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The Practitioner 2009; 253 (1724):26

Pasteur, science and medicine

15 Dec 2009

AUTHORS

By F.M. Sandwith, M.D. F.R.C.P., Gresham Professor of Physic; Lecturer, London School of Tropical Medicine; Lecturer on Tropical Diseases, St. Thomas's Hospital, etc. in 1909.

Article

Sudden illness attacked Louis Pasteur, which very nearly robbed the world of him who was destined to carry out such great work in the future, whose life has saved thousands of lives already, and whose discoveries were to open a new era to the world of science and medicine. At the age of 45 he had a stroke of apoplexy, and for many weeks lay between life and death. After a long rest he was able to return to his labours, to complete the great work of his life.

Shortly after his illness another great trial was in store for Pasteur, for to him, as to all patriotic Frenchmen, the year 1870-71 was darkened by the disastrous war with Prussia, by defeat and humiliation, besides terrible personal anxiety. His friends persuaded him to leave Paris, a half paralysed man could not fight, and would only be a useless mouth to feed, they pretended.

He went with this wife and daughter to Arbois, whence they watched the course of the war with the uttermost bitterness of feeling, whilst the son, a young student, went to the front as a volunteer. France was unprepared, while Prussia was armed and ready to the last button. The iron of humiliation of his beloved France bit into the very soul of Pasteur, and he never forgave his country's enemy.

Pasteur's patriotism was a very real factor in his life. His great wish was that France, after her crushing defeat, should regain her great place among the nations by means of scientific triumphs.

It was terrible, during the war, to see how little the French surgeons had applied the teaching of Pasteur to their own science. England had given to the world the man who was able to apply Pasteur's theory of germs to his own profession. Lister had realised as early as 1867 that living organisms and infectious germs in the air, the existence of which Pasteur had proved, were capable, not only of contaminating liquids and setting up putrefaction, but also were elements of danger, often of death, in wounds. He originated modern surgery. Sponges, drainage tubes, dressings, instruments, everything coming in contact with the wound was submitted to the most minute precaution of chemical cleanliness, and at once the surgeon became, what he now is, a saviour of life, not the executioner he had too often been in pre-antiseptic days. But during the Franco-Prussian war these truths had not yet penetrated to the ambulance tents. Hundreds and thousands of wounded succumbed, not to their original wound, or to the operation, but on the 8th or 9th day to gangrene or erysipelas, diseases introduced into the wound by the dust in the air, by the dressings, or even by the surgeon's hands.

The death of his children, the loss of the many brave young heroes in the ambulance tents during the war, the epidemics he had witnessed, all this human suffering weighed upon him and determined him to do his utmost to solve the problems which medical men, working alone, seemed unable to fathom; but  he was met with a torrent of abuse and opposition. The doctors of the day, with a few notable exceptions resented the invasion of what they considered their special domain, by a mere chemist, who tried to explain matters they did not understand by experimental proof. Pasteur was anxious to possess the status which would allow him to speak with greater authority on medical matters, and he accepted in 1873 the post of free Associate of the Academy of Medicine, which enabled him to attend the meetings, which he faithfully did for many years. His associates were men mostly opposed to his doctrines, men who vigorously denounced in grandiloquent speeches the theory of bacterial origin, men who would not or could not open their eyes to what experimental research was bringing to light. But Pasteur, invariably patient when ignorance did not arise from prejudice, denounced those speakers who clung so tenaciously to worn-out theories. "The relationship is certain, indisputable," he cried, "between the disease and the presence of organisms."

But although he had many opponents, he had also many faithful and devoted followers, the greatest scientists in England, Russia, Germany, and France. Let me here quote a letter written by Lister to Pasteur. Here he modestly passes on to the French scientist the praise given to him:

 

"...Allow me to take this opportunity to tender you my most cordial thanks for having, by your brilliant researches, demonstrated to me the truth of the germ theory of putrefaction, and thus furnished me with the principle upon which alone the antiseptic system can be carried out. Should you at any time visit Edinburgh, it would, I believe, give you sincere gratification to see at our hospital how largely mankind is being benefited by your labours. I need hardly add that it would afford me the highest gratification to show you how greatly surgery is indebted to you. Forgive the freedom with which a common love of science inspires me, and believe me, with profound respect,

Yours very sincerely,

Joseph Lister"