A WORLD'S BENEFACTOR

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 195, 26 November 1910, Page 9

A WORLD'S BENEFACTOR

LOUIS PA9TEUR. There are more than sixty Pasteur Institutes; but I am thinking of the' Paris Institute. At the end of one ol j its long corridors, down a few steps,! is the Tittle chapel where Pasteur lies. Of all the happy memories of sight-see-ing, none is clearer to me than th« first \ sight of Pasteur's grave. For I had j spent the morning in the rooms and I annexes of the Institute, among the latest facts and theories of pathology, hiding my want of understanding undei my want of conversational French; then had come two hours' interval, enough' for a look into the Louvre and a mouth- j ful of food: then back to the Institute,! to hear a lecture and to see the chapel. From the work of the place, done in the spirit of the Master, and to his honour, ypu go straight $9 him. Where he worked, there he rest*. Wall?, pavement, and low-vaulted roof, jbhjtf HiMi* enamel, jmfry inch ef it,; il

Rome or Rovenna. On its walls of rare marbles are the names of his great discoveries. In the vault over his grave are four great white angels, Faith, Hope, Charity, and Science. From time to time Mass is said in the chapel: th* altar is white marble. To me, who remember him, saw him, heard him talk, shook hands with him, ' all the adornments round his grave were not sufficient, and the half was not told me. For he was, it seems to me, the most perfect man who has ever entered the kingdom of Science. His devotion to home, his gentleness, humility, faith, patriotism, honour, shine like stars. And if I take, so far as I can, which is not far, his scientific life alone, apart from his spiritual life. I recognise in it also the same clear evidence of inspiration. For he is drawn or led forward, as it were according to a carefully devised scheme, from each discovery to the next. First, mathematics: the pupilteacher's board and lodging and twelve pounds a year at the College of Besancon. Then chemistry, and the run of the great Ecole Normale, where he could think and make experiments and learn without ceasing; and here the voices begin to call him, as they called to Joan of Are, to help France, and not only France did he help. Then he is advanced, from the study of crystalline forms, to the study of ferments; and the news that a young chemist in Paris has discovered the ferment of sour milk reaches a young surgeon in Glasgow called Joseph Lister, and sets him thinking hard. Then come the years of the Professorship at Lille, all among breweries and wine factories and distilleries. And here is Pasteur, a quiet, serious, patient little gentleman with a mierosope, teaching brewers and wine-makers and distillers how to conduct their proper affairs. He gives a course oi lectures to the vinegar-makers of Orleans on the whole art of making vinegar; he shows the wine-merchants how to keep their rough wines from turning; he visits a huge London brewery, and confounds the establishment, demonstrating to them under the microscope their yeast infected by evil germs. It was of such work that Huxley said that Pasteur had saved France enough to pay the indemnity of the Franco-German War. Then came his wonderful study of the disease of silkworms, whereby he restored prosperity to the silk trade of France. He, when he went to Alais to study pebrine and flacherie among the worms, feared that ho was going outside the lines of his work. It took a lot of persuasion to get him to leave his researches into ferments. "Remember," he said, "that I've never so much as touched a silkworm." Yet, in the leading of his life, nothing is plainer now than the profound influence of Alais on all his later discoveries. He was brought, through 1865-70, from the study of fermentation to the study of infective diseases; from the changes in beer to the changes in blood; and, in the facts of pebrine ravaging the worms, he saw, in miniature, the facts of erysipelas and pyoemia ravaging the inmates of an illkept hospital. It is no wonder that in his later life he used to commend to his students, as a model of good work, his "Etudes sur les Maladies des Vers a Soie." Then, close on the final proof and triumph of the work begun at Alais, came the Franco-German War. In that one of the hundred best books, ValleryRadot's Life of Pasteur, we read the story of his misery. It is nothing to say that the War nearly broke his heart. But it broke neither his faith nor the straight line of his work. Only, a sort of rage possessed him, to redeem and console France by working for her. "Henceforth," he said, "every one of my books shall have written on it these words, Revenge, revenge, revenge." And this was his revenge, to set the name or France in the honours list of Science higher than ever; to give the rest of his life to her service, and to wear himself out for her sake. Therefore, as soon as the war and the Commune were passed away, he took in hand those amazing studies of preventive medicine, which have brought more blessings to mankind and to animals than the world can reckon, nor yet sees any sign of the end of them. As lie had been able, with microscope and flask ana little tubes of yeast, to teach all countries how to treat the maladies of wines and beers, so, with microscope and flasks and little tubes of germs, he was able to teach all hospitals the principles ol modern surgery, and the principles of immunity against infective diseases. See him going the round of a great Paris hospital, explaining and enforcing, as a new discovery, the aseptic method; see him, in a debate at the French Academy of Medicine, sweeping away, with half-a-dozen words and a sketch on a blackboard, half-a-century of medical theories. He had revolutionised brewing; he had saved the silk trade; now he was revolutionising medicine. For, out of it all, out of his magnificent studies of fowl-cholera, anthrax, . osteo-myelitis, and puerp'eral fever, came this power, not dreamed of before him, ' the power to standardise this or that disease; to have its germs growing in a test-tube, and to have them of a definite strength; to graduate them, in a regular ' series, from non-virulence to full virulence; to stock a disease in all shades) of strength; and to use these bottled poisons, in their proper order, to immunise men or animals against the natural disease. Thus, at last, when he had re-created pathology, and had accomplished more for doctors than whole ages »f their work could accomplish, he was led to his last appointed diseovery, the preventive treatment against rabies.

That was in 1885; and, about 1890, he began to grow old. He had worked so hard, and had made his way, with infinfte patience, against so much opposition, eome of it intelligent enough, some of it foolish past all telling. Henceforth, he must begin to let his work pass into the hands of younger men. Let it pass? Why, it had passed already into the hands of all men. It was become part of the doctor's daily practice, part of the routine of every hospital, part of the method of medical sciences, part of all nursing, part of all housekeeping, part of all farming, par? of all brewing. There is no country on earth which is not the richer and the happier because of him. Then came enfeeblement. and a year ot quiet resignation; and, in September, 1805. his death. It is recorded of him that he died holding the crucifix in one hand, and in the other his wife's hand. Here was a life, within the limits 01 ; humanity, well-nigh perfect. He worked | ! incessantly; he went through poverty, bereavement, ill-health, opposition; he! ! lived to see his doctrines current over all the world, his facts enthroned, his; j methods applied to a thousand affairs' jof manufacture and agriculture, his' | science put in practice by nil doctors l and surgeons, his name praised and ! blessed bv mankind; and the very aniI mals, if they could speak, would say the ' same. G«nius; that is the only word. i When genius does come to earth, which I is not so often as some clever people | think, it chooses now and again strange | tabernacles; But here was a man whose spiritual life was *no lesß admirable j than his scientific life. In brief, nothing is too good to say of him; and the decI orations of his grave, once you know his work, are poor, when you think what he , was and what he did. Still, it is w^ll that he should lie close to the worjc of ) the Institute, close to Jhe heart of fcaris, ; -with laith, WoperJsr>, %M Scieice wktehiug dverli&n.-%; & WndonftJeo♦«*w. ■ .... .. W. ■■jrw>;t>-■£,w^.i