LOUIS PASTEUR.
(Died September 281k, 1895.)
THERE are more than sixty Pasteur Institutes : but I am thinking of the Paris Institute. At the end of one of its long corridors, down a few steps, is the little chapel where
Pasteur lies. Of all the happy memories of sight-seeing, none is clearer to me than the first sight of Pasteur's grave. For I had spent the morning in the rooms and annexes of the Institute, among the latest facts and theories of pathology, hiding my want of understanding under my want of conver- sational French : then had come two hours' interval, enough for a look into the Louvre and a mouthful of food : then back to the Institute, to hear a lecture and to see the chapel. From the work of the place, done in the spirit of the Master, and to his honour, you go straight to him. Where he worked, there he rests.
Walls, pavement, and low-vaulted roof, this little chapel, every inch of it, is beautiful : to see its equal you must visit Rome or Ravenna,. On its walls of rare marbles are the names of his great discoveries,—Dyssymetrie Moleculaire, Fermentations, Generations dites Spontanees, Etudes sur le Vin, Maladies des Vera a Soie, Etudes sur la Biere, Maladies Virulentes, Virus Vaccins, Prophylaxie de in Rage. In the mosaics, of gold and of all colours, you read them again; in the wreathed pattern of hops, vines, and mulberry leaves, and in the figures of cattle, sheep, dogs, and poultry. In the vault over his grave are four great white angels, Faith, Hope, Charity, and Science. From time to time Mass is said in the chapel : the altar is of white marble. Twice a year, on the day of the Master's birth and the day of his death, the workers at the Institute, the " Pastorians," come to the chapel, some of them bringing flowers in memory of him, and afterwards pay a visit of ceremony to Madame Pasteur,* whose apart- ments are on the second floor of the Institute, above the chapel. And I have heard of a tourist who was not ashamed to kneel and kiss the porphyry under which Pasteur lies. They still call a country churchyard by the old name of God's acre : here is a bit of the same land, this resting-place of a great saint of Science, whose angel keeps company with Faith, Hope, and Love. What is the use of the present stone effigies of Science on our public buildings P Why are huge stupid- looking women sitting up aloft, in shapeless robes, holding senseless implements ? But this little chapel bids us read the name and work of Science here, where the emblems of the Christian faith are united with the emblems of the Master's achievements.
Consider the poverty of other monuments to men of science. Observe, in the Abbey, the sprawling memorial to Newton, and the dull slabs that hold down Hunter and Darwin : and, in all the rest of London, nothing worth a look. Somewhere in St. Albans you can find an ugly old painted statue of Bacon, in a chair, like a guy, sitting above his own bones. That is what we do in this country ; a most unworthy statue, or the nakedness of a cold paving-stone : and we spend the money on a scholarship or exhibition, to enable young men to find out nothing in particular. Is it not wiser, more decent, to spend it, not in the hope of getting a few more facts, but to the immediate glory of the man himself P Besides, monuments ought to cry aloud, tell the man's life, proclaim his gifts and legacies of thought and theory to the world. They should play the part of Antony declaring to all Rome the list of all that Caesar left to Rome. 'Here was a Caesar ! When comes such another r' No sermons are in stones inscribed with the brevity of luggage-labels ; but there are sermons enough for all the sons of Science, and her daughters too, in the marbles and mosaics of the Pasteur Chapel.
Yet, to me, who remember him, saw him, heard him talk, shook hands with him, all the adornments round his grave were not sufficient, and the half was not told me. For he was, it seems to me, the most perfect man who has ever entered the kingdom of Science. His devotion to home, his gentleness, humility, faith, patriotism, honour, shine like stars. And if I take, so far as I can, whioh is not far, his scientific life alone, apart from his spiritual life, I recognise in it also the same clear evidence of inspiration. For he is drawn or led forward, as it were according to a carefully devised scheme, from each discovery to the next. Mist, mathematics : the pupil-teacher's board and lodging and twelve pounds a year at the College of Besancon. Then chemistry, and the run of the great Ecole Normale, where he could think and make experi- ments and learn without ceasing : and here the voices begin to call him, as they called to Joan of Arc, to help Frame; • On Saturday last, at Arbois, died Madame Pasteur, aged eighty-four. Arbois had been Pasteur's home from early boyhood : both -his parents had died there. and not France only did he help. Then be is advanced, from the study of crystalline forms, to the study of ferments; and the news that a young chemist in Paris has discovered the ferment of sour milk reaches a young surgeon in Glasgow mailed Joseph Lister, and sets him thinking hard. Then come the years of the Professorship at Lille, all among breweries and wine factories and distilleries. And here is Pasteur, a quiet, serious, patient little gentleman with a microscope, teaching brewers and wine-makers and distillers how to conduct their proper affairs. He gives a course of lectures to the vinegar-makers of Orleans on the whole art of making vinegar; he shows the wine-merchants how to keep their rough wines from turning ; he visits a huge London brewery, and confounds the establishment, demonstrating to them under the microscope their yeast infected by evil germs. It was of such work that Huxley said that Pasteur had saved France enough to pay the indemnity of the Franco-German War.
