LOUIS PASTEUR. 



LOUIS PASTEUR, one of the scientific leaders of the 

 century, has passed from amongst us. His personal 

 work is finished, and though the influence which this work 

 will have on the progress of science during the next century 

 cannot at the present time be calculated or foretold, even 

 approximately, we already know how far his investigations 

 have extended our knowledge of Molecular Physics, altered 

 our ideas concerning certain biological problems, and re- 

 volutionised our conceptions of the /Etiology and Patho- 

 logy of the specific infective diseases. ■ It may be held by 

 some, as Pasteur himself held, that the only record of his 

 work that need be kept is that contained in the Comptes 

 Rendus of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, but we are 

 glad to say that a sketch of the life of the man who carried 

 on the great work now inseparably associated with his 

 name has been given to the world by his son-in-law, M. 

 Valery Radot, under the title M. Pasteitr, Histoire dun 

 savant par u?i ignorant} For many of the facts of Pasteur's 

 life I have drawn freely on this sketch, but the source from 

 which most of the facts relating- to his work are taken is that 

 to which he himself would refer his followers — the Comptes 

 Rendus. 



Like so many of the greatest sons of France, Louis Pasteur 

 was born, not in one of her great cities, but in Dole in the 

 Jura, the ancient capital of Franc he Comptes, and originally 

 the seat of the University College now at Besancon in the 

 Doubs. His father, — a quiet, contemplative, and studious 

 tanner was a retired soldier who for his valour had been 

 decorated on the field of battle, — married an enthusiastic and 

 ambitious woman, ambitious not for herself or her husband, 

 but for the future of the son who was born to them on the 27 th 

 December, 1822. Father and mother alike determined to 

 make of their son an "educated man" ; what success they 



1 Translated from the French by Lady Claud Hamilton: Louis Pasteur, 

 -His Life and Work. 



