy was established, to pay 500,000 francs as an indemnity to the Italian silk cultivator. Experiments were instituted in twelve departments, but without any favourable result. In 1865 the weight of the cocoons had fallen to four million kilogrammes. This entailed a loss of 100,000,000 francs.
The Senate was assailed by a despairing petition signed by 3,600 mayors, municipal councillors, and capitalists of the silk-cultivating departments. The great scientific authority of M. Dumas, his knowledge of silk husbandry, his sympathy for one of the departments most severely smitten, the Gard, his own native place, all contributed to cause him to be nominated Reporter of the Commission. While drawing up his report the idea occurred to him of trying to persuade Pasteur to undertake researches as to the best means of combating the epidemic.
Pasteur at first declined this offer. It was at the moment when the results of his investigations on organised ferments opened to him a wide career; it was at the time when, as an application of his latest studies, he had just recognised the true theory of the fabrication of vinegar, and had discovered the cause of the diseases of wines; it was, in short, at the moment when, after having thrown light upon the question of spontaneous generation, the infinitely little appeared infinitely great. He saw living ferments present everywhere, whether as agents of decomposition employed to render back to the atmosphere all that had lived, or as direct authors of contagious maladies. And now it was proposed to him to quit this path, where his footing was sure, which offered him an unlimited horizon in all directions, to enter on an unknown road, perhaps without an outlet. Might he not expose himself to the loss of months, perhaps of years, in barren efforts?
M. Dumas insisted. 'I attach,' said he to his old pupil, now become his colleague and his friend, 'an extreme value to your fixing your attention upon the question which interests my poor country. Its misery is beyond anything that you can imagine.'
'But consider,' said Pasteur, 'that I have never handled a silkworm.'
'So much the better,' replied M. Dumas. 'If you know nothing about the subject, you will have no other ideas than those which come to you from your own observations.'
Pasteur allowed himself to be persuaded, less by the force of these arguments than by the desire to give his illustrious master a proof of his profound deference.
As soon as the promise was given and the resolution made to go to the South, Pasteur thought over the method to be employed in the pursuit of the problem. Certainly, amidst the labyrinth of facts and opinions, it was not hypotheses which were wanting. For seventeen years they had been rising up on all sides.