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ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 5 
Dr. Louis Pastrur.—By the death of Pasteur not only has 
France lost the greatest of her citizens, but the world has lost 
one of its greatest scientific discoverers and benefactors. He 
died at his country house near St. Cloud, on September 29, 1895, 
at the age of seventy-three. He was born at Dole in the Jura. 
His father was a tanner, who in his earlier days had served with 
distinction as a soldier. 
Pasteur commenced his studies at the Communal College, and 
thence proceeded to the College of Besangon and to the Ecole 
Normale, studying specially chemistry and molecular physics, 
particularly in relation to the formation of crystals. In 1847 he 
took his degree of. Doctor of Science, and later was appointed 
Professor of Chemical Physics in the University of Strassburg. 
In 1854 he was made Dean of the Faculty of Sciences at Lille and 
it was there that he commenced his celebrated researches on 
fermentation, which proved that fermentation and putrefaction 
were distinctly due to the action of micro-organisms on organic 
or inorganic compounds. These researches led him to investigate 
the diseases of the silk-worm. According to the account published 
in Nature, October 3rd, 1895, p. 551, “for four years he spent 
several months of each year in tracing the germs of the “febrine” 
disease through the various stages of development of the worm, 
egg, larva, chrysalis, and moth. He found what he described as 
“corpuscles,” which he indicated were the contagious elements of 
the disease. These were taken up from the mulberry leaves on 
which they had previously been deposited by diseased moths ; 
some of the worms died, but others went on to the chrysalis and 
even to the moth stage, still affected by these “ corpuscles,” and 
the eggs laid by these moths were also found to contain them. 
He was convinced that the only way was to breed from moths 
not affected by the disease and to this end he invented the plan 
which has been universally adopted, and has restored a source of 
wealth to the silk districts : each female moth, when ready to lay 
eggs, is placed on a separate piece of linen, on which it may lay 
them all; after it has laid them and has died, it is dried and then 
