1882-^-1884. 35T 



doctrines, represented a future reserve for the progress of 

 science. 



That year 1882 was the more interesting in Pasteur's life, 

 in that though victory on many points was quite indisputable, 

 partial struggles still burst out here and there, and an adversary 

 often arose suddenly when he had thought the engagement over. 



The sharpest attacks came from Germany. The Record of 

 the Works of the German Sanitary Office had led, under the 

 direction of Dr. Koch and his pupils, a veritable campaign 

 against Pasteur, whom they declared incapable of cultivating 

 microbes in a state of purity. He did not even, they said, 

 know how to recognize the septic vibrio, though he had dis- 

 covered it. The experiments by which hens contracted splenic 

 fever under a lowered temperature after inoculation signified 

 nothing. The share of the earthworms in the propagation of 

 charbon, the inoculation into guinea-pigs of the germs found 

 in the little cylinders produced by those worms followed by 

 the death of the guinea-pigs, all this they said was pointless and 

 laughable. They even contested the preserving influence of 

 vaccination. 



Whilst these things were being said and written, the Veter- 

 inary School of Berlin asked the laboratory of the Ecole 

 Normale for some charbon vaccine. Pasteur answered that 

 he wished that experiments should be made before a com- 

 mission nominated by the German Government. It was con- 

 stituted by the Minister of Agriculture and Forests, and 

 Virchow was one of the members of it. A former student of 

 the Ecole Normale — ^who, after leaving the school first on 

 the list of competitors for the agregation of physical science, 

 had entered the laboratory — one in whom Pasteur founded 

 many hopes, Thuillier, left for Germany with his little tubes 

 of attenuated virus. Pasteur was not satisfied; he would have 

 liked to meet his adversaries face to face and oblige them 

 publicly to own their defeat. An opportunity was soon to arise. 

 He had come to Arbois, as usual, for the months of August and 

 September, and was having some alterations made in his little 

 house. The tannery pits were being filled up. *'It will not 

 improve the house itself," he wrote to his son, **but it will be 

 made brighter and more comfortable by having a tidy yard and 

 a garden along the riverside." 



The Committee of the International Congress of Hygiene, 



