January, 1923
I N D UXTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMIXTR Y
Louis Pasteur-His
89
Contribution t o Science By I. I(.Russell
1133 FULLERTON AvE., CHICAGO, ILL.
N E OF THE remarkable facts about the life of Louis Pasteur is that the 100th anniversary of the date of his birth finds him more alive in the hearts of humanity than he was a t any time during his unusual thrust into the events of modern life. The French government drew perhaps as strong a reaction from peasants and artisans as it did from the world’s foremost scientists t o its proposal- to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Pasteur’s birth on December 27, 1922. The scientific world can claim, Pasteur the scientist, for its own, but Pasteur the world hero, it must share with the cattle raisers of France, whose herds Pasteur saved through finding the nature of the anthrax plague; with the silkworm breeders, whose industry he saved by stopping a contagious disease among the silkworms; with brewers, to whom he explained the cause of bitter beer; with milk producers, whom he gave control of putrefactive bacteria and bacteria which too speedily soured the milk; and even witb bakers, for to the baking industry Pasteur introduced t h e modern science of baking with all that is accomplished through the complete control of fermentation and the leavening process. Chemists the world over can take special pride in this 100th anniversary of the birth of Pasteur, for he seemed to make his life a living personification of the spirit of research. Acute observations of things other men have seen since the beginning of time gave him the key to some of the most consequential facts of modern life. For instance, he observed early in life that dough would turn sour in bread batch, while baked bread would not turn sour. He asked himself the question of what happened in the oven to change t h e nature of the dough so that it would no longer turn sour. He worked with microscope and culture media t o find out, and succeeded in discovering the nature of yeasts. H e found they were living self-reproducing cells, and that in feeding upon the dough they ultimately were responsible both for fermentation and for t h e souring of the dough that resulted when they worked too long within its midst. Inconspicuous as he was-a laboratory research man when he made this discovery-it brought the French government to him with the problem that, perhaps, set him upon the major trails of his long and useful life. “If yeasts are separate living organisms within dough that sour it,” he argued, when the government asked him what he could do with soured wine, of which the French fleet’s sailors were bitterly complaining, “perhaps we can save the wine by heating it until its yeasts are killed. Perhaps the same treatment given bread when baked will make it possible for the French war fleets to put to sea with good wine, and still have good wine in what casks are unconsumed when the fleet returns.” Pasteur was a devotee of applied science. He found out a t what tcmperature wine yeasts and acetic acid bacteria could be killed in wine, so that if it was kept free from access of air it would remain permanently sweet. The French sailors then went to sea with a cheer for their wine supply, and Pasteur applied himself to other problems just as practical as this. We may almost say that modern medicine, in its power to control contagion, is a by-product of Pasteur’s experiments in the nature of fermentation. At that time throughout the world of medicine i t was believed that putrefactions and degeneration
of human tissue occurred spontaneously from dements within the human body. While he was working as a chemist he happened by accident to see litters being carried into a building adjacent to his laboratory. Later he saw coffins being carried out. Upon inquiry he found that the building was an annex t o a maternity hospital. It set him to thinking and he wished t o try out the theory that was already beginning to form in his mind-that there were air-borne bacteria which leavened bread if they fell upon dough from the air and spoiled wine if they fell into it from the air. H e went to the hospital-and on the very first visit of his life to a hospital he qualified as the father of antiseptic medicine and the father of modem sanitation. He noticed the way the surgeons used their instruments and the nurses their bandages, made out of old, unsterilized sheets. He took the instruments from a surgeon’s hands and passed them through a flame. He took the bandages from a reluctant nurse and baked them, as he had the wine and the dough in his previous experiments. The death rate was lowered almost immediately. Before this time those who entered the hospital expected to die; after this they expected to live. Perhaps laboratory and clinic were never joined in a common cause out of which so much good for humanity flowed as at the clinical meeting at which Pasteur came from his laboratory t o the Academy of Medicine and demonstrated to the world by means of sick hens suffering from splenic fever or anthrax, the tremendous importance of temperature in the control of bacterial growth. He had noticed in a barnyard where the cows and the pigs died of splenic fever during an epidemic that the hens were immune. He experimented and found he could give anthrax to all farm animals but the poultry. H e found that the bacteria-producing anthrax would not live in the blood of a hen, which is four degrees warmer than the blood of mammals. With one of those brilliant inspirations which come to born scientists, Pasteur