THE MIGHTY MICROBE HUNTER

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17109, 2 April 1921, Page 13

THE MIGHTY MICROBE HUNTER

PASTEUB'S VICTORIES.

IBv Dr Han-v. Roberts, in "John o' 1 ' London's Weekly.")

It is impossible to. look at a portrait of Pasteur without being struck by its many points of resem&lauce to tti* . head of Charles Darwin. Onfe notes the same high, prominent brow, the same thick nose, the Baine keen, _eo£er, but persistent and serious, almost grave,, look, all the very opposite of tho char-. acteristics of the fanatic, the firebrand, tho revolutionary. Yet if ever there were revolutionists they wero. Pastoui and Darwin. . There was very much in, common in the minds, and methods ot these two supw-men. Louis Pnsteur was born of petit-bour-geois paients in 1822, and ho died twenty-five years ago. His whole adult life seems to have been occupied in tno realm of pure science each of whica has enormously changed, often to the point of reversal, some branch or human practice or economic activity. 10 the Tvine-makers, the vino-growers, the silkworm farmers, the stock-breeders, and finally to the physicians and surgeons, he brought severally the moßti valuable and tho most significant discoveries that any one of thorn, had encountered for centuries. , . Ho was primarily a chemist, an» Jt. was the methods of modern chemistry that he introduced into biology, cially into physiology and -pathology. Though his discoveries seem so fftT apart, and wore practically related to such widely different human activities, vet there is a real continuity linking them all together. His anjthrax arid, rabies discoveries are but logical continuation of his early experiments with the tartrates. It is in. connexion with what we now -know as diseases, and the processes of fermentation brought the act low forms of animal and v.egetabl<Mo, that Pasteur's' name is most widely Tho education of doctors has long been almost free from, any taint of science or philosophy. \" s been taught as a mechanfcal craft, apfl medicine as a kind of Jesuitry, itfence the utterly unscientific habit of mind and the surprising lack of literary and philosophic culture' which characterises so many exponents of tho healing art. The doctrines of the early had some kind of cpnnexion,with philosophy. Until this influence of Pastern , began to operate, modern physicianxreprlsented Very little advance, on the seventeenth contury herbabsts. Incomplete and subject to modification and even oorrection, as many ot Pasteup conclusions \ h«v e .already proved to he, to main discoveries, and. most of the 1 general rules and. principles that follow from them, are m essence certain of a permanent position. TV hen. one has realised the soft of mind he liad and the code hy which it worked and has journeye<l in imagination witlh it Si> far as those early discoveries concerning the process of alcoholic fomentation, and the living dust of the air, one is conscious of a kind of inevitability m all the subsequent discoveries, even those which further exponments have shown to be fallacious. There is a popular, though mistaken, notion that the discoveries of a Pasteur or of a Darwin are the'result and.natural reward of their patience and perseverance. The world is full of patient and persevering people who attain to nothing but the exasperation of their _rriend3 and the ridicule of /tiwir enemies. -.lt >is the capacity to arrest the passing flash which marks the great discoverer arid the great thinker. . To Pasteur, -almost entirely, is_ due the conception'ot the bacterial origin of specific diseases and of the cellular) strife which mprks the reaction of the. attacked individual to these- morbiferous invaders. At first Pastour assumed a very ehnplo explanation of tho part played by bacteria, in disease. He believed that the same specific bacteria would always produce tho same specific results. He came to learn that "the resistance of each human being to micro* bial infection is a question of species, a question of individuals, a question of place arid of timOj a question of qualti tity of, inoculating material, and a-ques-tion of temperature." He established the truth tfcat the fight the instruments of disease and tho body attacked was, at any rate so far as weapdnaare concerned, a matter of ghrsico--1 chemical agencies. • Considerable development ha 3 taken' ; place since Pasteur's di>ath inJbnr knowledge of physiology, especially in that department known as bio-chemistry. But it is sot too much to say that practically all this development is based on j the workings of the rare mind of Louis I Pastenr.

So complete has been his victory, and *&o generally accepted and commonplace have 3iis doctrines become, thai we are apt to forget the difficulties with which Pasteur had >to contend and the prejudices which it Heeded all his couraae to overcome. ' Duckrax relates how one day, in a discussion on puerperal fever at tite Academy of Medicine, one of the most renowned physicians delivered an eloquent dissertation on the causes of epidemics in the maternity hospitals. Pastenr, from Iris pfctce in the »uai«nce, interrupted him: "The cause of tho epidemic is nothing of land. It is the doctor and his staff who carry thd microbe from the sicb woman to the healthy woman." The speaker, expressed his confidence .that no one would ever find the microbe. Pasteur' darted to the blackboard and drew ft, shouting : "There is its picture." This story throws a very helpful light both on Pas-, tour's character and on. his success.

Owiag to lack of shipping, approximately '4,000,000 feet of timber is on the skids of the West Coast mills awaitrinj: shipment. Tlu» warit of shaping fays uie* "Greyinouth Star"> is hampering, the m3i» considerafcly. ,' k Jcny roan can sheep farm on paper," said 1 a witness in tlie Supremo Court as Gisbaroe, "but it takes-a good m*B t* put hj« theory into practice, and the chances aro he would soon find himself in the bankruptcy court."