156 LOUIS PASTEUR 



connection with this body chiefly as a means of 

 creating interest in the germ theory of disease and 

 he attended the meetings, dry as he doubtless found 

 many of them, with considerable regularity. Op- 

 portunities not infrequently presented themselves 

 for discussing the germ theory, as this doctrine was 

 scouted at by several of the foremost representa- 

 tives of the medical profession, many of whom be- 

 lieved in the doctrine of spontaneous generation 

 and thought that the bacteria sometimes observed 

 in diseased conditions of the body were created by 

 the body itself. As Pasteur was not a medical man, 

 being as was said, a "mere chemist," his incursions 

 into the field of medicine were regarded as not 

 entitled to much consideration. Little did his 

 medical colleagues then realize that they were deal- 

 ing with the man whose discoveries with regard to 

 disease were to be of greater value than those of 

 all the academies of medicine in the history of the 

 world. 



The first successful applications of Pasteur's dis- 

 coveries were made in surgery. The transforma- 

 tion which surgical methods have undergone as a 

 result of these discoveries is, as Osier has remarked, 

 "one of the greatest boons ever conferred upon 

 humanity." The mortality from surgical opera- 



