Louis Pasteur: a great scholar of the past, a father of modern science
Bust of Louis Pasteur installed in the laboratory (now a museum) of the house of Arbois.
© RFI / Marc Verney
Text by: Marc Verney
14 mins
Louis Pasteur was born on December 27, 1822 in Dole, in the Jura (eastern France), two centuries ago.
Even today, many cities in France have a "rue Pasteur" in memory of this tanner's son, who proved the role of infectious agents, viruses or bacteria, in the transmission of certain diseases and refuted - evidence to the support – the theory of spontaneous generation of living beings.
Thanks to the work of this pioneer in hygiene and microbiology, washing your hands regularly has become a very commonplace act, long before our barrier gestures today!
But it was the great adventure of vaccination against rabies that propelled this Jurassic man, eager for recognition, to the firmament of scientific glory.
By sometimes forgetting the work of those who allowed him to access it...
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Until the 19th century, infectious diseases wreaked havoc among populations without anyone being able to really explain it.
In particular cholera, yellow fever, tuberculosis, plague, tetanus or rabies, which sow terror in cities and countryside.
Attempts at care are empirical, often fanciful, the eradication of these deadly scourges is impossible.
Thus, two centuries earlier, it was thought that sea bathing had the virtue of curing rabies and the doctors themselves advocated this curative means as effective.
Thomas Burnet, doctor in ordinary to the King of England, wrote in 1691: “
It is the custom to send to the sea those who have been bitten by rabid dogs, to be immersed there three times, at the beginning of the bite.
This remedy is old
(1).
And, including at the end of the 19th century, we still remained, a few years before Pasteur's discovery, attached to totally ineffective treatments.
An article in the
Journal of Useful Knowledge
of September 18, 1880 gave this advice to people bitten by a canine: "
We quote the case of Doctor Bisson, who, feeling the first symptoms of the dreadful disease, plunged into a bath of superheated steam which he continued until his strength was exhausted, and luckily got out of trouble
" (2).
A terrible agony for man
For centuries, rabies has scared humans.
In the eastern regions of France, wolves from Eastern Europe are the main carriers of the disease.
Contaminated beasts attack domestic dogs and turn them into rabid animals.
Which, after several days of incubation, will attack its master, transmitting the virus to him.
The ensuing agony is terrible for humans: “
The rabies virus infects the nervous system and affects its functioning.
After a few days to a few months of incubation, the infected individual becomes anxious and agitated.
Once the signs are declared, the evolution is towards coma and death in a few hours to a few days.
Apart from a few cases, the outcome is always fatal when the disease is declared.
“, indicates today the Pasteur Institute.
When he was only a child, Louis Pasteur was marked by all the stories he heard about people affected by this scourge: "
In October 1831
, writes André Besson in the
Cahiers dolois
(3)
, a a rabid wolf bit animals and people in the region of Arbois
,
he
(Pasteur, Editor's note)
saw cauterized with a hot iron, in a forge located a few kilometers from the family home, an Arboisien named Nicole
”.
As an adult, the scientist himself experienced the pain of losing two of his daughters, Jeanne then Cécile, carried away by another of these infectious diseases, typhoid fever (a third, Camille, died of a liver tumour).
Louis Pasteur at work in his laboratory.
© RFI / Marc Verney / Maison Pasteur
Across Europe, research is intensifying to determine the causes of and remedies for infectious diseases.
Because, for the populations, the impotence of science is no longer relevant.
In January 1847, in his work
Things seen
(4), Victor Hugo writes that fifteen dogs suffering from rabies are killed each year in Paris and that an average of two people die there.
Since Antiquity, we only knew this: a patient cured of a contagious disease such as measles, scarlet fever or smallpox never contracts it again.
Already well known for his work on crystallography, wine vinegar, silkworms, beer, fermentation and also spontaneous generation, Louis Pasteur, then in his fifties, led to the time of the research on several conditions.
With his German competitor Robert Koch (1843-1910), the discoverer of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis, the Jurassian proves that it is microbes coming from outside the human body that are responsible for infectious diseases.
This gives a big boost to the emergence of domestic hygiene, but Louis Pasteur wants to go further and give men immunity against the attacks of microbes.
The Briton Edward Jenner (1749-1823) realized that farm workers were protected from smallpox because of their proximity to cows infected with cowpox, a disease transmissible to humans, but benign.
By inoculating this vaccine into healthy people, Jenner had succeeded in protecting them from smallpox.
“Vaccination” was born and the Briton could be proud of the title of “father of immunology”.
Inspired by the work of Jenner, Louis Pasteur decided to use the infectious agents themselves to obtain immunization;
his work on chicken cholera (1878) or anthrax (1881), which affects ruminants,
will bring that hope.
