264 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



The old professors, whose career had been built on a com- 

 bination of theories which they were pleased to call medical 

 truth, dazed by such startling novelties, endeavoured, as did 

 Piorry, to attract attention to their former writings. "It is 

 not the disease, an abstract being," said Piorry, "which we 

 have to treat, but the patient, whom we must study with the 

 greatest care by all the physical, chemical and clinical means 

 which Science offers." 



The contagion which Pasteur showed, appearing clearly in 

 the disorders visible in the carcases of inoculated guinea-pigs, 

 was counted as nothing. As to the assimilation of a laboratory 

 experiment on rabbits and guinea-pigs to what occurred in 

 human pathology, it may be guessed that it was quite out of 

 the question for men who did not even admit the possibility of a 

 comparison between veterinary medicine and the other. It 

 would be interesting to reconstitute these hostile surroundings 

 in order to appreciate the efforts of will required of Pasteur to 

 enable him to triumph over all the obstacles raised before him 

 in the medical and the veterinary world. 



The Professor of Alfort School, Colin, who had, he said, 

 made 500 experiments on anthrax within the last twelve years, 

 stated, in a paper of seventeen pages, read at the Academy of 

 Medicine on July 31, that the results of Pasteur's experiments 

 had not the importance which Pasteur attributed to them. 

 Among many other objections, one was considered by Colin as 

 a fatal one the existence of a virulent agent situated in the 

 blood, besides the bacteridia. 



Bouley, who had just communicated to the Academy of 

 Sciences some notes by M. Toussaint, professor at the Toulouse 

 veterinary school, whose experiments agreed with those of 

 Pasteur, was nevertheless a little moved by Colin 's reading. 

 He wrote in that sense to Pasteur, who was then spending his 

 holidays in the Jura. Pasteur addressed to him an answer as 

 vigorous as any of his replies at the Academy. 



" Arbois, August 18, 1877. My dear colleague ... I 

 hasten to answer your letter. I should like to accept literally 

 the honour which you confer upon me by calling me ' your 

 master,' and to give you a severe reprimand, you faith- 

 less man, who would seem to have been shaken by M. 

 Colin 's reading at the Academic des Sciences, since you are 

 still holding forth on the possibility of a virulent agent, 

 and since your uncertainties seem to be appeased by a new 



