It needed no small courage on Pasteur’s part to inoculate his fellow-creatures against hydrophobia. In 1885 a boy some nine years old, from Meissengott in Alsace, was brought by his mother to the laboratory suffering from fourteen wounds inflicted by a mad dog. After long consultations with his assistants and the most anxious deliberations, he consented to the inoculation of the boy. The next fortnight was a time of intense anxiety, but all went well. His second patient is commemorated by the bronze statue which ornaments the front of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. It represents the struggle between a peasant boy, armed only with his sabot, and a mad dog; the boy was terribly bitten, but the treatment saved his life. It is not easy to arrive at an accurate estimate of the death-rate caused by rabies; but the most careful and moderate estimates show that, before this treatment was in use, some fifteen to twenty out of every hundred persons bitten by mad dogs died a most painful and horrible death. During the fourteen years, from 1885 to 1899, over 23,000 persons known to have been bitten by rabid dogs have been inoculated at the Pasteur Institute; and their average mortality has been 0·4 per cent. In 1899, the latest year for which statistics are available, 1,614 cases were treated, with a mortality of 0·25 per cent. Of these, 1,506 were French and 108 were foreigners. Of the 108 foreigners, 12 came from Great Britain and 62 from British India. It is little short of a national disgrace that we should still be dependent on French aid to succour those amongst us who are so unfortunate as to be bitten by a mad dog; but the nation which gave the use of anæsthetics to the world, and which first showed the value of antiseptics, is largely dependent to-day on foreign aid in dealing with great outbreaks of all sorts of diseases within its borders. The German Koch and the Russian Haffkine are called in to cope with the cholera in India; we fall back upon the Swiss Yersin and the Japanese Kitasato to elucidate the true nature of plague, and to devise methods for combating its ravages. When rinderpest broke out in South Africa it was again to Koch that we turned. The unsatisfactory position of Great Britain in these matters is to some extent due to a small but active section of society whose affection for their lapdogs has overpowered their sense of duty to their neighbours. It is, however, we fear, still more due to the unintelligent treatment of men of science by the Government of the country, and to the want of appreciation of the value of science shown by society at large. If, to balance the list given a few lines above, we recall the work of our countryman Major Ross on the malarial parasite, it serves only to remind us of the difficulties placed in the way of his research by the officials of the service to which he belonged and the slightness of the recognition which for many years he received from the Government.
In 1874 the French National Assembly voted Pasteur, as some recognition of his work on seri-culture, a pension of 12,000 francs a year; nine years later this was increased to 25,000 francs, and it was further agreed that the pension should be continued to his wife and children. In 1881 he was nominated to represent France at the International Medical Congress, which met that year in London. The reception accorded him when, with his host, Sir James Paget, he mounted the platform in St. James’s Hall, overwhelmed him. ‘C’est sans doute le prince de Galles qui arrive,’ he remarked to his host, never dreaming that such acclamations could be meant for him. The following year he succeeded to Littré’s fauteuil at the Academy. In 1888 the President of the Republic opened the Pasteur Institute, which had been erected and endowed by a public subscription from all countries and from all classes; and there in 1892 he received a distinguished collection of scientific men, who had come from all parts of the world to congratulate him on his seventieth birthday.
Three years later his health began rapidly to fail. Two strokes of paralysis followed one another at a short interval, and on September 28, 1895, he died. He lies buried in the Institute he loved so well. A nobler monument, or one more worthy of him who lies therein, has never been erected by man. The benefits which his simple, strenuous, hard-working, noble life conferred on humanity cannot be estimated. They help us, however, to realize the truth of the old Arabian proverb, ‘The ink of science is more precious than the blood of the martyrs.’
M. Vallery-Radot has given what will probably prove to be the definitive Life of Pasteur. He has written at length, and he has written well. That he is not a man of strict scientific training in no way detracts from the merit of the work; rather, in many respects, this makes the book more readable. The pupils of Pasteur, who are now carrying on his work, have, out of the abundance of their knowledge, helped in the more technical portions of the book; whilst M. Vallery-Radot, from his intimacy and relationship with the subject of his biography, has been able to supply those personal details which form so essential and so interesting a part of every good biography.
