754 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 49. 



the new faculty of science just created then 

 by the French government. As soon as 

 installed in his new position he began the 

 work which has given him his world wide 

 reputation — his study of the ferments. He 

 was then thirty-two years of age, and had 

 never studied physiology, anatomy or bi- 

 ology, and notwithstanding the difficulties 

 inherent to such a change in the direction 

 of his researches, leaving the physical and 

 chemical molecular works, he turned ab- 

 ruptly to physiology, against the advices of 

 his friends and patrons, Biot and Dumas. 



Pasteur began his studies on ferments 

 with milk, finding there bacteria so small 

 that their diameter was only the thous- 

 and part of a millimetre. Then he took 

 the transformation from wine into vine- 

 gar; when suddenly he was confronted by 

 a very sharp opposition brought up by 

 Felix A. Pouchet, of Rouen, on the cxuestion 

 of spontaneous generation. Pasteur saw at 

 once that the origin of microbes was not to 

 be eluded any longer, and without hesita- 

 tion he began a series of observations re- 

 quii-ing the greatest care, ability and keen 

 attention which had perhaps ever been 

 given before in laboratories. Every scien- 

 tific friend of Pasteur tried to dissuade him 

 from such researches, except one, the great 

 crystallographer, M. de Senarmont, who had 

 an absolute confidence in the extraordinary 

 ability of Pasteur as an experimentator. 

 The great success achieved by Pasteur has 

 put now to rest forever the question of spon- 

 taneous generation, which broke the first 

 ring in the chain of the ' Origin of Species ' 

 of Darwin. It is curious that neither Dar- 

 win nor any of his followers had ever tried 

 to oppose Pasteur ; not but that opponents 

 in England made, like Pouchet, objections 

 and presented observations which seemed 

 to break Pasteur's experiments; but little 

 by little all opponents left the field, and 

 John Tyndall did not hesitate to accept and 

 uphold Pasteur's views. 



The studies on wine, which followed 

 closely those on vinegar, required a gi-eat 

 deal more research, and the volume pub- 

 lished by Pasteur : ' Etudes sur le vin, ses 

 maladies etc ' in 1866, is and will remain the 

 standard work. The amount of money 

 saved by Pasteur's method of treating dis- 

 eased wine may be counted by millions and 

 millions of francs ; for it is used not only 

 in France but in every wine growing coun- 

 try. 



The French government, justly desirous 

 to put an end, if possible, to a sort of pest 

 among the silkworms which destroyed al- 

 most all the fortunes of the southern part 

 of France devoted to that industrj^, asked 

 Pasteur to go there and study the sickness 

 of the silkworms. Dumas, the chemist, 

 told the Emperor Napoleon III., "if any 

 body can do anything about it, it is Pas- 

 teur !" At first Pasteur was unwilling to 

 abandon his work on ferments, which had 

 already given such great result ; and it was 

 only to the pressing solicitation of Dumas, 

 who was from a district of Languedoc, most 

 aflFected and almost totally ruined by the 

 pest on silkworms, that Pasteur yielded at 

 last. On taking leave of me, he said : " I 

 do not know, what I am going to find ; it 

 is la bouteille a Vencre !" 



Pasteur worked steadily during five years 

 at the sUkworms, with the splendid result 

 of finding a practical way to stop the pest ; 

 and now the silk industry of France, Italy 

 and other European countries engaged in 

 producing silk is more prosperous than it 

 ever was before the epidemic. 



In the two volumes : ' Etudes sur la 

 maladie des Vers a Sole,' 1870, Pasteur has 

 given to the world all his researches and 

 remedies. It is in Vol. 1, p. 99, that we 

 read the following prophetic sentence, of 

 which his subsequent discoveries have given 

 such a splendid confirmation : ' II est 

 au pouvoir des hommes,' saj's he, ' de faire 

 disparaitre de la surface du globe les 



