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
either in a vacuum or in carbonic acid gas, the septic vibrio alone
will be developed. This device of culture is one of the best which can
be employed to demonstrate that the blood of a body dead from splenic
fever possesses immediately after death a single contagium, that of
splenic fever, and that twenty-four hours after death, on the contrary,
there are two contagia, that of splenic fever and that of septicæmia.
* * * * *
Some months ago a very hot discussion arose between Pasteur and a
commission formed principally of professors of the veterinary school
in Turin, regarding the facts above mentioned. One experiment, in
the success of which Pasteur was extremely interested, had been made
at this school. Instead of employing pure splenic fever blood, free
from all contagium, the Italian professors, whether from ignorance
of the preceding facts or from inadvertence, employed the blood of
a diseased sheep, which, from their own showing, had been dead more
than twenty-four hours. Pasteur immediately wrote, pointing out that
the commission had done wrong in using blood which must have been at
the same time splenic and septic. The Turin professors grew angry,
and affirmed that this assertion of Pasteur's was incorrect; that
this sheep's blood had been studied with care, and that no filaments
had been found in it except those of splenic fever; and it would,
moreover, be marvellous, they added ironically, that Pasteur from
the depths of his laboratory in Paris should be able to assert that
this blood was mixed with septic poison, whilst they, good observers,
armed with a microscope, had had this sheep's blood under their eyes.
Pasteur contented himself with replying that his assertion rested
upon a principle, and that he was perfectly able, without having seen
the blood of the sheep, to affirm that under the conditions in which
it had been collected that blood was septic. A public correspondence
ensued, but no understanding could be come to. Pasteur then offered to
go himself to Turin, in order to demonstrate upon as many bodies of
sheep dead of splenic fever as they would like to give him, that the
blood of these dead bodies--at the end of twenty-four hours if in the
month of March, and in twelve or fifteen hours if in the month of June,
would be found to be both splenic and septic. Pasteur also proposed,
by appropriate cultures, to withdraw at pleasure the splenic fever
poison or the septic poison, or the two together, at the choice of the
Italians. The Italians, however, shrank from Pasteur's proposal to pay
them a visit in order to convince them of their error.
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