434. THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



Avignon contrasted with the foggy November weather left 

 behind in Paris and brought a feeling of comfort, almost of 

 returning health; a delegation of doctors met the train at Nice, 

 bringing Pasteur their good wishes. 



The travelling party drove from Vintimille to Bordighera 

 under the deep blue sky reflected in a sea of a yet deeper blue, 

 along a road bordered with cacti, palms and other tropical plants. 

 The sight of the lovely gardens of the Villa Bischoffsheim gave 

 Pasteur a delicious feeling of rest. 



His health soon improved sufficiently for him to be able to 

 take some short walks. But his thoughts constantly recurred 

 to the laboratory. M. Duclaux was then thinking of starting a 

 monthly periodical entitled Annals of the Pasteur Institute, 

 Pasteur, writing to him on December 27, 1887, to express his 

 appiobation, suggested various experiments to be attempted. 

 He attributed the action of the preventive inoculations to a 

 vaccinal matter associated with the rabic microbe. Pasteur had 

 thought at first that the first development of the pathogenic 

 microbe caused the disappearance from the organism of an 

 element necessary to the life of that microbe. It was, in other 

 words, a theory of exhaustion. But since 1885, he adopted the 

 other idea, supported indeed by biologists, that immunity was 

 due to a substance left in the body by the culture of the microbe 

 and which opposed the invasion — a theory of addition. 



*'I am happy to learn,'' wrote Villemin, his friend and his 

 medical adviser, *'that your health is improving; continue to 

 rest in that beautiful country, you have weU deserved it, and 

 rest is absolutely necessary to you. You have overtaxed yourself 

 beyond all reason and you must make up for it. Repairs to 

 the nervous system are worked chiefly by relaxation from the 

 mental storms and moral anxieties which your rahid work has 

 occasioned in you. Give the Bordighera sun a chance ! ' ' 



But Pasteur was not allowed the rest he so much needed ; on 

 January 4, 1887, referring to a death which had occurred after 

 treatment in the preceding December, M. Peter declared that 

 the antirabic cure was useless; at the following meeting he 

 called it dangerous when applied in the *' intensive" form. 

 Dujardin-Beaumetz, Chauveau and Verneuil immediately inter* 

 vened, declaring that the alleged fact was ' ' devoid of any scien- 

 tific character." A week later, Mil. Grancher and Brouardel 

 bore the brunt of the discussion. Grancher, Pasteur's repre- 

 sentative on this occasion, disproved certain allegations, and 



