Free Lance of Science

5901y^ 92M Louis Pastettr OCT : Books by Rene J. Dubos The Bacterial Cell Bacterial and Mycotic Infections of Man Louis Pasteur FREE LANCE OF SCIENCE By Rene and Jean Dubos The White Plague TUBERCULOSIS, MAN AND SOCIETY Louis Pasteur FREE LANCE OF SCIENCE r s s s s Louis Pasteur $ \ s FREE LANCE OF SCIENCE s s s s by RENE J. D U B S s s \ I I s \ I s With Illustrations s s $ s Little, Brown and Company Boston I s COPYRIGHT 1950, BY RENE J. DUBOS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS THEREOF IN ANY FORM Sixth Printing "Published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To Jean 5901092 Contents i The Wonderful Century 3 H The Legend of Pasteur 21 m Pasteur in Action 58 . iv From Crystals to Life 90 v The Domestication of Microbial Life 116 vi Spontaneous Generation and the Role of Germs in * the Economy of Nature 159 vn The Biochemical Unity of Life 188 * vm The Diseases of Silkworms 209 - ix The Germ Theory of Disease 233 x Mechanisms of Contagion and Disease 267 xi Medicine, Public Health and the Germ Theory 292 xn Immunity and Vaccination 317 xin Mechanisms of Discoveries 359 xrv Beyond Experimental Science 385 Events of Pasteur s Life Arranged in Chronological Order 401 Bibliography 405 Index 409 Illustrations The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to PROFESSOR PASTEUB VALLERY-RABOT and to DOCTOR HENREETXE NOUFFLABD for their help in securing photo- graphs of the portraits reproduced in this book. Monsieur Jean Joseph Pasteur; Madame Jean Joseph Pasteur. Pastel drawings of his father and mother made by Pasteur at the age of fifteen 26 Pasteur at the age of thirty, professor at the University of Strasbourg 38 Marie Laurent a few years before her marriage to Pasteur 38 Pasteur, student at the Ecole Normale. Drawing made by Labayle from a daguerreotype 96 Charles Chappuis, schoolmate and lifelong confidant of Pasteur. Drawing by Pasteur 96 Jean Baptiste Dumas 102 Jean Baptiste Biot 102 Pasteur (approximately sixty-seven years old) 168 Antoine J6r6me Balard 168 Xii ILLUSTRATIONS at Pasteur (approximately forty-five years old) Pont Gisquet, his 228 dictating a scientific paper to wife Pasteur and Pierre Bertin-Mourot 370 Pasteur in his laboratory of the Ecole Normale. Reproduced from the Journal Illustre, March SO, 1884 370 Louis Pasteur FREE LANCE OF SCIENCE CHAPTER I The W'ondei^Hi Century Although the roads to human power and to human knowledge lie close together, and are nearly the same, nevertheless ... it is safer to begin and raise the sciences from those foundations which have relation to practice, and to let the active part itself be as the seal which prints and determines the con- templative counterpart. FRANCOS BACON Louis PASTEUR was born on December 27, 1822, at Dole in the eastern part o France, where his father owned and managed a small tannery. When he died on September 28, 1895, at Ville- neuve FEtang near Paris, his name had already become legendary as that of the hero who had used science to master nature for the benefit of mankind. Many fields had been opened or enriched by his labors: the structure of the chemical molecule; the mecha- nism of fermentation; the role played by microorganisms in the economy of matter, in technology, in disease; the theory and practice of immunization; the policy of public hygiene. But the importance of his discoveries is not in itself sufficient to account for his immense fame. Among Pasteur's contemporaries, several equaled and a few surpassed him in scientific achievement, yet of him only was it said that "he was the most perfect man who has ever entered the kingdom of science/* For Pasteur's name evokes not only the memory of a great scientist, but also that of a crusader who devoted his life to the welfare of man. There were many traits in Pasteur's personality which enor- mously magnified the importance of his scientific contributions to 4 LOUIS PASTEUR of the of his environ- society. His intense awareness problems his ment, his eagerness to participate in their solution, passionate desire to convince his opponents, his indefatigable vigor and skill as his in controversy all these characteristics were as important the experimental genius in making him not only the arm but also science. voice, and finally the symbol, of triumphant the In reality, Pasteur achieved this great popular success by sacrifice of Egher ambitions7As a young man, he had planned to the devote his life to the study of lofty theoretical problems: fundamental structure of matter and the origin of life; but instead he soon began to devote more and more time to practical matters asking of nature questions relevant to the immediate preoccupations of his time. Although he was unquestionably one of the greatest experi- menters who ever lived, he did not create a new