Reviews of the Week
The Mind of Pasteur
Louis Pasteur : Free Lance of Science. By Rene J. Dubos.
(Gollancz. tss.) OF the two greatest men of France in the last century it is arguable that Pasteur was the greater. His tomb at the Institut Pasteur is less pretentious than that of Napoleon at Les Invalides, but it is revered while the other is only admired. Napoleon hanged the face of Europe: Pasteur founded a new science which saved innumerable lives in his own life-time and is now well on its way to eliminating death from microbic disease altogether. To write an acceptable new account of such a man is a formidable project at best: it becomes more so when a classical biography such as that by Vallery-Radot already exists. Dubos has written a quite different book by condensing his main chronicle into the first chapter, the remainder dealing with the personality of Pasteur, his successive achievements and his philosophy. No one could be better qualified to undertake this task. Dubos is a countryman of Pasteur, although long since a citizen of New York: his own career has had several resemblances to that which he describes and one of his achievements was a vital link in the chain of te_search which started with an observation by Pasteur himself and kded by giving us penicillin. He thus writes not only with expert knowledge but with the insight of the discoverer, and he has the further advantage over the biographer of fifty years ago that the full fruits of the master's work are now apparent. The result is a masterly analysis of Pasteur's achievements, intellectually more satisfying than any which has preceded it.
Pasteur's only formal training was as a chemist, and, when he left pure chemistry for the study, first of fermentation and later of micro-organisms as causes of disease, he had to devise new techniques: he was in fact laying the foundations of a new science. One.thing of which we are given a very clear picture is his capacity for designing crucial experiments: the elegance and thoroughness of his work with the famous swan-neck flasks by which he proved that microbes in the air and not air itself are responsible for fermentation were an early example. His first encounter with disease—that of silkworms—reveals further the scale of his intellect, for this was a problem of such complexity as would baffle for a time even the modern microbiologist with all his resources. There were in fact two diseases, as he soon recognised, and both are due to micro-organisms of types which were to remain unidentified for many years, yet it was not long before he devised a method of breeding healthy stocks. The work on chicken cholera and anthrax was more straightforward, although his devising of a method for producing immunity to these infections was due to his immediate recognition of the significance of a chance observation and brilliant exploitation of it. Finally, in rabies he again faced a profound mystery and with inexorable logic and immense courage reached a solution to the problem of how to protect human beings against the effects of rabid dog-bites. That this was in fact a solution has sometimes been called in question: studies now in progress in Persia controlled by the World Health Organisation should provide the final answer. Whatever the merits of any of the methods he proposed for protection against microbic disease, we owe to Pasteur not only the recognition of its nature but all the fundamentals of the science by which it is now being subdued. Dubos paints in vivid colours the background of all this work— the scepticism, the resentment of chemists who refused to recognise that living things were responsible for material changes within their particular sphere, the public debates attended not only by scientists but by the elite of society. We see Pasteur, challenged by one opponent after another, always to be defeated by his genius for devising the method of the decisive experiment. We are shown how his observations and deductions foreshadowed much of the advanced work to which the present commanding position of micro- biological science is due. There is a fascinating penultimate chapter on what he might have done had he pursued other objects arising naturally from his work than that of producing artificial immunity: even for Pasteur there were only so many hours in the day, and the time of his not very long active life was fully spent. Few men have taken so little voluntary leisure.
It will be new to most readers that in his original discovery,
purely of a chemical nature, Pasteur believed that he had revealed
a fundamental property of living matter, and that in the controversy
over spontaneous generation it was held by some that a religious issue was involved. These facts at least indicate how deeply minds were being stirred by the discoveries of a hundred years ago. Dubos gives full prominence to the fact that Pasteur was a devout Catholic, and indeed devotes several pages to discussing the relationship between his scientific and religious beliefs. This discussion is in keeping with the detached and analytical attitude of the whole book : we must go to earlier sources for a more personal view. Although the picture of the scientist is magnificently drawn, that of the man has lost something by condensation of the simple narrative of his life: we see less of his intense compassion for suffering, of the agony of suspense while he awaited the outcome of his first inocula tions against rabies. Only a single appeal to emotion is borrowed from Vallery-Radot's life, the response of Madame Pasteur to her husband's election to the Acaddmie des Sciences: this was to load with flowers the grave of Biot, who had been his mentor. This appealing gesture well deserves the immortality it has gained. The world of science is in debt to Dubos for a penetrating study, and the general reader will look far before he finds a similar work with
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