Born, Dec, 27, 1832—Died, Sept. 28, 1895.
Twenty-five years ago, in the house by the old stables of the Cent Gardes at Ville Neuve (Etang, a few miles beyond St. Cloud,.surrounded by his family and devoted disciples, Pasteur peacefully passed away.
The simple, austere chamber remains unchanged: no luxury, only bare necessity: a chair, a table, a bed; little beside, save wreaths of immortelles—one from our own great Lister,—world wide tributes of reverence and devotion.
France has acclaimed Pasteur the greatest of her sons. Well may she proud of him, He was one of the greatest of all time. None has triumphed more brilliantly over the sinister and malignant forces of Nature, None has conferred more precious and lasting gifts upon mankind, There was soniething religious in his passion for truth. "He was a priest—a priest of the idea" said Duclaux, his pupil and successor.
Dreamy, intuitive, sensitive humble, richly gifted with ereativo imagination, he was an idealist; but he submitted his ideas to the most rigorous test of experiment. His head was among
earth. the stars, "his feet firm on solid petty jealousies and aniuiosities of ordinary men were meaningless to him; nor was he influenced by considerations of worldly gain. "I could never work for money, but I would always work for science," he once remarked. Had he chosen to keep his discoveries to himself, he would have been one of the wealthiest of men, but he gave them freely to mankind, and was content to end his days, a professor of chemistry, receiving a uiodest salary from the Government of his country. His own words reveal his mind; "Happy he who has within himself a God whom he obeys—an ideal of beauty, of art, of science, of country, and of the love of men."
From Oxe Trivxpx To ANOTHER.
The revelation of Nature's _se-sets ever spurred him on. His achievements followed one another in quick succession. From his work on crystals, especially on grape acid, he was led to the study of fermentation: from fermentation to the diseases of wine and beer, and to the question of the spontancons generation of life. He was not. content only with speculation and discussion: he was the creator of the experimental method which has worked such miracles in the elucidation and prevention of disease. He proclaimed the theory that life springs only from life. In brief and simple words he said "Lite is the germ. and the germ is life"?
In 1863 he told Napoleon that his ambition was to discover the causes. of putrid and contagious diseases. With Claude Bernard and Henri int Claire Deville he worked at cholera which bad broken out Paris. "Tt needs courage for this kind of study," remarked Deville one day. "And what of duty?" was Pasteur's reply.
Then he investigated two deadly diseases of silkworms, which were costing France fifty million francs ayeer. The silk industry had been going from bad to worse: the lose and misery in the south of France were terrible. He, a. chemist, who had never touched a_ silkworm he-fore, discovered the cause of the diseases and the method of prevention. He brought back prosperity to the silk industry, and relieved his country's distress.
Tue Core ror Rasirs.
This was in 1865. Tu 1870 came the Franco-German war He was 48 years old. The war wrecked his' country and troke lus heart. His anguish was pitiful: but he determined more than ever to serve France by his devotion to science; to exalt her nauie by his dis-; coveries.
Anthrax, fowl-cholera and swine-fever in turn yielded to his patient and exhaustive researches; and finally he achieved the greatest of all triumphs—the prevention of rabies, one of the most awful diseases that afflict mankind. He produced immunity by inoculations of attenuated virus, given during the incubation period of the disease. He proved conclusively that he could protect dogs by this method, but he had not yet put it to the supreme test on man.
On July 6, 1885, Joseph Meister, an Alsatian, who is to-day in the service of the Institute, came to Pasteur, fearfully bitten in 14 places by a furious rabid dog. Pasteur's mind was torn with anxiety: he consulted his colleagues, Vulpien and Grancher; they decided that they dare not refuse treatment. Meister was: saved.
Since then more than one hundred thousand patients have reved the Pasteur treatment; the failures have been less than one per cent.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.