72 Background of Work and Study in Public Health 



nical proficiency demonstrated by Koch as early as his publishings 

 on bacterial wound infections and sepsis must have been a strong, 

 abiding reason why he in time appealed to Smith as a " hero " in 

 science. 



The great distinguishing feature between the work of Pasteur 

 and Koch — what has been called " the central jewel in the diadem 

 of Pasteur's achievements " ^'^^ — was the epoch-making principle 

 of experimental immunity to pathogenic bacteria. Emile Duclaux 

 has said ^"^^ that Pasteur, but for this, might have been only a 

 " precursor " to some other scientific man, " a Koch for example," 

 since 



his pathological work was the development and the complement of his 

 work upon the fermentations. . . . He remains the equal of many when 

 he demonstrates the bacterial origin of anthrax or of other diseases. Where 

 he is without equal is when he discovers the attenuation of viruses, and 

 when he introduces into science that fertile notion that allows us to act 

 upon a disease by acting, not upon the sick person, as up to that time one 

 had been in the habit of doing, but upon the pathological bacterium. 



Smith, like Duclaux, found in Pasteur's work the origins of 

 bacteriotherapy. Whereas Darwin's work had given wide cur- 

 rency to the phrase " struggle for existence," Pasteur's experiments 

 had placed another phrase, the "struggle for oxygen," into the 

 scientific foreground. Duclaux explained "° thus: 



Some common bacteria sown with the anthrax bacteridium, in neutral 

 or alkaline urine, prevent its developing because they take possession of 

 the ground more rapidly and exhaust the oxygen. They can, in the same 

 way, arrest its development in an animal. " It is possible " [said Pasteur} 

 "" to inject great quantities of the anthrax bacteridium into an animal 

 without its contracting the disease, if some of these common bacteria have 

 been present in the culture used." Here we have the first example of 

 bacteriotherapy, to which Cantani returned later, and which has not spoken 

 its last word. The interpretation of these facts has changed, and we know 

 now that it is less simple [than it seemed at that time] but the idea of 

 the struggle for existence was nevertheless then introduced into pathology, 

 in the domain of cellular antagonism: and it has remained there. 



Pasteur began to study fermentation and disease before Koch 

 secured his medical degree from Gottingen. For some time, how- 



*'* Dr. C. A. Herter, The influence of Pasteur on medical science, op. cit., 329. 

 ^"^ Pasteur, The history of a mind, op. cit., 232. 

 "" Idem, 256. 



