1882—1884 137 



adversaries and to make of this assembly a tribunal of judges. 

 Except for a few diplomats who at the first words exchanged 

 anxious looks at the idea of possible polemics, Frenchmen felt 

 happy at being better represented than any other nation. Men 

 eagerly pointed out to each other Dr. Koch, twenty-one years 

 younger than Pasteur, who sat on one of the benches, listening, 

 with impassive eyes behind his gold spectacles. 



Pasteur analysed all the work he had done with the collabora- 

 tion of MM. Chamberland, Eoux, and Thuillier. He made 

 clear to the most ignorant among his hearers his ingenious 

 experiments either to obtain, preserve or modify the virulence 

 of certain microbes. " It cannot be doubted," he said, " that 

 we possess a general method of attenuation. . . . The 

 general principles are found, and it cannot be disbelieved that 

 the future of those researches is rich with the greatest hopes. 

 But, however obvious a demonstrated truth may be, it has not 

 always the privilege of being easily accepted. I have met in 

 France and elsewhere with some obstinate contradictors. 

 . . . Allow me to choose amongst them the one whose per- 

 sonal merit gives him the greatest claims to our attention, I 

 mean Dr Koch, of Berlin." 



Pasteur then summed up the various criticisms which had 

 appeared in the Record of the Works of the German Sanitary 

 Office. "Perhaps there may be some persons in this 

 assembly," he went on, "who share the opinions of my con- 

 tradictors. They will allow me to invite them to speak ; I 

 should be happy to answer them." 

 ij/ Koch, mounting the platform, declined to discuss the subject, 

 preferring, he said, to make answer in writing later on. Pasteur 

 was disappointed; he would have wished the Congress, or at 

 least a Commission designated by Koch, to decide on the 

 experiments. He resigned himself to wait. On the following 

 days, as the members of the Congress saw him attending 

 meetings on general hygiene, school hygiene, and veterinary 

 hygiene, they hardly recognized in the simple, attentive man, 

 anxious for instruction, the man who had defied his adversary. 

 Outside the arena, Pasteur became again the most modest of 

 men, never allowing himself to criticize what he had not 

 thoroughly studied. But, when sure of his facts, he showed 

 himself full of a violent passion, the passion of truth ■ when 

 truth had triumphed, he preserved not the least bitterness of 

 former struggles.^ 



