920 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1096 



have all been indirect influences on human 

 well-being and happiness, and with the 

 good they brought much evil was mixed. 

 Thus, the factory system, the congestion 

 of population, and the noise and turmoil 

 of city life are grave evils accompanying 

 the advantages which applied physics and 

 chemistry have created and diffused. The 

 fruits of the biological sciences — botany, 

 zoology, physiology and biochemistry, ap- 

 plied to curative medicine and surgery and 

 to preventive medicine and sanitation — 

 have been direct contributions to human 

 welfare; because they have provided de- 

 fenses against disease, premature death, 

 and individual and family distress and 

 suffering. The beneficent applications of 

 biological science, unlike most of the large 

 results of applied chemistry and physics, 

 take effect in the field of human affections 

 and family experiences, make life less 

 anxious and more enjoyable for multi- 

 tudes of human beings, mitigate or abolish 

 ancient agonies and dreads of the race, and 

 promise for it a happier future. 



The career of Pasteur illustrates ad- 

 mirably the passing of the center of benef- 

 icent scientific research from chemistry 

 and physics to biological science. Pas- 

 teur's first researches were crystallograph- 

 ic; whence he passed to the study of 

 molecular dissymmetry, the material of his 

 researches being, however, organic. He 

 was first professor of physics and then pro- 

 fessor of chemistry. His interest in cer- 

 tain tartrates led him naturally, though 

 partly by accident, to a study of fermenta- 

 tion. His zealous discharge of his duties 

 as Dean of a Faculty of Sciences at Lille, 

 a manufacturing center, led to his study 

 of beet-root juice, fermented in order to 

 produce alcohol. Thereafter Pasteur's re- 

 searches were biological, although he had 

 had no training as either naturalist or 

 physician. He began at the foundation by 



disproving the doctrine of spontaneous 

 generation. One of his earliest conclusions 

 was that "gases, fluids, electricity, mag- 

 netism, ozone, things known or things oc- 

 cult, there is nothing in the air that is con- 

 ditional to life except the germs it carries." 

 Of his earliest results from experiments on 

 admitting pure air to flasks containing pu- 

 trescible infusions he wrote : 



It seems to me that it can be afiLrmed that the 

 dusts suspended in atmospheric air are the exclu- 

 sive origin, the necessary condition of life in in- 

 fusions; 



and in the same paper he made the preg- 

 nant remark : 



What would he most desirable would be to push 

 those studies far enough to prepare the road for 

 serious research into the region of various dis- 

 eases. 



He lived to push his studies into the 

 causes of the silk-worm disease, of a 

 cholera which came from Egypt into 

 Prance, of the plant diseases affecting the 

 manufacture of wine and of beer, of the 

 splenic fever, of the chicken-cholera, and 

 of rabies; and he and his followers in- 

 vented successful treatment for those dis- 

 eases, and for the treatment of typhoid 

 fever and diphtheria. The germ and para- 

 site theory of disease led the way in serum 

 therapy, and established both the philoso- 

 phy and the practise of the new medicine 

 and surgery of the past thirty-five years. 

 Starting with a sound knowledge of chem- 

 istry and physics, and having early ac- 

 quired a habit of utmost accuracy in ob- 

 serving and reasoning, Pasteur passed over 

 into biological science by the time he was 

 thirty-two years of age, and became the 

 most suggestive and productive inventor 

 and promoter in applied biology that has 

 ever lived. His career illustrates con- 

 spicuously the general truth that the 

 sciences most serviceable to mankind dur- 

 ing the past sixty years have been the bio- 

 logical sciences. In a letter to his father in 



