A History of Science — Volume 5Williams, Henry Smith
History
A History of Science — Volume 5
Williams, Henry Smith
Science -- History
As we move among this light-hearted and lightheaded throng we shall
scarcely escape a feeling of good-humored contempt for what seems an
inferior race. It will be wholesome, therefore, for us to turn aside
from the boulevard into the Rue Dotot, which leads from it near its
centre, and walk a few hundred yards away from the pleasure-seekers,
where an evidence of a quite different and a no less characteristic
phase of the national psychology will be before us. For here, within
easy sound of the jangling discords of the organs that keep time for the
march of the _cheveaux de bois_, rises up a building that is in a sense
the monument of a man who was brother in blood and in sentiment to the
revellers we have just left in the boulevard, yet whose career stamped
him as one of the greatest men of genius of any race or any time. That
man was Louis Pasteur. The building before us is the famous institute
that bears his name.
In itself this building is a simple and unimposing structure, yet of
pleasing contour. It is as well placed as the surroundings permit, on a
grassed terrace, a little back from the street, where a high iron fence
guards it and gives it a degree of seclusion. There are other buildings
visible in the rear, which, as one learns on entering, are laboratories
and the like, where the rabbits and guinea-pigs and dogs that are so
essential to the work of the laboratory are kept. On the terrace
in front is a bronze statue of a boy struggling with a rabid dog--a
reminder of the particular labor of the master-worker which led directly
to the foundation of the institution. It will be remembered that it
was primarily to give Pasteur a wider opportunity to apply his newly
discovered treatment for the prevention of rabies that the subscription
was undertaken which led finally to the erection of the buildings before
us and brought the Pasteur Institute in its present form into being.
Of the other aims and objects of the institution I shall speak more at
length in a moment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account