STUDIES OF 1868, 1869, 1870 179 



He knew well that a process of silkworm breeding 

 which clashed with interests, which transformed com- 

 mercial or industrial practices, could not make its way 

 without arousing anger, without stirring up criticisms, 

 the more bitter because they were not disinterested. 

 He showed himself less and less sensitive to these attacks 

 the surer he became of his facts, and no contradiction, 

 even though it came from the Silk Commission of Lyons 

 ever stirred him as much as those which he was obliged 

 to encounter later in connection with his studies on 

 fermentation or researches on anthrax and human rabies. 

 Yet, as the diffusion of the method had become a practical 

 question, he did not disdain to become a silkworm 

 breeder, and he went voluntarily to preside at the in- 

 stallation of his process in the nurseries of the growers in 

 the lower Alps or the Eastern Pyrenees, who invoked 

 his aid. 



It was in the intervals of this practical apostolate 

 that he returned to his investigations on the malady 

 of the morts-flats, which, as he studied it, showed itself 

 to be more complicated than the corpuscular disease 

 and more nearly related to human diseases. This re- 

 lation was at the time still very vague in the mind of 

 Pasteur, who had not studied medicine, and who had, 

 furthermore, the faculty almost necessary, it seems, to 

 men of his temper, of isolating themselves in what they 

 do, and of working so much the better the less they look 

 out of the window. But as these studies of Pasteur 

 had brought him into the domain of pathology, had 

 led him to examine a host of new problems, and had had 

 clearly a reflex action on his later discoveries, perhaps 

 it is well to state the point which he had reached in 1878, 

 after 10 years of study, which was intermittent and 

 interrupted by other pieces of work. It was just before, 

 or at the beginning of his researches on anthrax, and the 



