Pasteur the Great

This is the year of Louis Pasteur. Although the exact date of his birth was December 27, 1822, celebrations of the centenary have been going on in all parts of the civilized world for many months, and will continue throughout 1923, culminating in a great international exposition of hygiene at Strasbourg this summer. The medical and scientific press of every country is full of paeans of laudation. It is becoming increasingly clear that Pasteur's influence on science has been greater than that of any other man of the 19th or 20th centuries, with the sole exception of Charles Darwin.

The cottage at Dole, in the Vosges, where Pasteur was born, the son of a poor tanner, has been purchased for 40,000 francs by John D. Rockefeller and others as a centenary gift to the people of the commune. It will be remodeled by the French into a public museum.

Henry Miller's production of Sacha Guitry's play, Pasteur, brought his personality vividly before the American public. [But the American public failed to support it, and the inspiring production lasted only two weeks.] Few who have not made a study of the man's life realize the universality of his genius or the variety of his contributions to medicine and industry. A brief catalog of them includes at least the following: 1.) He determined the symmetry and asymmetry of crystals by rotation of light.

2.) He discovered the true nature of fermentation as a life process and devised practical methods of preventing it in wine, milk, etc., by heat (pasteurization).

3.) He gave the deathblow to the theory of spontaneous generation of disease by the first clear statement of the modern microbic theory.

4.) He cultivated anaerobic organisms, i.e., germs which live without air.

5.) He saved the silk industry by solving the problem of silk worm dis- ease.

6.) He established the theory of immunity by attenuated viruses, i.e., the use of small doses of a disease-bearing organism to forestall acute cases of the disease.

7.) He successfully combatted cattle anthrax and chicken cholera by vaccination.

8.) He revolutionized surgery and obstetrics by aseptic methods, inspiring the work of Joseph Lister.

9.) He devised the preventive treatment for human rabies (hydro- phobia).

10.) He founded a research institution of world-wide influence, the Pasteur Institute of Paris.