In the midst of the unexpected meetings brought about by that Congress, it was an interesting thing to see this son of a King and Emperor, the heir to the German crown, thus going towards that Frenchman whose conquests were made over disease and death. Of what glory might one day dream this Prince, who became Frederic III!
His tall and commanding stature, the highest position in the Prussian army conferred on him by his father, King William, in a solemn letter dated from Versailles, October, 1870—everything seemed to combine in making a warlike man of this powerful-looking prince. And yet was it not said in France that he had protested against certain barbarities, coldly executed by some Prussian generals during that campaign of 1870? Had he not considered the clauses of the Treaty of Frankfort as Draconian and dangerous? If he had been sole master, would he have torn Alsace away from France? What share would his coming reign bear in the history of civilization?... Fate had already marked this Prince, only fifty years old, for an approaching death. In his great sufferings, before the inexorable death which was suffocating him, he was heroically patient. His long agony began at San Remo, amongst the roses and sunshine; he was an Emperor for less than one hundred days, and, on his death-bed, words of peace, peace for his people, were on his lips.
As Pasteur, coming to this Congress, was not only curious to see what was the place held in medicine and surgery by the germ-theory, but also desirous to learn as much as possible, he never missed a discussion and attended every meeting. It was in a simple sectional meeting that Bastian attempted to refute Lister. After his speech, the President suddenly said, “I call on M. Pasteur,” though Pasteur had not risen. There was great applause; Pasteur did not know English; he turned to Lister and asked him what Bastian had said.
“He said,” whispered Lister, “that microscopic organizations in disease were formed by the tissues themselves.”
“That is enough for me,” said Pasteur. And he then invited Bastian to try the following experiment:
“Take an animal’s limb, crush it, allow blood and other normal or abnormal liquids to spread around the bones, only taking care that the skin should neither be torn nor opened in any way, and I defy you to see any micro-organism formed within that limb as long as the illness will last.”
Pasteur, desired to do so by Sir James Paget at one of the great General Meetings of the Congress, gave a lecture on the principles which had led him to the attenuation of virus, on the methods which had enabled him to obtain the vaccines of chicken-cholera and of charbon, and, finally, on the results obtained. “In a fortnight,” he said, “we vaccinated, in the Departments surrounding Paris, nearly 20,000 sheep, and a great many oxen, cows and horses....
“Allow me,” he continued, “not to conclude without telling you of the great joy that I feel in thinking that it is as a member of the International Medical Congress sitting in London that I have made known to you the vaccination of a disease more terrible perhaps for domestic animals than is small-pox for man. I have given to the word vaccination an extension which I hope Science will consecrate as a homage to the merit and immense services rendered by your Jenner, one of England’s greatest men. It is a great happiness to me to glorify that immortal name on the very soil of the noble and hospitable city of London!”
“Pasteur was the greatest success of the Congress,” wrote the correspondent of the Journal des Débats, Dr. Daremberg, glad as a Frenchman and as a physician to hear the unanimous hurrahs which greeted the delegate of France. “When M. Pasteur spoke, when his name was mentioned, a thunder of applause rose from all benches, from all nations. An indefatigable worker, a sagacious seeker, a precise and brilliant experimentalist, an implacable logician, and an enthusiastic apostle, he has produced an invincible effect on every mind.”
The English people, who chiefly look in a great man for power of initiative and strength of character, shared this admiration. One group only, alone in darkness, away from the Congress, was hostile to the general movement and was looking for an opportunity for direct or indirect revenge; it was the group of anti-vaccinators and anti-vivisectionists. The influence of the latter was great enough in England to prevent experimentation on animals. At a general meeting of the Congress, Virchow, the German scientist, spoke on the use of experimenting in pathology.