256 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



pad of cotton wool used as a stopper was previously sterilized. 

 Thus was an entirely new technique rising fully armed and 

 ready to repel new attacks and ensure new victories. 



If Pasteur was so anxious to drive Dr. Bastian to the wall, 

 it was because he saw behind that so-called experiment on 

 spontaneous generation a cause of perpetual conflict with phy- 

 sicians and surgeons. Some of them desired to repel purely 

 and simply the whole theory of germs. Others, disposed to 

 admit the results of Pasteur's researches, as laboratory work, 

 did not admit his experimental incursions on clinical ground. 

 Pasteur therefore wrote to Dr. Bastian in the early part of 

 Julv, 1877— 



*'Do you know why I desire so much to fight and conquer 

 you? it is because you are one of the principal adepts of a 

 medical doctrine which I believe to be fatal to progress in the 

 art of healing — the doctrine of the spontaneity of all diseases, 

 . . . That is an error which, I repeat it, is harmful to medical 

 progress. From the prophylactic as well as from the thera^ 

 peutic point of view, the fate of the physician and surgeon 

 depends upon the adoption of the one or the other of these two 

 doctriner* 



f 1 



