206 PASTEUR 



the latter's labours resulted in the discovery 

 of a vaccine for diphtheria, which had previ- 

 ously decimated the lives of children. Then 

 croup was vanquished, just as rabies and an- 

 thrax had been before it; thousands of exist- 

 ences, and those of the most precious sort, for 

 the future of the race slumbered in them, had 

 thus been saved. Dr. Yersin, for his part, dis- 

 covered the microbe of the plague; while the 

 whole band of workers, who had come to be 

 known as "Pasteurians," each following his in- 

 dividual aptitudes and tastes, rivalled one an- 

 other in zealous service of science and human- 

 ity. 



It was at this period of researches and dis- 

 coveries, based on his doctrines and his proc- 

 esses as an experimenter, that Louis Pasteur 

 was attacked by the malady from which he 

 was destined to die. On the 1st of November, 

 1894, he had an attack of uremia, and there fol- 

 lowed a long, slow agony, lasting for months, 

 with alternations of hope and despair. Pas- 

 teur endured it with Christian resignation, for 



