1877—1879 289 



culture vessel. The same was observed on a man whom Dr. 

 Maurice Eaynaud, interested in those researches on furuncles, 

 had sent to the laboratory, and afterwards on a female patient 

 of the Lariboisiere Hospital, whose back was covered with 

 furuncles. Later on, Pasteur, taken by Dr. Lannelongue to 

 the Trousseau Hospital, where a little girl was about to be 

 operated on for that disease of the bones and marrow called 

 osteomyelitis, gathered a few drops of pus from the inside and 

 the outside of the bone, and again found clusters of microbes. 

 Sown into a culture liquid, this microbe seemed so identical 

 with the furuncle organism that *'it might be affirmed at 

 first sight/' said Pasteur, "that osteomyelitis is the furuncle of 

 bones." 



The hospital now took as much place in Pasteur's life as the 

 laboratory. ^'Chamberland and I assisted him in those 

 studies," writes M. Roux. *'It was to the Hopital Cochin 

 or to the Maternite that we went most frequently, taking our 

 culture tubes and sterilized pipets into the wards or operating 

 theatres. No one knows what feelings of repulsion Pasteur 

 had to overcome before visiting patients and witnessing post- 

 mortem examinations. His sensibility was extreme, and he 

 suffered morally and physically from the pains of others ; the 

 cut of the bistoury opening an abscess made him wince as if he 

 himself had received it. The sight of corpses, the sad business 

 of necropsies, caused him real disgust ; we have often seen him 

 go home ill from those operating theatres. But his love of 

 science, his desire for truth were the stronger; he returned the 

 next day." 



He was highly interested in the studj^ of puerperal fever, 

 which was still enveloped in profound darkness. Might not 

 the application of his theories to the progress of surgery be 

 realized in obstetrics? Could not those epidemics be arrested 

 which passed like scourges over lying-in hospitals ? It was still 

 remembered with horror how, in the Paris ^Maternity Hos- 

 pital, between April 1 and May 10, 1856, 64 fatalities had taken 

 place out of 347 confinements. The hospital had to be closed, 

 and the survivors took refuge at the Lariboisiere Hospital, 

 where they nearly all succumbed, pursued, it was thought, by 

 the epidemic. 



Dr. Tarnier, a student residing at the Maternite during that 

 disastrous time, related afterwards how the ignorance of the 

 causes of puerperal fever was such that he was sometimes called 



