Louis Pasteur: His Life and LaboursVallery-Radot, René
Science
Louis Pasteur: His Life and Labours
Vallery-Radot, René
Pasteur, Louis, 1822-1895; Scientists -- France -- Biography
Here is a crop which has perfectly succeeded. The moultings, and the
climbing upon the heather, are all that could be desired. The cocoons
are finished, and the appearance of the moths alone is waited for.
They arrive, and they pair. Then begins the work of the cultivator,
who is careful about the production of his eggs. He separates the
couples at the end of the day; laying each female moth by itself on
a little linen cloth suspended horizontally. The females lay their
eggs. After the laying, he takes each female in turn and secures her
by a pin passed through the wings to a folded corner of the little
cloth, where are grouped some hundreds of eggs which she has laid. The
male moth also might be pinned in another corner of the cloth, but
the examination of the male is useless, as it has been found that he
does not communicate the _pébrine_. The female moth, after having been
desiccated by free contact with the air, is examined at leisure, it may
be even in the autumn or winter. Nothing is easier than to ascertain
whether there are any corpuscles in its dead body. The moth is crushed
in a mortar and mixed with a little water, and then a drop of the
mixture is examined by the microscope. If corpuscles be found, the bit
of cloth corresponding to the examined moth is known, and it is burnt
with all the eggs it contains.
This method of procuring pure eggs is, in fact, only the rational
development of the first inductions which Pasteur had submitted to the
Agricultural Committee of Alais in June 1865. At that time he hardly
ventured to hope that he should be able to find the means of preparing
more than very small quantities of healthy eggs for his experiments;
but events were so ordered that the starting-point, which seemed to
be purely scientific, unfolded a method susceptible of a widespread
practical application. This process of procuring sound eggs is now
universally adopted. In the Basses-Alpes, in Ardèche, in Gard, in the
Drôme, and in other countries, may be met with everywhere, at the
time of the cultivation, workshops where hundreds of women and young
girls are occupied, with a remarkable division of labour and under the
strictest supervision of skilful overseers, in pounding the moths, in
examining them microscopically, and in sorting and classifying the
little cloths upon which the eggs are deposited.
* * * * *
But if Pasteur had brought back wealth to ruined countries, if he had
returned to Paris happy in the victory he had gained, he had also
undergone such fatigues, and had so overstrained himself in the use of
the microscope while absorbed in his daily and varied experiments, that
in October 1868 he was struck with paralysis of one side. Seeing, as he
thought, death approaching, he dictated to his wife a last note on the
studies which he had so much at heart. This note was communicated to
the Academy of Sciences eight days after this terrible trial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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