THE GERM THEORY. 801 



plosives. Yet, surely ground has been shown for the suggestion that 

 increased attention should be bestowed upon the improvement of the 

 laws, and the instruction of the common people, relative to the modern 

 explosives. 



* 



THE GERM THEORY.* 



Bt Professor LOUIS PASTEUE. 



r^\ ENTLEMEN : I had no intention of addressing this admirable 

 VX Congress, which brings together the most eminent medical men 

 in the world, and the great success of which does so much credit to 

 its principal organizer, Mr. MacCormac. The good-will of your es- 

 teemed president has decided otherwise. How could one, in fact, 

 resist the sympathetic words of that eminent man, whose goodness of 

 heart is associated in no small degree with great oratorical ability ? 

 Two motives have brought me to London. The first was to gain in- 

 struction, to profit by your learned discussions ; and the second was 

 to ascertain the place now occupied in medicine and surgery by the 

 germ theory. Certainly I shall return to Paris well satisfied. During 

 the past week I have learned much. I carry away with me the con- 

 viction that the English people are a great people ; and, as for the 

 influence of the new doctrine, I have been not only struck by the 

 progress it has made, but by its triumph. I should be guilty of in- 

 gratitude and of false modesty, if I did not accept the welcome I have 

 received among you, and in English society, as a mark of homage paid 

 to my labors during the past five-and-twenty years upon the nature of 

 ferments their life and their nutrition, their preparation in a pure 

 state by the introduction of organisms (ensemencement) under natural 

 and artificial conditions labors which have established the principles 

 and the methods of microbie (microbism), if the expression is allow- 

 able. Your cordial welcome has revived within me the lively feeling 

 of satisfaction I experienced when your great surgeon, Lister, declared 

 that my publication in 1857, on milk-fermentation, had inspired him 

 with his first ideas on his valuable surgical method. You have re- 

 awakened the pleasure I felt when our eminent physician, Dr. Davaine, 

 . declared that his labors upon charbon (splenic fever or malignant pus- 

 tule) had been suggested by my studies on butyric fermentation and 

 the vibrion which is characteristic of it. Gentlemen, I am happy to 

 be able to thank you by bringing to your notice a new advance in the 

 study of microbie as applied to the prevention of transmissible diseases 

 diseases which, for the most part, are fraught with terrible conse- 

 quences, both for man and domestic animals. The subject of my com- 



* London " Lancet's" translation of an address delivered at the International Medi- 

 cal Congress in London, August 8, 1881. 

 vol. xx. 51 



