234 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



biography), to give to a reader unfamiliar with such studies a 

 certain idea of one of the most interesting chapters in the history 

 of civilization, affecting the preservation of innumerable human 

 lives. 



"A pin-prick is a door open to Death," said the surgeon 

 Velpeau. That open door widened before the smallest opera- 

 tion ; the lancing of an abscess or a whitlow sometimes had such 

 serious consequences that surgeons hesitated before the slightest 

 use of the bistoury. It was much worse when a great surgical 

 intervention was necessary, though, through the irony of things, 

 the immediate success of the most difficult operations was now 

 guaranteed by the progress of skill and the precious discovery 

 of anaesthesia. The patient, his will and consciousness sus- 

 pended, awoke from the most terrible operation as from a 

 dream. But at that very moment when the surgeon's art was 

 emboldened by being able to disregard pain, it was arrested, 

 disconcerted, and terrified by the fatal failures which super- 

 vened after almost every operation. The words pyaemia, 

 gangrene, erysipelas, septicaemia, purulent infection, were 

 bywords in those days. 



In the face of those terrible consequences, it had been 

 thought better, about forty years ago, to discourage and even 

 to prohibit a certain operation , then recently invented and prac- 

 tised in England and America, ovariotomy, "even," said 

 Velpeau, " if the reported cures be true." In order to express 

 the terror inspired by ovariotomy, a physician went so far as 

 to say that it should be " classed among the attributes of the 

 executioner/' 



As it was supposed that the infected air of the hospitals 

 might be the cause of the invariably fatal results of that opera- 

 tion, the Assistance Publique 1 hired an isolated house in the 

 Avenue de Meudon, near Paris, a salubrious spot. In 1863, 

 ten women in succession were sent to that house ; the neigh- 

 bouring inhabitants watched those ten patients entering the 

 house, and a short time afterwards their ten coffins being taken 

 away. In their terrified ignorance they called that house the 

 House of Crime. 



Surgeons were asking themselves whether they did not 

 carry death with them, unconsciously scattering virus and 

 subtle poisons. 



1 Assistance Publique, official organization of the charitable works 

 supported by the State. [Trans.] 



