1 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



vading microbes, thus explaining, by the principle of auto-vaccination 

 or auto-toxination, why an individual may at certain times be immune 

 to contagious disease. 



And here, permit a parenthetical word upon vivisection. This vast 

 amount of research had entailed much experimentation with living 

 animals; and, as might have been foreseen, certain false humanitarians 

 raised a great outcry about it. In England this went so far as to lead 

 to the enactment of an antivivisection law, since repealed, I believe, 

 although organized societies there, and on the continent, and in Amer- 

 ica still carry on an agitation. However kind the surgeon or pathologist 

 may be, he can not avoid inflicting some pain in his efforts to prevent 

 more. Nor can it have escaped your observation that, no less than man, 

 the lower animals profited from these discoveries which could not have 

 been made in any other way. It is also worthy of note that no anti- 

 vivisectionist has ever offered to sacrifice himself for the good of hu- 

 manity. The colleagues of Pasteur testify that he always used anes- 

 thetics in his work on animals and at such times evinced the most acute 

 sympathetic suffering; only the end in view gave him courage to go on 

 with the experiment. He said of himself that he could never have the 

 heart to shoot a bird for sport. 



Pasteur's discoveries were epoch-making, and revealed in him the 

 Copernicus of medicine. Prior to his researches, the causes and ra- 

 tional treatment of disease were no better understood than in the stone 

 age. Naturally, his conclusions were not accepted by medical men till 

 every possible opposition had been exhausted. Physicians resented in- 

 struction from a man devoid of medical training. " A mere chemist " 

 was the sneer most frequently on the lips of his adversaries. When they 

 could no longer deny the existence of microbes, adherents to the old 

 school still vehemently asserted that they were merely an epiphenom- 

 enon. I recall a choleric colleague of my own in the faculty of a medical 

 college where I was teaching twenty years ago, who in the heat of debate 

 was wont to call out loudly — " Bring on your microbes. I'll eat a pint 

 of any variety ! " Fortunately for him no one took him at his word. 

 The distinguished Professor Pettenkofer, of Munich, having made the 

 same remark concerning Koch's bacillus of cholera, he was supplied 

 with the beverage — and actually drank it. Heroic efforts of physicians 

 enabled him to keep his soul between his teeth, and after recovery he 

 had the manhood to publish an admission of error. 



In 1880 Huxley estimated that the practical results of Pasteur's 

 discoveries had yielded France a return in excess of the war indemnity 

 wrested from her a decade before — one billion francs. It is safe to as- 

 sert that at present they represent to the world not less than that sum 

 annually. And how shall an estimate be made of the relief of suffering 

 and the preservation of life? 



