368 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



non-vaccinated, had succumbed subsequently to the inoculatkC; 

 of the blood of a sheep which had died of charbon. 



This took place in March, 1882. As soon as Pasteur heard 

 of this extraordinary fiasco, which seemed the counterpart of 

 the Pouilly-le-Fort experiment, he wrote on April 16 to the 

 director of the Turin Veterinary School, asking on what day 

 the sheep had died the blood of which had been used for the 

 virulent inoculation. 



The director answered simply that the sheep had died on the 

 morning of March 22, and that its blood had been inoculated 

 during the course of the following day. *' There has been," 

 said Pasteur, *'a grave scientific mistake; the blood inoculated 

 was septic as well as full of charbon.'* 



Though the director of the Turin Veterinary School affirmed 

 that the blood had been carefully examined and that it was in 

 no wise septic, Pasteur looked back on his 1877 experiments 

 on anthrax and septicemia, and maintained before the Paris 

 Central Veterinary Society on June 8, 1882, that the Turin 

 School had done wrong in using the blood of an animal at least 

 twenty-four hours after its death, for the blood must have been 

 septic besides containing anthrax. The six professors of the 

 Turin School protested unanimously against such an interpre- 

 tation. *'We hold it marvellous,'* they wrote ironically, *'that 

 your Illustrious Lordship should have recognized so surely, 

 from Paris, the disease which made such havoc amongst the 

 animals vaccinated and non-vaccinated and inoculated with 

 blood containing anthrax in our school on March 23, 1882. 



*'It does not seem to us possible that a scientist should 

 affirm the existence of septicaemia in an animal he has not even 



seen. . . ." 



The quarrel with the Turin School had now lasted a year. 

 On April 9, 1883, Pasteur appealed to the Academy of Sciences 

 to judge of the Turin incident and to put an end to this agita- 

 tion, which threatened to cover truth with a veil. He read out 

 the letter he had just addressed to the Turin professors. 



*' Gentlemen, a dispute having arisen between you and 

 myself respecting the interpretation to be given to the absolute 

 failure of your control experiment of March 23, 1882, I have 

 the honour to inform you that, if you wiU accept the suggestion, 

 I will go to Turin any day you may choose ; you shall inoculate 

 in my presence some virulent charbon into any number of 

 sheep you like. The exact moment of death in each case shall 



