The life of Pasteur

by René Vallery-Radot

Bouley, who was more given to propagating new doctrines than to lingering on such philosophical problems, thought it was time to introduce into the debate certain ideas on the great problems tackled by medicine since the discovery of what might be called a fourth kingdom in nature, that of microbia. In a statement read at the Académie de Médecine, he formulated in broad lines the rôle of the infinitesimally small and their activity in producing the phenomena of fermentations and diseases. He showed by the parallel works of Pasteur on the one hand, and M. Chauveau on the other, that contagion is the function of a living element. “It is especially,” said Bouley, “on the question of the prophylaxis of virulent diseases that the microbian doctrine has given the most marvellous results. To seize upon the most deadly virus, to submit them to a methodical culture, to cause modifying agents to act upon them in a measured proportion, and thus to succeed in attenuating them in divers degrees, so as to utilize their strength, reduced but still efficacious, in transmitting a benignant malady by means of which immunity is acquired against the deadly disease: what a beautiful dream!! And M. Pasteur has made that dream into a reality!!!...”

The debate widened, typhoid fever became a mere incident. The pathogenic action of the infinitesimally small entered into the discussion; traditional medicine faced microbian medicine. M. Peter rushed once more to the front rank for the fight. He declared that he did not apply the term chymiaster to Pasteur; he recognized that it was but “fair to proclaim that we owe to M. Pasteur’s researches the most useful practical applications in surgery and in obstetrics.” But considering that medicine might claim more independence, he repeated that the discovery of the material elements of virulent diseases did not throw so much light as had been said, either on pathological anatomy, on the evolution, on the treatment or especially on the prophylaxis of virulent diseases. “Those are but natural history curiosities,” he added, “interesting no doubt, but of very little profit to medicine, and not worth either the time given to them or the noise made about them. After so many laborious researches, nothing will be changed in medicine, there will only be a few more microbes.”

A newspaper having repeated this last sentence, a professor of the Faculty of Medicine, M. Cornil, simply recalled how, at the time when the acarus of itch had been discovered, many partisans of old doctrines had probably exclaimed, “What is your acarus to me? Will it teach me more than I know already?” “But,” added M. Cornil, “the physician who had understood the value of that discovery no longer inflicted internal medication upon his patients to cure them of what seemed an inveterate disease, but merely cured them by means of a brush and a little ointment.”

M. Peter, continuing his violent speech, quoted certain vaccination failures, and incompletely reported experiments, saying, grandly: “M. Pasteur’s excuse is that he is a chemist, who has tried, out of a wish to be useful, to reform medicine, to which he is a complete stranger....

“In the struggle I have undertaken the present discussion is but a skirmish; but, to judge from the reinforcements which are coming to me, the mêlée may become general, and victory will remain, I hope, to the larger battalions, that is to say, to the ‘old medicine.’”

Bouley, amazed that M. Peter should thus scout the notion of microbia introduced into pathology, valiantly fought this “skirmish” alone. He recalled the discussions à propos of tuberculosis, so obscure until a new and vivifying notion came to simplify the solution of the problem. “And you reject that solution! You say, ‘What does it matter to me?’... What! M. Koch, of Berlin—who with such discoveries as he has made might well abstain from envy—M. Koch points out to you the presence of bacteria in tubercles, and that seems to you of no importance? But that microbe gives you the explanation of those contagious properties of tuberculosis so well demonstrated by M. Villemin, for it is the instrument of virulence itself which is put under your eyes.”

Bouley then went on to refute the arguments of M. Peter, epitomized the history of the discovery of the attenuation of virus, and all that this method of cultures possible in an extra-organic medium might suggest that was hopeful for a vaccine of cholera and of yellow fever, which might be discovered one day and protect humanity against those terrible scourges. He concluded thus—“Let M. Peter do what I have done; let him study M. Pasteur, and penetrate thoroughly into all that is admirable, through the absolute certainty of the results, in the long series of researches which have led him from the discovery of ferments to that of the nature of virus; and then I can assure him that instead of decrying this great glory of France, of whom we must all be proud, he too will feel himself carried away by enthusiasm and will bow with admiration and respect before the chemist, who, though not a physician, illumines medicine and dispels, in the light of his experiments, a darkness which had hitherto remained impenetrable.”

A year before this (Peter had not failed to report the fact) an experiment of anthrax vaccination had completely failed at the Turin Veterinary School. All the sheep, vaccinated and non-vaccinated, had succumbed subsequently to the inoculation of the blood of a sheep which had died of charbon.

This took place in March, 1882. As soon as Pasteur heard of this extraordinary fiasco, which seemed the counterpart of the Pouilly-le-Fort experiment, he wrote on April 16 to the director of the Turin Veterinary School, asking on what day the sheep had died the blood of which had been used for the virulent inoculation.

The director answered simply that the sheep had died on the morning of March 22, and that its blood had been inoculated during the course of the following day. “There has been,” said Pasteur, “a grave scientific mistake; the blood inoculated was septic as well as full of charbon.”