

1882—1884 371 



with which a professor of the Faculty of Medicine allowed him? 

 self to speak of vaccinations by attenuated virus. 



He ended by rejoicing once more that this great discovery 

 should have been a French one. 



Pasteur went back to Arbois for a few days. On his return 

 to Paris, he was beginning some new experiments, when he 

 received a long letter from the Turin professors. Instead of 

 accepting his offer, they enumerated their experiments, asked 

 some questions in an offended and ironical manner, and con- 

 cluded by praising an Italian national vaccine, which produced 

 absolute immunity in the future — when it did not kill. 



They cannot get out of this dilemma," said Pasteur; 

 either they knew my 1877 notes, unravelling the contra- 

 dictory statements of Davaine, JaiUard and Leplat, and Paul 

 Bert, or they did not know them. If they did not know them 

 on March 22, 1882, there is nothing more to say; they were 

 not guilty in acting as they did, but they should have owned it 

 freely. If they did know them, why ever did they inoculate 

 blood taken from a sheep twenty-four hours after its death? 

 They say that this blood was not septic ; but how do they know ? 

 They have done nothing to find out. They should have inocu- 

 fated some guinea-pigs, by choice, and then tried some cultures 

 in a vacuum to compare them with cultures in contact with 

 air. Why will they not receive me? A meeting between 

 truth-seeking men would be the most natural thing in the 

 world!'' 



Still hoping to persuade his adversaries to meet him at Turin 

 and be convinced, Pasteur wrote to them. '* Paris, May 9, 

 1883. Gentlemen — ^Your letter of April 30 surprises me very 

 much. What is in question between you and me? That I 

 should go to Turin, if you will allow me, to demonstrate that 

 sheep, dead of charbon, as numerous as you like, will, for a 

 few hours after their death, he exclusively infected with 

 anthrax, and that the day after their death they will present 

 both anthrax and septic infection ; and that therefore, when, on 

 March 23, 1882, wishing to inoculate blood infected with 

 anthrax only into sheep vaccinated and non-vaccinated, you 

 took blood from a carcase twenty-four hours after death, you 

 committed a grave scientific mistake. 



** Instead of answering yes or no, instead of saying to m^ 

 'Come to Turin/ or 'Do not come,' you ask me, in a manii- 