The principle is to attenuate the microbe to make it harmless and finally to inoculate it to the patient, who develops immunity against his tiny assailant.
Flasks containing culture broths sterilized in 1883 and never used again.
© RFI / Marc Verney
From now on, the French researcher “
is in full possession of his experimental method.
He decides to apply it to the study of a human disease.
He chooses rabies because it affects not only man, but also the animal on which he can experiment
(5).
The Lyonnais veterinarian Pierre-Victor Galtier (1842-1908) (6) opened the way for him with work on rabid rabbits and by discovering that it was possible to increase or decrease the virulence of laboratory rabies.
Establishing for his part that rabies – the microbe of which would only be made visible under a microscope in 1962 – was a disease affecting the nervous system, Pasteur, who was seeking to obtain a stable strain, injected directly into the brain of a dog a piece of brain from a rabid canine.
The animal thus inoculated dies.
One of his collaborators shows him the way: "
The credit for inoculation by trepanation goes to Émile Roux
(1853-1933), young doctor and future director of the Institut Pasteur in 1904, who was one of the pillars of the "Pasteur adventure", wrote Michel Morange (7) in 2022 in his book dedicated to the Jura scientist.
From then on, Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux tried to obtain a vaccine.
The virulence of the disease must be reduced.
The marrows of rabies rabbits, placed in flasks, are exposed to the action of an environment devoid of humidity but with a current of oxygen.
The strain of rabies gradually subsides until it dies out.
Pasteur injected these aged rabbit marrow into rabid dogs, then tested increasingly virulent marrow.
It is a success: the rage does not declare itself.
Now we have to move on to the next step: protecting humans from the horrible disease.
The first human vaccination
The story is well known: on the morning of July 6, 1885, Joseph Meister, a nine-year-old boy who came from Alsace with his mother and Théodore Vonné, a merchant-grocer from Meissengott (Maisonsgoutte, in French), the owner of the animal having bitten the child fourteen times, arrive at Pasteur's laboratory, located rue d'Ulm in Paris.
"
It is said
," says Michel Morange (8),
that the owner of the rabid dog had heard about Pasteur's research through the newspapers.
Louis Pasteur not being a doctor, he entrusts Doctor Jacques-Joseph Grancher (1843-1907) with the task of inoculating the child with the treatment.
In ten days (July 6 to 16), little Meister received thirteen injections of less and less attenuated rabies marrow in his stomach.
The latter offering in particular the interest of knowing if the vaccination had succeeded.
Faced with the success of the operation, the Jurasian began the process of vaccinating another boy, the young shepherd Jean-Baptiste Jupille, bitten on the hands by a rabid animal in Villers-Farlay (a few kilometers from Arbois) while he tried to protect his young comrades.
Again, the operation was a success.
She made us forget a first failure of the Pasteur method, in June 1885, with Julie-Antoinette Poughon, an 11-year-old girl,
who dies of rabies after receiving a few injections.
"
The attempt is not made public
, writes Frédéric Lewino in a press article in 2020 (9),
unfortunately, the vaccination is carried out a month and a half after the bite, which is far too late
”.
Pasteur, helped by Dr. Grancher, inoculates the famous virus for the first time in the little Alsatian Meister, suffering from rabies.
in: “The Pilgrim”, n°2380, Sunday, November 5, 1922. © Institut Pasteur/Musée Pasteur
The tremendous repercussions that followed the successful vaccination of the young Meister and the shepherd Jupille strongly contributed to the constitution of a "Pastor myth", even to the emergence of a "lay saint"... One year after the first vaccination, nearly 2,500 people underwent Pasteur's preventive treatment.
There are only seventeen failures.
The Jura researcher, increasingly in demand, decided to create a research and vaccination center which would also be a place of education.
In March 1887, a large piece of land was acquired in Paris, in the Vaugirard district.
Thanks to the two million gold francs collected by an international subscription, the President of the Republic, Sadi Carnot inaugurates, on November 14, 1888,
the Pasteur Institute
, a private non-profit foundation recognized as being of public utility.
Major discoveries were made there: the identification of the plague bacillus in 1894, the vaccine against BCG in 1921, yellow fever in 1931, poliomyelitis in 1954 and again hepatitis B in 1985, the first human vaccine obtained by genetic engineering or also the AIDS screening test…
Today, at a time when the world is fighting the Covid-19 epidemic, what is the legacy left to us by Louis Pasteur, buried in the crypt of the Parisian Institute?
Besides the fact that it has spread throughout the world, with, for example, Tunis in 1893, Dakar in 1896, Montevideo in 2004 (there are more than thirty in total), it is the fact that Louis Pasteur, we read in an article by researcher Paul Mazliak (10), was able to give a "
tremendous impetus to the fight against contagious diseases against the advice of many doctors or veterinarians, and even (in the case of rabies) against the advice of some of his students.