Then came his wonderful study of the diseases of silkworms, whereby he restored prosperity to the silk trade of France. He, when he went to Alais to study pebrine and Jlacherie among the worms, feared that he was going outside the lines of his work. It took a lot of persuasion to get him to leave his researches into ferments. Remember,' he said, ' that I've never so much as touched a silkworm.' Yet, in the leading of his life, nothing is plainer now than the profound influence of Alais on all his later discoveries. He was brought, through 1865-70, from the study of fermentation to the study of infective diseases ; from the changes in beer to the changes in blood ; and, in the facts of pibrine ravaging the worms, be saw, in miniature, the facts of erysipelas and pycemia ravaging the inmates of an ill-kept hospital. It is no wonder that in his later life be used to commend to his students, as a model of good work, his " Etudes sur les Maladies des Yen
Soie."
Then, close on the final proof and triumph of the work begun at Alais, came the Franco-German War. In that one of the hundred best books, Vallery-Radot's Life of Pasteur, we read the story of his misery. It is nothing to say that the War nearly broke his heart. But it broke neither his faith nor the straight line of his work. Only, a sort of rage possessed him, to redeem and console France by working for her.
• Henceforth,' he said, g every one of my books shall have written on it these words, _Revenge, revenge, revenge.' And this was his revenge, to set the name of France in the honours-list of Science higher than ever : to give the rest of his life to her service, and to wear himself out for her sake.
Therefore, so soon as the War and the Commune were passed away, he took in hand those amazing studies of pre- ventive medicine, which have brought more blessings to mankind and to animals than the world can reckon, nor yet sees any sign of the end of them. As he had been able, with microscope and flask and little tubes of yeast, to teach all countries how to treat the maladies of wines and beers, so, with microscope and flasks and little tubes of germs, he was able to teach all hospitals the principles of modem surgery, and the principles of immunity against infective diseases. See him going the round of a great Paris hospital, explaining and enforcing, as a new discovery, the aseptic method : see him, in a debate at the French Academy of Medicine, sweeping away, with half-a-dozen words and a sketch on a blackboard, half-a- oentury of medical theories. He had revolutionised brewing : he had saved the silk trade : now he was revolutionising medicine.
For, out of it all, out of his magnificent studies of fowl- cholera, anthrax, osteo-myelitis, and puerperal fever, came this power, not dreamed of before him, the power to standardise this or that disease: to have its germs growing in a test-tube, and to have them of a definite strength : to graduate them, in a regular series, from non-virulence to full virulence : to stock a disease in all shades of strength : and to use these bottled poisons, in their proper order, to immunise men or animals against the natural disease. Thus, at last, when be had re-created pathology, and had accomplished more for doctors than whole ages of their work could accomplish, he was led to his last appointed discovery, the preventive treatment against rabies.
That was in 1885: and, about 1890, he began to grow old. He had worked so hard, and had made his way, with infinite patience, against so much opposition, some of it intelligent
enough, some of it foolish past all telling. Henceforth, he must begin to let his work pass into the hands of younger men. Let it pass P Why, it had passed, already, into the hands of all men. It was become part of the doctor's daily practice, part of the routine of every hospital, part of the method of the medical sciences, part of all nursing, part of all housekeeping, part of all farming, part of all brewing. There is no country on earth which is not the richer and the happier because of him.
Then came enfeeblement, and a year of quiet resignation ; and, in September, 1895, his death. It is recorded of him that he died holding the crucifix in one hand, and in the other his wife's hand. Here was a life, within the limits of humanity, well-nigh perfect. He worked incessantly : he went through poverty, bereavement, ill-health, opposition : he lived to see his doctrines current over all the world, his facts enthroned, his methods applied to a thousand affairs of manufacture and agriculture, his science put in practice by all doctors and surgeons, his name praised and blessed by mankind : and the very animals, if they could speak, would say the same. Genius : that is the only word. When genius does come to earth, which is not so often as some clever people think, it chooses now and again strange tabernacles : but here was a man whose spiritual life was no less admirable than his scientific life. In brief, nothing is too good to say of him : and the decorations of his grave, once you know his work, are poor, when you think what he was and what he did. Still, it is well that he should lie close to the work of the Institute, close to the heart of Paris, with Faith, Hope, Love, and Science
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