A History of Science — Volume 5Williams, Henry Smith
History
A History of Science — Volume 5
Williams, Henry Smith
Science -- History
struggle, unhampered by the material drawbacks which so often confront
the would-be worker in science.
He desired also that the institution should be a centre of education
along the lines of its work, adding thus an indirect influence to the
score of its direct achievements. In both these regards the institution
has been and continues to be worthy of its founder. The Pasteur
Institute is in effect a school of bacteriology, where each of the
professors is at once a teacher and a brilliant investigator. The chief
courses of instruction consist of two series each year of lectures and
laboratory demonstrations on topics within the field of bacteriology.
These courses, at which all the regular staff of the institution assist
more or less, are open to physicians and other competent students
regardless of nationality, and they suffice to inculcate the principles
of bacteriology to a large band of seekers each year.
But more important, perhaps, than this form of educational influence is
the impetus given by the institute to the researches of a small, select
band of investigators who have taken up bacteriology for a life work,
and who come here to perfect themselves in the final niceties of the
technique of a most difficult profession. Thus such men as Calmette,
the discoverer of the serum treatment of serpent-poisoning, and Yersin,
famous for his researches in the prevention and cure of cholera by
inoculation, are "graduates" of the Pasteur Institute. Indeed, almost
all the chief laborers in this field in the world to-day, including the
directors of practically all the daughter institutes bearing the same
name that are now scattered all over the world, have had at least a
share of their training in the mother institute here in Paris.
Of the work of the men who form the regular staff of the Pasteur
Institute only a few words need be said here. Doctors Roux, Grancher,
Metchnikoff, and Chamberland all had the privilege of sharing Pasteur's
labors during the later years of the master's life, and each of them is
a worthy follower of the beloved leader and at the same time a brilliant
original investigator.*1* Roux is known everywhere in connection with
the serum treatment of diphtheria, which he was so largely instrumental
in developing. Grancher directs the anti-rabic department and allied
fields. Metchnikoff, a Russian by birth and Parisian by adoption, is
famous as the author of the theory that the white blood-corpuscles of
the blood are the efficient agents in combating bacteria. Chamberland
directs the field of practical bacteriology in its applications to
hygiene, including the department in which protective serums are
developed for the prevention of various diseases of domesticated
animals, notably swine fever and anthrax. About one million sheep and
half as many cattle are annually given immunity from anthrax by the
serum here produced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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