370 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



Academy of Medicine gave way before the desire not to leave 

 Bouley alone to lead the defensive campaign ; he started for 

 Paris. 



As his family was then at Arbois, and the doors of his flat 

 at the Ecole Normale closed, the simplest thing for Pasteur 

 was to go to the Hotel du Louvre, accompanied by a member 

 of his family. The next morning he carefully prepared his 

 speech, and, at three o'clock in the afternoon, he entered the 

 Academy of Medicine. The President, M. Hardy, welcomed 

 him in these words " Allow me, before you begin to speak, 

 to tell you that it is with great pleasure that we see you once 

 again among us, and that the Academy hopes that, now that 

 you have once more found your way to its precincts, you will 

 not forget it again." 



After isolating and rectifying the points of discussion, 

 Pasteur advised M. Peter to make a more searching inquiry 

 into the subject of anthrax vaccination, and to trust to Time, 

 the only sovereign judge. Should not the recollection of the 

 violent hostility encountered at first by Jenner put people on 

 their guard against hasty judgments? There was not one of 

 the doctors present who could not remember what had been 

 written at one time against vaccination ! ! ! 



He went on to oppose the false idea that each science should 

 restrict itself within its own limitations. ' What do I, a phy- 

 sician, says M. Peter, want with the minds of the chemist, 

 the physicist and the physiologist? 



" On hearing him speak with so much disdain of the chemists 

 and physiologists who touch upon questions of disease, you 

 might verily think that he is speaking in the name of a science 

 whose principles are founded on a rock ! Does he want proofs 

 of the slow progress of therapeutics? It is now six months 

 since, in this assembly of the greatest medical men, the 

 question was discussed whether it is better to treat typhoid 

 fever with cold lotions or with quinine, with alcohol or salicylic 

 acid, or even not to treat it at all. 



" And, when we are perhaps on. the eve of solving the ques- 

 tion of the etiology of that disease by a microbe, M. Peter 

 commits the medical blasphemy of saying, ' What do your 

 microbes matter to me? It will only be one microbe the 

 more ! ' 



Amazed that sarcasm should be levelled against new studies 

 which opened such wide horizons, he denounced the flippancy 