His unshakable confidence in the possibility
of "mitigating the virulence"
microbes to confer on healthy individuals, through vaccination, an artificial immunity against pathogenic germs
”, make man “
a benefactor of humanity and one of the greatest biologists of all time
”.
On the facade of Pasteur's birthplace in Dole (Jura).
© RFI / Marc Verney
De Pasteur, “the French have especially retained the vaccine against rabies while for the Anglo-Saxons the French scientist is associated with pasteurization”
RFI questioned Sylvie Morel, president of the public establishment for cooperation Louis-Pasteur, who coordinated the festivities for the bicentenary of the scientist's birth in his native department, the Jura. For her, the scientist's Jura roots cannot be dissociated from
the "man-world
" that he has become in the history of humanity.
What trace does Louis Pasteur leave in the memory of the Jura
?
National memory
?
Sylvie Morel:
The Francs-Comtois, like all the French, have mainly retained the vaccine against rabies, while for the Anglo-Saxons the French scientist is associated with pasteurization (*).
Between the two discoveries, many people have forgotten Pasteur's work on hygiene and the prevention of epidemics, even if the Covid-19 period was an opportunity to recall it.
Pasteur left a strong mark in the Jura through his two houses: the house where he was born in Dole and his house in Arbois, the only house he owned.
Pasteur multiplied in the Jura the experimental campaigns on alcoholic fermentation, on spontaneous generation and the second child who received the vaccine against rabies came from Villers-Farlay, a village a few kilometers from the residence of the scientist.
And then symbolic places maintain the memory of the scientific work of Louis Pasteur: Mont Poupet (above Salins-les-Bains) the vineyard of Montigny-les-Arsures where he carried out experiments questioning the belief in spontaneous generation microorganisms.
The people of the Jura have already, during Pasteur's lifetime, wanted to be part of this history: commemorative plaques have been placed, marked Pasteur roads have been traced.
Two associations, one in Dole, the Society of Friends of Pasteur, created in December 1927, and the other in Arbois, the Pasteur Patrimoine Arboisien association continue to devote their energy to recalling the history of the scientist while promoting houses and the dissemination of the experimental approach is ensured by a public establishment for cultural cooperation called Terre de Louis Pasteur.
What are the highlights of this bicentenary?
The steering committee bringing together Jura and national players – Academy of Sciences and Institut Pasteur in particular – agreed that events in Bourgogne Franche-Comté would have the greatest visibility over the 2022 summer season (from April to November 2022) while the major institutions will organize events in Paris during the winter period until 2023. The Academy of Sciences has requested the creation of a rose to celebrate the event.
She wants to take advantage of this commemoration to start restoration work and make the house of Arbois accessible.
For this, she asked for the support of the Heritage Foundation.
The fourth edition of Stéphane Bern's mission has finally designated the house of Louis Pasteur as an emblematic place which will be able to benefit from the aid of the Heritage Loto.
What are the repercussions (economic, tourist) of the memory of Louis Pasteur at the level of the Jura?
The Jura houses of Louis Pasteur together welcome around 40,000 visitors a year.
A figure which is undoubtedly not in line with Pasteur's reputation but also reflects the tourist context of the Jura, a rural department far from large urban areas.
The department mainly attracts people looking for outdoor activities and gastronomy.
The economic benefits linked to the memory of Louis Pasteur apart from the income of the public institution are more difficult to quantify.
However, there is a synergy between the visit of the heritage houses, the gastronomy and the local products (wines of the Jura including the famous yellow wine, the county) and the Pasteurian themes (fermentation in particular).
What traces have been preserved of the centenary of December 27, 1922?
Because Pasteur was born at the end of the year, on December 27, 1822, a period not conducive to major commemorations (the war of 14-18 is not so far away, the climatic conditions, the proximity of the end-of-year celebrations) , the commemorations were postponed to 1923. The French government decided to dedicate a day in honor of Louis Pasteur, on May 27, 1923: "
This event was not only to glorify one of the most illustrious representatives of science but also to arouse in public opinion a great movement in favor of the development of scientific laboratories and the improvement of the various material means made available to our scientists for the execution of their research
".
The town of Dole acquired his birthplace in 1911, but the First World War delayed the opening of the museum for a time.
On May 26, 1923, a huge party took place to celebrate the scientist: garlands were hung in all the streets of the city and the houses were all flowered.
In 2023, Dole will celebrate the centenary of the inauguration of the city's Pasteur museum.
(*) Pasteurization is a process during which certain foods are heated for a short time to kill any bacteria that may be present.
