1877—1879 69 



certain puerperal infections, a microbe in the shape of a chain 

 or chaplet, which lent itself very well to culture. 



" Pasteur," wrote M. Roux, " does not hesitate to declare 

 that that microscopic organism is the most frequent cause of 

 infection in recently delivered women. One day, in a discus- 

 sion on puerperal fever at the Academy, one of his most weighty 

 colleagues was eloquently enlarging upon the causes of epi- 

 demics in lying-in hospitals ; Pasteur interrupted him from his 

 place. ' None of those things cause the epidemic ; it is the 

 nursing and medical staff who carry the microbe from an in- 

 fected woman to a healthy one.' And as the orator replied that 

 he feared that microbe would never be found, Pasteur went to 

 the blackboard and drew a diagram of the chain-like organism, 

 saying : ' There, that is what it is like ! ' His conviction was 

 so deep that he could not help expressing it forcibly. It would 

 be impossible now to picture the state of surprise and stupe- 

 faction into which he would send the students and doctors in 

 hospitals, when, with an assurance and simplicity almost dis- 

 concerting in a man who was entering a lying-in ward for the 

 first time, he criticized the appliances, and declared that all the 

 linen should be put into a sterilizing stove." 



Pasteur was not satisfied with offering advice and criticism, 

 making for himself irreconcilable enemies amongst those who 

 were more desirous of personal distinction than of the progress 

 of Science. In order the better to convince those who still 

 doubted, he affirmed that, in a badly infected patient — what he 

 usually and sorrowfully called an invaded patient — he could 

 bring the microbe into evidence by a simple pin prick on 

 the finger tip of the unhappy woman doomed to die the next 

 day. 



' And he did so," writes M. Roux. ' In spite of the tyranny 

 of medical education which weighed down the public mind, 

 some students were attracted, and came to the laboratory to 

 examine more closely those matters, which allowed of such 

 precise diagnosis and such confident prognosis." 



What struggles, what efforts, were necessary before it could 

 be instilled into every mind that a constant watch must be 

 kept in the presence of those invisible foes, ready to invade 

 the human body through the least scratch — that surgeons, 

 dressers and nurses may become causes of infection and pro- 

 pagators of death through forgetfulness ! and before the theory 

 of germs and the all powerfulnesa of microbes could be put 



u 2 