For one who knew Pasteur only during the last decade of his life to attempt any account of his character may savour of impertinence. Still, it is impossible to close this article without some tribute to his simple dignity of manner, and, above all, to his infinite kindness. No man has done more to lessen suffering in this world, both in man and in the lower animals, and probably but few have felt so much sympathy with suffering in others. As a boy—and French country boys are not more thoughtful about the suffering of animals than those of other races—he refused to go shooting. ‘La vue d’une alouette blessée lui faisait mal.’ As an old man it was a touching sight to see him amongst the sufferers under treatment at the Institut Pasteur, patting the little children on the head, heartening up the timid and giving sous to the brave, infinitely tender to the frightened mothers. ‘Men of science, my Sandra, are always the humanest,’ as Laura said in ‘Vittoria.’ Another dominating trait in his character was his unflinching desire for truth; to ‘prove all things,’ and to ‘hold fast that which is good,’ was the motto of his working life. His success was in no small measure due to the rigorous tests he applied at all stages of his investigations; it was also due to the untiring assiduity with which he worked, never sparing himself, never in any way thinking of himself. But, above all, it was due to the intense thought he bestowed upon his researches. Concentrating his intellect upon the problem in question, he thought out all possible solutions, and was prepared for all possible eventualities. It was this power of thought, coupled with a matchless gift of observation and experiment, that enabled him to leave a name which cannot be forgotten whilst civilization endures.
MALARIA
There in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.
John Keats: ‘To Autumn.’
It has been said that one-half the mortality of the human race is due to malaria. This may very well be an exaggeration, but there can be little doubt that, of all the ills that flesh is heir to, malaria is the most deadly, and exercises the most profound influence on the distribution and activities of man. It will be seen later that the disease is most rife where the densest populations are found, and the mortality of such a closely crowded area as India gives some idea of the enormous loss of life and the widespread suffering caused by this disease. In 1892, out of a total population in India of 217,255,655, the deaths from all causes reached the figure of 6,980,785. Of these, 4,921,583 were ascribed to ‘fever.’ All these fevers were not, of course, malarial, but comparison with other statistics leads to the belief that a high percentage of them was caused by malaria. Major Ross states that in 1897 over 5,000,000 deaths in the same country were recorded as due to ‘fever,’ and that out of a total strength of 178,197 men in the British army in India, 75,821 were treated in the hospitals for malaria. Fifty years ago the loss from malaria amongst the European population of India was 13 per thousand. With improved methods of living and more skilful treatment this has been reduced to 7 per thousand; but the native, who is slow to change his ways, and usually averse to modern methods of treatment, still retains a very high fever death-rate—over 18 per thousand. During the years 1887-1897 the average mortality in Italy attributed to malaria was 15,000 a year, and 2,000,000 patients annually suffered from ‘fever.’
Apart from the mortality due to this disease, the amount of suffering and the decline in human power and activity which it entails deserve careful attention. Compared with the number of patients, the number of deaths is by no means large. In round numbers, out of every thousand soldiers in the British army in India in 1897, 420 men were attacked by malaria, but only one in a thousand died; even in the ‘most malarious’ districts the death-rate only amounted to 6 per thousand. In Sierra Leone, a district much more fatal than any in India, the average death-rate of the white troops, based on hospital records extending from 1892 to 1898, is estimated by Major L. M. Wilson at 42·9 per thousand, whilst that of the coloured troops is 5·9 per thousand. On the other hand, the European troops show an annual number of cases of 2,134 per thousand, and the non-European troops one of 1,056 per thousand. These figures probably under-estimate the amount of fever amongst the troops. It must be remembered that many soldiers who have slight attacks of fever do not present themselves at the hospital, whilst of those who do a considerable number are only detained for slight treatment, and are never entered on the hospital books, and so are not recorded on the returns.
From the statistics quoted above, it appears that of our soldiers in India three out of every seven suffer from an annual attack of malaria sufficiently pronounced to be recorded on the medical books, whilst our soldiers on the west coast of Africa have an average of at least two attacks a year, and a considerable number of them die. There is no reason to believe that the civil population of India or West Africa is in any degree more exempt from the disease than the military, but the statistics in the latter case are more readily accessible.