HISTORICAL 19 



It is curious and perhaps not a little humiliating to-day, 

 when the truth of Pasteur's discoveries is known even by the 

 schoolboy, for us to look back upon the manner in which they 

 were received by those who might have been expected to re- 

 ceive them with acclamation. Many of the medical men and 

 the veterinary surgeons of his day resented the intrusion of a 

 " mere chemist " into their domain, and received his great dis- 

 coveries, not only with derision, but often with bitter opposi- 

 tion, and he was even accused of concocting his results 1 



He studied the cause of puerperal infection and the high 

 mortality then following upon child-birth, and found it to be 

 usually due to a chain-like micro-organism called a Streptococcus. 

 He attended a discus'sion on the subject at the Academy of 

 Medicine in Paris, and listened to the learned doctors of the 

 day putting forward all sorts of hypotheses, each equally wide 

 of the mark. At length he impatiently exclaimed, " None of 

 these things cause the epidemics. It is the nursing and 

 medical staff who carry the microbe from an infected woman to 

 a healthy one ! " The learned physician who was speaking said 

 he was afraid this microbe would never be discovered. Pasteur 

 in answer merely went to the blackboard and drew a chain of 

 dots upon it, exclaiming, "There, that is what it is like." 

 Within a few years after this discovery, and owing to the pre- 

 cautions of perfect cleanliness which Pasteur insisted upon, 

 the death-rate from puerperal fever in the Paris Maternity 

 Hospitals fell from 100 or 200 per 1000 to between 1 and 2 

 per 1000. 



Pasteur's life is so fascinating a study, that one is tempted 

 to dwell upon it at a length not permissible in such a small 

 book as this, and we must rest content with merely mentioning 

 his other great achievements in the domain of bacteriology, 

 pathology, and preventive medicine. Chicken Cholera, Hydro- 

 phobia or Rabies, one of the most dreadful maladies communi- 

 cable from animals to man, and other diseases, were investigated 

 and efficacious vaccine treatment of them discovered. Pasteur 

 lived to see his doctrines triumph over all opposition, and he 

 died in 1895, full of honours and years, lu's name commemorated, 

 not only in his native France, but in many lands, by their 

 "Pasteur Institutes of Preventive Medicine," and by the word 

 " pasteurise," known in practically every household where milk 

 is sterilised for infant food. 



His work was carried on and applied especially to surgery 

 by our own great Lister, who wrote to him from Edinburgh, 

 "Allow me to take this opportunity to tender you my most 

 cordial thanks for having, by your brilliant researches, demon- 

 strated to me the truth of the germ theory of putrefaction, and 



