1873 1877 233 



like Pidoux, who a propos of diseases, said : *' Disease is in 

 us, of us, by us," and who, a propos of small-pox, even said 

 that he was not certain that it could only proceed from inocula- 

 tion and contagion. 



Though the majority of physicians and surgeons considered 

 that it was waste of time to listen to " a mere chemist," there 

 was a small group of young men, undergraduates, who, in their 

 thirst for knowledge, assembled at the Acade"mie de M^decine 

 every Tuesday, hoping that Pasteur might bring out one of 

 his communications concerning a scientific method *' which 

 resolves each difficulty by an easily interpreted experiment, 

 delightful to the mind, and at the same time so decisive that 

 it is as satisfying as a geometrical demonstration, and gives an 

 impression of security." 



Those words were written by one of those who came to the 

 Academic sittings, feeling that they were on the eve of some 

 great revelations. He was a clinical assistant of Dr. Be"hier's, 

 and, busy as he was with medical analysis, he was going over 

 Pasteur's experiments on fermentations for his own edifica- 

 tion. He was delighted with the sureness of the Pastorian 

 methods, and was impatient to continue the struggle now begun. 

 Enthusiasm was evinced in his brilliant eyes, in the timbre 

 of his voice, clear, incisive, slightly imperious perhaps, and in 

 his implacable desire for logic. Of solitary habits, with no 

 ambition for distinction or degrees, he worked unceasingly for 

 sheer love of science. The greatest desire of that young man 

 of twenty-one, quite unknown to Pasteur, was to be one day 

 admitted, in the very humblest rank, to the Ecole Normale 

 laboratory. His name was Eoux. 



Was not that medical student, that disciple lost in the crowd, 

 an image of the new generation hungering for new ideas, more 

 convinced than the preceding one had been of the necessity 

 of proofs? Struck by the unstable basis of medical theories, 

 those young men divined that the secret of progress in hospitals 

 was to be found in the laboratories. Medicine and surgery in 

 those days were such a contrast to what they are now that it 

 seems as if centuries divided them. No doubt one day some 

 professor, some medical historian, will give us a full account 

 of that vast and immense progress. But, whilst awaiting a 

 fully competent work of that kind, it is possible, even in a book 

 such as this (which is, from many causes, but a hasty epitome 

 of many very different things spread over a very simple 



