THE LIFE-WORK OF PASTEUR. 241 



giYe pebrine oxflachery. He became able to graduate the intensity of 

 the disease, and make it appear at any day and almost at any hour." 

 He found the means of preventing the disorders, and "restored its 

 wealth to the desolated silk district." The cost of this precious result 

 was a paralysis of the left side, from which he has never fully 

 recovered. 



As early as 1860 M. Pasteur expressed the hope that he might " be 

 able to pursue his investigations far enough to prepare the way for a 

 more profound study of the origin of diseases." Reviewing, at the 

 conclusion of his " Studies on Beer," the principles which had directed 

 his labors for twenty years, he wrote that the etiology of contagious 

 diseases was, perhaps, on the eve of receiving an unexpected light. 

 Robert Boyle had said that thorough understanding of the nature 

 of fermentations and ferments might give the key to the explanation 

 of many morbid phenomena. The German doctor, Traube, had in 1864 

 explained the ammoniacal fermentation of urine, by reference to 

 Pasteur's theory. The English surgeon. Dr. Lister, wrote in 1874 to 

 Pasteur that he owed to him the idea of the antiseptic treatment of 

 wounds which he had been practicing since 1865. Professor Tyn- 

 dall wrote to him, in 1876, after having read his investigations for the 

 second time : " For the first time in the history of science we have 

 a right to entertain the sure and certain hope that, as to epidemic dis- 

 eases, medicine will shortly be delivered from empiricism and placed 

 upon a really scientific basis. When that great day shall come, man- 

 kind will, in my opinion, recognize that it is to you that the greatest part 

 of its gratitude is due." 



The domestic animals of France and other countries had been sub- 

 ject to a carbuncular disease, like the malignant pustule of man, which 

 took different forms and had different names in different species, but 

 was evidently the same in nature. A medical commission had, be- 

 tween 1849 and 1852, made an investigation of it and found it trans- 

 missible by inoculation from animal to animal. Drs. Davaine and 

 Rayer had, at the same time, found in the blood of the diseased ani- 

 mals minute filiform bodies, to which they paid no further attention for 

 thirteen years, or till after Pasteur's observations on fermentation had 

 been widely spread. Then, Davaine concluded that these corpuscles 

 were the source of the disease. He was contradicted by MM. Jaillard 

 and Leplat, who had inoculated various animals with matter procured 

 from sheep and cows that had died of the disease without obtaining a 

 development of the bodies in question. Davaine suggested that they 

 had used the wrong matter, but they replied that they had obtained it 

 direct from an unmistakable source. Their views were supported by 

 the German Dr. Koch and M. Paul Bert. At this point, M. Pasteur 

 stepped in and began experiments after methods which had served him 

 as sure guides in his studies of twenty years. They were at once 

 simple and delicate. " Did he wish, for example, to demonstrate that 



VOL. XXV. — 16 