conceived the idea that if he could reduce a hen’s temperature through chilling her, until her blood was at the temperature normal for mammals, her immunity to anthrax infection would disappear. He promised the Academy of Medicine that he would bring its members some dead and dying hens in whose bodies he would ask them to find, through clinical operation, samples of anthrax germs. Since he had just been insisting that such a thing was impossible, both the Academy of Science and the Academy of Medicine sent its ablest representatives t o the test. Pasteur kept his promise and appeared a t the Academy of Medicine with the hens. He threw a dead hen down before the master physicians, and stated that it had died twenty-nine hours after inoculation. He told of keeping the hen in an ice bath for some time previous to inoculation. “Ah,” said some of the Academicians, “death might have resulted from the chill.” “Then” said Pasteur, as Vallery-Radot, his biographer, records the great meeting, “I will show you this gray hen. She was in the bath as long as the other one which died, but she was not thereafter inoculated.” The gray hen was lively, happy, and normal. Thus Pasteur has awakened the world to the importance of the infinitely small. He was now on the track of finding important controls for this bacterial life, and in noticing the tremendous
90
INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
consequences of a difference of four degrees he had struck a t the heart of one of the most important methods of control even yet discovered. There were still some flings a t Pasteur, even as an accepted Academician. With great passion Pasteur turned upon his detractors in the Academy. He cried out: I say it with no sham modesty, I have considered that my only right to a seat in this place is that given me by your great kindness, for I have no medical knowledge. I, therefore, consider that I must be more scrupulously exact than anyone else in the presentations which I have the honor to make to you. I should promptly lose all credit if I brought you erroneous or merely doubtful facts. If ever I am mistaken-a thing which may happen to the most scrupulous-it is because my good faith has been greatly surprised. I have come among you with a program to follow which demands accuracy a t every step. I can tell you my program in two words. I have sought for twenty years, and I am still seeking “spontaneous generation,” properly so called. If God permit I shall seek for twenty years and more.the spontaneous generation of transmissible diseases. In these difficult researches, while sternly depreciating frivolous contradictions, I only feel esteem and gratitude towards those who may warn me if I should be in error. Thus Pasteur laid down the platform of every research chemist, as he stood a t the threshold of his career as a medical Academician. The hospital from now on claimed him more than did his physiological laboratory. He attacked the problem of bubonic plague; in the humble farmyards he found hens dead on their nests from chicken cholera. He had a heart for poor farmers, for his ancestors had been serfs. He isolated the chicken cholera germ and observed “the prodigious faculty of multiplication of microorganisms” when grown in a suitable culture medium. He noticed that the smallest drop of the infected culture medium on a‘crumb of bread caused the death of a hen. He noticed that the bacteria grew in the hen’s intestinal canal and in the excreta spread infection to other hens. He was now on the trail of the method of the spread of typhoid, and yet
Vol. 15, No. 1
many physicians had>sneereda t his ideas by declaring that “such mad gossip would one day lead t o the notion that even typhoid was a germ disease.” Pasteur’s genius for observation now brought out into the light one of the most important of medical discoveries. It marks the passing of his interests from the laboratory to the clinic, and marks the initiation of an entirely new field of medical technic. Pasteur accidentally inoculated a hen with chicken cholera microbes that had stood in the laboratory for several weeks. He saw her become ill and then recover. It was a new experience, and he immediately reinoculated the hen with fresh virus. Fresh virus had never before failed t o kill a hen, but this time it did fail. What could have attenuated the activity of the microbe? Looking backward, we can easily see that here Pasteur first picked up the trail of discovering the nature of vaccine. Inoculation of the attenuated germs made it impossible for the freshculture germs t o kill the vaccinated hens although all others speedily died. I n a spirit of incomparable enthusiasm and happiness he set t o work t o apply what he had found in a farmyard to the contagious ills of mankind. Mankind has always feared death by a mad dog’s bite. In Mexico overseers of brush cutters go into the brush and simulate the cry of a mad coyote t o make their workmen leap to tasks that must be accomplished before they can quit that neighborhood. What a glad day for the world, then, was it for fond parents to lead the victim of a mad dog’s bite t o Pasteur and have him cured! The method had already been discovered in the case of chicken cholera and had been applied in the case of a splenic fever plague. For his work on carrying the theory on over into the case of rabies, Pasteur won himself a place as a world-wide hero. No wonder Huxley declared in a lecture a t the London Royal Society: “Pasteur’s discoveries alone suffice to cover the war indemnity of five milliards paid by France to Germany in 1870.”
