Iv 



brilliant researches, which demonstrated the truth of the germ 

 theory of putrefaction. 



Pasteur followed with the closest attention and deepest interest 

 the developments of his ideas at the hands of the medical world, but 

 hesitated himself to undertake the responsibility of their application 

 to the study of infective diseases. " I am neither doctor nor veterin- 

 ary surgeon." he declares with modest diffidence. He was, bow- 

 ever, in reality equipped as no man before bad ever been, not only 

 with the necessary experience and training accumulated during 

 many years of devotion to original research, but also with the 

 scientific machinery necessary for the successful conduct of such 

 investigations, having brought his technique and methods to a pitch 

 of refinement and perfection which had never been equalled before. 



Although fifty-five years of age, it is perhaps not surprising then 

 to find Pasteur ultimately devoting himself with all the enthusiasm 

 of youth to the study of pathological phenomena, the first subject 

 which attracted his attention being the well known infectious cattle 

 disease called anthrax. 



We cannot here enter into the details of the history of this investi- 

 gation, but suffice it to say that the work of Bayer and Davaine, of 

 Pollender, of Delafond, of Koch, brilliant as the researches of these 

 investigators had been, had not succeeded in convincing the medical 

 and scientific world that the virus of anthrax was identical with the 

 so-called rodlets seen by Davaine in anthrax infected blood, and that 

 these rodlets, and not "the globules and plasma side by side with 

 them," constituted the real agents of the disease. The incontestable 

 proof of the truth of this new doctrine was left for Pasteur to furnish, 

 and we know that he succeeded in removing all doubt on the question 

 of the etiology of anthrax once and for all. But more than this, in con- 

 j unction with his assistants, Joubert and Chamberland, he discovered 

 another pathogenic micro-organism, the bacillus of malignant oedema, 

 an organism giving rise to a deadly septicaemia, which in its anaerobic 

 mode of life much resembles the butyric ferment which Pasteur had 

 so successfully studied in 1861. 



Having thus turned his attention to pathological researches, 

 Pasteur cast about him in all directions to obtain material, even 

 walking the hospitals and heroically overcoming his instinctive 

 antipathy to the sight of suffering and distress. But the occupation 

 of discovering pathogenic bacteria could not permanently engross 

 Pasteur's attention, and his mind's eye had long been riveted on that 

 great achievement of Jenner's which towers in royal isolation above 

 the plains of the medical history of centuries. 



" II faut immuniser contre les maladies infectieuses dont nous 

 cultivons les virus," was Pasteur's constant cry to his assistants at 

 this time. Haunted by this idea, Dr. Boux tells us how, during the 



