180 LOUIS PASTEUR 



but the patients who did not die had recovered 

 when Pasteur and his associates arrived. It is not 

 likely that Pasteur would have discovered the 

 germ of yellow fever, and he certainly ran no risk 

 in coming in contact with those afflicted by it. It 

 was many years later that the remarkable mode of 

 transmission of this malady was revealed ; and the 

 mosquito convicted of being the agent of its trans- 

 mission, — a discovery which has led to the almost 

 complete, extermination of this widespread and 

 deadly scourge, and the saving of thousands of 

 human lives. 



In the intervals of his work on anthrax Pasteur 

 interested himself in various human diseases. A 

 minor discovery was made in 1880 as to the cause 

 of boils. Duclaux, then one of Pasteur's collabo- 

 rators, was suffering from a series of these afflic- 

 tions. When Pasteur's attention was called to 

 them, he had one of the boils pricked open, for he 

 was averse to performing any kind of operation 

 himself, and he succeeded in making a culture 

 from its contents. In this and in other cultures, 

 a small, rounded organism, now known as a 

 staphylococcus, was discovered, which is at present 

 recognized as the common cause of these infec- 

 tions. 