Priestley Centennial, Northumberland, Pa., July 31 to August 1, 1874 Among the most prized of the historical relics in the Chandler Chemical Museum of Columbia University are seven photograph negatives (6 X Sin.) taken by Prof. Louis H. Laudy, of Columbia College, a t the Priestley Centennial a t Northumberland, Pa., in 1874. These negatives, which are the earliest photographic reminiscences of any meeting of American chemists, are the remainder and the more valuable of the original twelve plates described on page 465 of Vol. V of the American Chemist (1874-1875). They comprise (1) a large group of 70 attending chemists and visitors (see opposite page), (2) a small Columbia College group of 19 chemists and visitors, (3) a photograph of two tables of chemical apparatus that belonged to Dr. Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, (4)a photograph of a table of Priestley’s electrical apparatus, (5) a photograph of a table of miscellaneous apparatus (telescope, magic lantern, orrery, etc.) that belonged t o Priestley, (6) a photograph of manuscripts, books, and other Priestley relics, with the Stewart portrait of Priestley, (7) a smaller (5 X 6 in.) photograph of an old print showing the destruction of Priestley’s house and laboratory during the Birmingham riots of July 14, 1791. The Chandler Museum has arranged that members and SOCIZTY may obtain unfriends of the AMERICANCHEMICAL mounted mat prints from these interesting old but clear negatives a t a nominal cost of 35 cents apiece, including first-class postage and packing. The two group photographs make excel-
lent enlargements for a laboratory, office, or lecture room; they can be obtained for the 14 X 17 in. size a t $1.50 a piece, including postage and packing. Of the chemists and visitors in the large group, about 55 of the 70 have been identified. Among those identified are T.S. Hunt, J. L. Smith, F. W. Clarke, C. P. Chandler (all of these former presidents of the AMERICANCHEMICAL SOCIETY), E. N. Horsford, €3. Silliman, Jr., H. C. Bolton, E. Waller, E. L. Youman, C. A. Joy, S. P. Sharples, R. C. Kedzie, T. M. Drowne, P. W. Bedford, A. A. Breneman, W. H. Chandler, J. P. Remington, and many others. Owing to the fact that all the attending chemists were not in the group and that several unknown visitors were included in the picture, the identification of all the faces has not been possible. It is hoped that with the distribution of the picture among American chemists, other identifications may be made. Of the Columbia group, 18 of the 19 have been identified. A key to each of the group photographs ordered will be included along with the print. Applications with remittances for the photographs should be addressed to T. I,. Schultze, 297 Fulton St., Brooklyn, N. Y. In ordering photographs, the number of the negative according to the foregoing list should be indicated. These negatives will be left in the hands of the photographer only until March 1 next. Orders to be filled by him must be received before that date. [c.A. BROWNEA N D RALPHH. McKEE.]
