127 



Emile Duchaux's Pasteur: The History of a Mind* 



A number of good biographies of Pasteur have famiHarized 

 English readers with his Hfe and character. Here, however, 

 another phase of his personahty is presented — his mental life, 

 written by his student and co-worker Duclaux. The author's 

 purpose, didactic rather than purely biographical, has been to 

 trace the working of Pasteur's mind in his conflicts w^ith old 

 prejudices and his pioneer development of new concepts; more 

 particularly to show his mode of clear deductive reasoning from 

 facts. 



The book appears to have been almost unknown to American 

 and English workers, for whom it has been translated b^^ Smith 

 and Hedges, with a number of interesting additions to the 

 original. The personality of Duclaux, his life and works are 

 described in a vivid introduction by the senior translator, w^ho 

 has also appended a series of brief, characterizing word portraits 

 of persons referred to in the text, with a comprehensive index not 

 present in the original. An unusually complete collection of 

 photographs of Pasteur at various stages of his career has been 

 added. 



The book is divided into eight parts, and takes up Pasteur's 

 studies on crystallography, fermentation, spontaneous generation, 

 silkworm diseases, the etiology of microbial diseases, and his 

 development of the concepts of viruses, vaccines and immunity. 

 In each subject Duclaux first gives the reader a clear per- 

 spective of the state of the various current ideas and facts then 

 known, and then discusses Pasteur's own researches and con- 

 cepts — derived experimentally — and the discoveries to which 

 they led. The controversies and discussions with contemporary 

 workers are written in a colloquial, readable style that has been 

 well retained in the translation. The reader is brought directly 

 into the atmosphere of the time — its vague ideas and gropings 

 on the threshold of a new* science, which we can scarcely realize 

 in our present development of bacteriology. 



Through his close association with Pasteur, Duclaux was 



* Translated by Envin F. Smith and Florence Hedges. W. B. Saunders Com- 

 pany, Philadelphia. 



