NEW EXAMPLES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL CONFLICTS 269 



of a brilliant career, did not hesitate to declare that 

 success and failure in surgery found a rational explana- 

 tion in the principles on which rests the so-called theory 

 of germs, and that this would give rise to a new surgery, 

 that already inaugurated by a celebrated English surgeon, 

 Dr. Lister, who was one of the first to understand its 

 fecundity. Without any professional competence, but 

 with the conviction of a qualified experimenter, I ven- 

 ture to repeat here the words of our eminent confrere." 



XI 

 NEW EXAMPLES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL CONFLICTS 



In this rapid review of the etiological work of Pasteur 

 I have naturally omitted some details which seem to 

 me secondary, and some ideas which would have con- 

 stituted merely replicas of ideas already well-known. 

 Pasteur studied, or caused to be studied under his eyes, 

 all the bacteria which he could find, however little patho- 

 genic they were or appeared to be. As I have said, 

 that which interested him was the pathological conflict 

 between the physiological properties of the micro- 

 organism and of the cells of the tissues, and for examples 

 of this conflict he searched everywhere. 



As the laboratory was not a hospital we scarcely saw 

 diseases there; he was obliged to profit by the indisposi- 

 tions of the personnel. I was, just at this moment, 

 beset by a series of boils and the first thing that Pasteur 

 did when I showed him one of them was to prick it, 

 or rather have it pricked, for he was not fond of operating 

 himself, and to take therefrom a drop of blood in order 

 to make a culture, in which undertaking he was success- 

 ful. A second boil gave the same result, and thus the 

 staphylococcus was discovered which since that time 



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