The life of Pasteur

by René Vallery-Radot

“For us all,” said the President of the Aubenas Spinning Syndicate, “you have been the kindly magician whose intervention conjured away the scourge which threatened us; in you we hail our benefactor.”

Pasteur, effacing his own personality as he had done at the Académie, laid all this enthusiasm and gratitude as an offering to Science.

“I am not its object, but rather a pretext for it,” he said, and continued: “Science has been the ruling passion of my life. I have lived but for Science, and in the hours of difficulty which are inherent to protracted efforts, the thought of France upheld my courage. I associated her greatness with the greatness of Science.

“By erecting a statue to Olivier de Serres, the illustrious son of the Vivarais, you give to France a noble example; you show to all that you venerate great men and the great things they have accomplished. Therein lies fruitful seed; you have gathered it, may your sons see it grow and fructify. I look back upon the time, already distant, when, desirous of responding to the suggestions of a kind and illustrious friend, I left Paris to study in a neighbouring Department the scourge which was decimating your magnaneries. For five years I struggled to obtain some knowledge of the evil and the means of preventing it; and, after having found it, I still had to struggle to implant in other minds the convictions I had acquired.

“All that is past and gone now, and I can speak of it with moderation. I am not often credited with that characteristic, and yet I am the most hesitating of men, the most fearful of responsibility, so long as I am not in possession of a proof. But when solid scientific proofs confirm my convictions, no consideration can prevent me from defending what I hold to be true.

“A man whose kindness to me was truly paternal (Biot) had for his motto: Per vias rectas. I congratulate myself that I borrowed it from him. If I had been more timid or more doubtful in view of the principles I had established, many points of science and of application might have remained obscure and subject to endless discussion. The hypothesis of spontaneous generation would still throw its veil over many questions. Your nurseries of silkworms would be under the sway of charlatanism, with no guide to the production of good seed. The vaccination of charbon, destined to preserve agriculture from immense losses, would be misunderstood and rejected as a dangerous practice.

“Where are now all the contradictions? They pass away, and Truth remains. After an interval of fifteen years, you now render it a noble testimony. I therefore feel a deep joy in seeing my efforts understood and celebrated in an impulse of sympathy which will remain in my memory and in that of my family as a glorious recollection.”

Pasteur was not allowed to return at once to his laboratory. The agricultors and veterinary surgeons of Nîmes, who had taken an interest in all the tests on the vaccination of charbon, had, in their turn, drawn up a programme of experiments.

Pasteur arrived at a meeting of the Agricultural Society of the Gard in time to hear the report of the veterinary surgeons and to receive the congratulations of the Society. The President expressed to him the gratitude of all the cattle-owners and breeders, hitherto powerless to arrest the progress of the disease which he had now vanquished. Whilst a commemoration medal was being offered to him and a banquet being prepared—for Southern enthusiasm always implies a series of toasts—Pasteur thanked these enterprising men who were contemplating new experiments in order to dispel the doubts of a few veterinary surgeons, and especially the characteristic distrust, felt by some of the shepherds, of everything that did not come from the South. Sheep, oxen, and horses, some of them vaccinated, others intact, were put at Pasteur’s disposal; he, with his usual energy, fixed the experiments for the next morning at eight o’clock. After inoculating all the animals with the charbon virus, Pasteur announced that those which had been vaccinated would remain unharmed, but that the twelve unvaccinated sheep would be dead or dying within forty-eight hours. An appointment was made for next day but one, on May 11, at the town knacker’s, near the Bridge of Justice, where post-mortem examinations were made. Pasteur then went on to Montpellier, where he was expected by the Hérault Central Society of Agriculture, who had also made some experiments and had asked him to give a lecture at the Agricultural School. He entered the large hall, feeling very tired, almost ill, but his face lighted up at the sight of that assembly of professors and students who had hurried from all the neighbouring Faculties, and those agricultors crowding from every part of the Department, all of them either full of scientific curiosity or moved by their agricultural interests. His voice, at first weak and showing marks of weariness, soon became strengthened, and, forgetting his fatigue, he threw himself into the subject of virulent and contagious diseases. He gave himself up, heart and soul, to this audience for two whole hours, inspiring every one with his own enthusiasm. He stopped now and then to invite questions, and his answers to the objectors swept away the last shred of resistance.

“We must not,” said the Vice-President of the Agricultural Society, M. Vialla, “encroach further on the time of M. Pasteur, which belongs to France itself. Perhaps, however he will allow me to prefer a last request: he has delivered us from the terrible scourge of splenic fever; will he now turn to a no less redoubtable infection, viz. rot, which is, so to speak, endemic in our regions? He will surely find the remedy for it.”