(1) Pages 338 and 339,
History of the city of Dieppe, from its origins to the present day
, Alexandre Bouteiller, Emile Delevoye, printer - publisher (1878)
(2) Page 104, “The great fear of rabies”, André Besson,
Around Louis Pasteur
,
Cahiers dolois
(1995)
(3) Page 106, “The great fear of rabies”, André Besson,
Around Louis Pasteur
,
Cahiers dolois
(1995)
(4) Page 31,
Things seen, 1847-1848
, Paris, Victor Hugo, Gallimard - Folio (1972)
(5) https://www.pasteur.fr/fr/institut-pasteur/notre-histoire/troisieme-epoque-1877-1887
(6) "Pasteur and rabies: the role of veterinarians (Galtier and Bourrel in particular)", R. Rosset,
Bulletin of the French Veterinary Academy
(1985)
(7) Page 300,
Pasteur
, Michel Morange, Biographies NRF Gallimard (2022)
(8) Page 323,
Pasteur
, Michel Morange, Biographies NRF Gallimard (2022)
(9) “The pioneers of vaccination: Louis Pasteur and rabies”, Frédéric Lewino,
Le Point
(October 19, 2020)
(10) https://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedia/louis-pasteur/
Having become the owner of the family tannery in Arbois (our photo), Louis Pasteur set up his laboratory there where he studied fermentation and diseases in wine.
© RFI / Marc Verney
►
A few biographical references
December 27, 1822: birth of Louis Pasteur in Dole
August 13, 1842: passage of the baccalaureate in mathematical sciences in Dijon
May 15, 1848: dissertation on the relationship that may exist between the crystalline form, the chemical composition and the direction of rotary polarization (Pasteur's first great discovery in crystallography).
This discovery makes it possible to understand how a chemical compound can be beneficial or harmful to a living organism.
November 7, 1852: full professor of chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences of Strasbourg
September 1854: Dean of the Faculty of Sciences of Lille
November 20, 1856: Pasteur begins his research on alcoholic fermentation
March 1857: failure at the Academy of Sciences
October 3, 1857: publication of the memoir on fermentation called lactic
October 1857: administrator of the Normal School, he is director of scientific studies of this school
September 10, 1859: death of his eldest daughter Jeanne (9 and a half years old) from typhoid fever
July 3, 1861: dissertation on the organized corpuscles that exist in the atmosphere, examination of the doctrine of spontaneous generations
February 10 and July 7, 1862: studies on mycoderma.
Role of these plants in ascetic fermentation.
A new process for making vinegar
December 8, 1862: election to the Academy of Sciences in the mineralogy section
May 1, 1865: practical process for preserving and improving wines (later called pasteurization).
Pasteur also conducts first studies on silkworm disease
June 15, 1865: death of Pasteur's father
August 11, 1865: death of his daughter Camille (2 years old) in Arbois
May 23, 1866: his daughter Cécile (12 and a half years old) dies in Chambéry
1867: creation of a physiological chemistry laboratory at the Normal School
October 19, 1868: Louis Pasteur suffers from left hemiplegia
1870: Pasteur moves into his house in Arbois
April-August 1871: first research on beer
November 17, 1873: studies on beer and development of a new manufacturing process that makes it unalterable
July 1874: national award for Pasteur
April 30, 1877: studies on anthrax
October 1878: Louis Pasteur is Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor
February 9, 1880: around chicken cholera, Pasteur exposes for the first time the principle of virus-vaccines
October 26, 1880: attenuation of the chicken cholera virus
December 11, 1880: first work on rabies
March 21, 1881: anthrax vaccine
June 13, 1881: report of the experiments carried out at Pouilly-le-Fort on anthrax vaccination
December 8, 1881: election to the French Academy
January 20, 1883: reply to a memoir by Robert Koch concerning vaccination against anthrax
February 25, 1884: new communication on rabies
July 6, 1885: first rabies vaccination in humans
October 26, 1885: treatment to prevent rabies after bite;
the young shepherd Jupille, from Villers-Farlay, bitten by a dog, treated by Pasteur
March 1, 1886: decision to create a national institute against rabies
July 18, 1887: Pastor elected perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences
October 23, 1887: Pastor struck down with a stroke
September 1894: Louis Pasteur's last stay in Arbois
September 28, 1895: death of the scientist in Villeneuve-l'Étang (Marnes-la-Coquette)
October 5, 1895: state funeral
► Useful links:
Pastor Institute
Bicentenary
website
Louis Pasteur
in the Jura
► Bibliography:
Pasteur, the man and the scholar
, Annick Perret, Maxime Schwartz, ed.
Tallandier (2022)
Pasteur
, Michel Morand, Biographies NRF – Gallimard (2022)
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