LOUIS PASTEUR 



there were some benighted people who would not do 

 the things necessary to produce good health, even if 

 knowledge of how to do them were available. 



When Pasteur's yeast and spontaneous generation 

 studies were almost completed, he was urged to go to 

 southern France to try to discover why the silk worms 

 were sick. He tried to decline saying: "I have never 

 touched a silk worm in my life." Why did people urge 

 Pasteur to do this ? Why didn't they call a bacteriolo- 

 gist or a student of insect diseases? At that time there 

 were no bacteriologists because there was no bacteriol- 

 ogy. Of course there were bacteria, but since no one 

 then knew the laws of bacteria, there was no bac- 

 teriology. Likewise there was no science of insect 

 diseases, or science of diseases of men as we now under- 

 stand those terms. 



For many years the silk industry of France had suf- 

 fered. Often the worms became sick and died, or if 

 they lived, they produced poor cocoons. Poor cocoons, 

 or no cocoons, mean reduction or loss of the desired 

 silk, which means poorer food for the people, poorer 

 education for their children, and all the poorer things 

 which accompany reduction or loss of a fundamental in- 

 dustry. So important was the silk industry in southern 

 France, and so great the anxiety about the health of the 

 silkworms, that one writer says the workers when meet- 

 ing would salute one another by saying: "Good morn- 

 ing! How are the silkworms this morning?" What 

 they desired was good healthy adult silk moths which 

 laid good moth eggs; that these eggs should hatch into 

 worms which might feed and grow healthily upon their 



