THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



doctor enters a room , he always looks as if he was going to say , 

 ' I have just been saving a fellow-man ' ? " 



Pasteur knew not those harmless shafts which are a revenge 

 for prolonged pomposity. Why need Claude Bernard trouble 

 to wonder what So-and-so might think? He had the con- 

 sciousness of the work accomplished and the esteem and 

 admiration of men whose suffrage more than satisfied him. 

 Whilst Pasteur was already desirous of spreading in the 

 Acad&nie de M^decine the faith which inspired him, Claude 

 Bernard remembered the refractory state of mind of those who , 

 at the time of his first lectures on experimental physiology 

 applied to medicine, affirmed that "physiology can be of no 

 practical use in medicine ; it is but a science de luxe which could 

 well be dispensed with." He energetically defended this 

 science de luxe as the very science of life. In his opening 

 lecture at the Museum in 1870, he said that " descriptive 

 anatomy is to physiology as geography to history; and, as it 

 is not sufficient to understand the topography of a country to 

 know its history, so is it not enough to know the anatomy of 

 fin organ to understand its functions." Mery, an old surgeon, 

 familiarly compared anatomists to those errand boys in large 

 towns, who know the names of the streets and the numbers of 

 the houses, but do not know what goes on inside. There are 

 indeed in tissues and organs physico-chemical phenomena for 

 which anatomy cannot account. 



Claude Bernard was convinced that Medicine would gradually 

 emerge from quackery, and this by means of the experimental 

 method, like all other science. "No doubt," he said, "we 

 shall not live to see the blossoming out of scientific medicine, 

 but such is the fate of humanity ; those that sow on the field 

 of science are not destined to reap the fruit of their labours." 

 And so saying, Claude Bernard continued to sow. 



It is true that here and there flashes of light had preceded 

 Pasteur; but, instead of being guided by them, most doctors 

 continued to advance majestically in the midst of darkness. 

 Whenever murderous diseases, scourges of humanity, were in 

 question, long French or Latin words were put forward, such 

 as " Epidemic genius," fatum, quid ignotum quid divinum, etc. 

 Medical constitution was also a useful word, elastic and applic- 

 able to anything. 



When the Vale de Grace physician, Villemin a modest, 

 gentle-voiced man, who, under his quiet exterior, hid a veritable 



