1865—1870 171 



their Tvork of undermining; pseudo-scientists in their vanity 

 proclaimed that everything was illusory that was outside their 

 own affirmations, and the seed merchants, willing to ruin 

 everybody rather than jeopardize their miserable interests, 

 *'did not hesitate (we are quoting M. Gernez) to perpetrate 

 the most odious falsehoods." 



Instead of being annoyed, saddened, often indignant as he 

 was, Pasteur would have done more wisely to look back upon 

 the history of most great discoveries and of the initial difficul- 

 ties which beset them. But he could not look upon such things 

 philosophically; stupidity astonished him and he could not 

 easily bring himself to believe in bad faith. His friends in 

 Alais society, M. de Lachadenede, M. Despeyroux, professor 

 of chemistry, might have reminded him, in their evening con- 

 versations, of the difficulties ever encountered in the service of 

 mankind. The prejudice against potatoes, for instance, had 

 lasted three hundred years. When they were brought over 

 from Peru in the fifteenth century, it was asserted that they 

 caused leprosy ; in the seventeenth century, that accusation was 

 recognized to be absurd, but it was said that they caused fever. 

 One century later, in 1771, the Besancon Academy of Medicine 

 having opened a competition for the answer to the following 

 question of general interest: '^What plants can be used to 

 supplement other foods in times of famine!" a military 

 apothecary, named Parmentier, competed and proved victori- 

 ously that the potato was quite harmless. After that, he began 

 a propagandist campaign in favour of potatoes. But prejudice 

 still subsisted in spite of his experimental fields and of the 

 dinners in the menu of which potatoes held a large place. 

 Louis XVI had then an inspiration worthy of Henry IV; he 

 appeared in public, wearing in his buttonhole Parmentier 's 

 little mauve flower, and thus glorified it in the eyes of the 

 Court and of the crowd. 



But such comparisons had no weight with Pasteur; he was 

 henceforth sure of his method and longed to see it adopted, 

 unable to understand why there should be further discussions 

 now that the silkworm industry was saved and the bread of 

 so many poor families assured. He was learning to know all 

 the bitterness of sterile polemics, and the obstacles placed one 

 by one in the way of those who attempt to give humanity any- 

 thing new and useful. Fortunately he had what so many 

 men of research have lacked, the active and zealous collabora- 