scientific philosophy as had Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier and the other men of genius that he so desired to emulate. Nevertheless, Pasteur kept to the end his youthful hope of gaming, through science, an insight into the problems of natural philosophy and in most of his writings, broad chemical and physiological theories are propounded side by side with details for the practical application of his discoveries. Nurtured in the classical tradition of the French Enlightenment, he worshiped the experimental method as the oracle which would reveal to man the universal laws of the physical world; as a child of the nineteenth century, on the other hand, he responded to the impact of the astonishing power dis- played by the exact sciences in solving the technical problems of industrial civilization. Indeed, he symbolizes the position reached by science in 1850, when experimental technology was replacing natural philosophy in the preoccupations of most scientific men. Theory and practice fought to rule Pasteur's life, as they did to control his times. Until the nineteenth century, society had demanded little from the man of science less than from the artist, who, according to the of the mood time, was expected to illustrate the Holy Scrip- tures, or to depict the sumptuous life of Pompeii or of Venice, THE WONDERFUL CENTURY 5 or the bourgeois atmosphere of Flanders, or the pomp of Louis XIV. From the earliest times, true enough, mathematicians and physicists had served governments and princes as architects had built for them tombs and palaces, ramparts and catapults, harbors, ships, canals and roads while most naturalists, alche- mists and chemists had been physicians, devoting some of their talents to the art of healing or to compounding poisons. It had sufficed the man of science that his activities matched in general the preoccupations of his day; he might search for gold or for the elixir of life; he might investigate natural phenomena in order to make manifest the glory of God or satisfy the curiosity of man; or, at the most, he might devise a few instruments and techniques to make life easier and more entertaining. Yet science was predominantly the concern of the philosophical mind, more eager to penetrate the mysteries of the universe than to control nature. This point of view had dictated the attitude even of those en- gaged in studies of immense practical importance. For example, Harvey, whose physiological discoveries were the beginning of scientific medicine, bequeathed his estate to the Royal Col- lege of Physicians with the stipulation that the proceeds be used "to search out and study the secrets of nature'*; he did not voice much interest in the practical consequences of this search. The men of genius of the seventeenth century had discovered many of the fundamental laws of the physical world. During the following century, the scientists of the Enlightenment exploited the philosophical consequences of these laws in the faith that they had arrived at a rational concept of the relation of man to the universe. Whether or not they erred in their premature con- clusions, this striving after aims which transcend the preoccupa- life their claim to be as tions of everyday justifies recognized the "natural philosophers.*' That expression survived into early nineteenth century, when Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire entitled his great work on the analogies of living creatures Philosophic anatomique. Even Faraday, on the eve of the profound industrial revolution 6 LOUIS PASTEUR which was to result from his electrical and chemical discoveries, preferred to be called a "philosopher," rather than a "scientist." It was perhaps as a silent protest against the encroachment of society into the activities of natural philosophers that, while still in full scientific productivity, he withdrew from all his consulting and industrial connections into the sanctuary of the Royal In- stitution. The integration of science and social economy, nevertheless, had had several isolated sponsors before Pasteur's time. Francis Bacon had pictured, in The New Atlantis, a society of scholars organized for the acquisition of a knowledge that would permit man to achieve mastery over nature. "The end of our Foundation/' he wrote, "is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the of effecting all things possible." In 1666 Colbert, that prototype of American efficiency who conducted the business of France under Louis XIV, had created the French Academy of Sciences and had supplied it with funds for the support of academicians, and of their instruments and experiments. As early as 1671, he organized a co- operative project for the survey of the kingdom and its depend- encies.

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