par 
_ his boy Louis should be- 
May 2, 1884.] 
jections are seldom adequately recognized and 
met. Liebig gets fuller treatment than most ; 
while Schiitzenberger, Koch, and Berthelot are 
either passed with a light touch or altogether 
ignored. Much of the story gives the impres- 
sion of a comparatively quiet and always tri- 
umphant life, flowing smoothly on, —a stream 
of brilliant scientific conquest, unrippled by 
blunders, and unchallenged, by the incredulous. 
But the initiated know that the course of true 
science, like that of true love, never runs 
smooth, though both are 
probably all the more 
interesting on that ac- 
count. 
Louis Pasteur was 
born in Déle, Dec. 27, 
1822. His father, who 
had been an honorable 
soldier, had settled 
down as a tanner, but 
he appears to have had 
an earnest desire that 
come ascholar. ‘‘ Ah!”’ 
said the father over and 
over again to the young 
boy, ‘‘if you could only 
become a professor 
some day, and a pro- 
fessor in the college of 
Arbois, I should be the 
happiest man in the 
world.’’ Little did the 
father think that his 
son would be professor — not at the humble 
Arbois, but in the Ecole normale de Paris. 
In 1842 young Pasteur was examined for 
entrance to the Ecole normale. He was ad- 
mitted, but stood fourteenth; whereupon he 
voluntarily spent a year in more careful prepa- 
ration, and then, in 1843, entered the Ecole, 
now standing fourth among the candidates. 
Chemistry had already become a passion 
with him; and under Dumas at the Sorbonne, 
and Balard at the Ecole, he had ample oppor- 
tunity for following his bent: ‘‘M. Dumas, 
with his serene gravity, . . . never letting the 
least inaccuracy slip into his words or his ex- 
periments; M. Balard, with boyish vivacity, 
. . . not always giving his words time to fol- 
low his thoughts.’’ 
Under Delafosse, Pasteur now became ab- 
sorbed in molecular physics, and finally met 
with an anomaly pointed out by Mitscherlich ; 
viz., that while the tartrates and paratartrates 
of sodium and ammonium are in nearly all re- 
spects alike, they yet act differently upon polar- 
SCIENCE. 
D47 
ized light. This anomaly fastened itself in the 
fresh mind of Pasteur, and eventually led him 
to his views on dissymmetry, which are here 
given at great length. 
While still absorbed in molecular physics, 
Pasteur was appointed assistant professor at 
Strasbourg, where he carried on the same 
studies. ‘* To interrupt these required noth- 
ing less than his marriage with Mlle. Marie 
Laurent, the daughter of the rector of the 
academy. Indeed, it is said, that, on the 
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THE WARM ROOM FOR THE CULTURE OF MICROBES. 
morning of the wedding-day, some one had to 
go to the laboratory to remind M. Pasteur that 
it was the day on which he was to be married.’’ 
The author assures us, however, that he has 
proved to be so good a husband, that Madame 
Pasteur listens to the story now with an indul- 
gent smile. 
In 1854 Pasteur was appointed dean of the 
faculty of sciences at Lille: He was then 
thirty-two years of age, and almost wildly en- 
thusiastic over molecular physics. But as a 
matter of policy, for the sake of drawing the 
attention of the neighborhood to the new fac- 
ulty, he resolved to lecture, for at least a part 
of every session, upon fermentation, because 
the making of alcohol was a prominent indus- 
try thereabouts. 
From this time on, Pasteur’s history is more 
familiar. Fermentations, spontaneous genera- 
tion, wine, vinegar, the silk-worm disease, 
splenic-fever, chicken-cholera, hydrophobia, 
and vaccination have been successively studied 
by him, and many of them much elucidated. 
