Pasteur's Pride

One hot July morning in 1885, feverish little Joseph Meister was dragged by his frantic mother through the streets of Paris in search of an unknown scientist who, according to rumors, could prevent rabies. For nine-year-old Joseph had been bitten in 14 places by a huge, mad dog and in a desperate attempt to cheat death, his mother had fled from their home town in Alsace to Paris. Early in the afternoon Mme Meister met a young physician in a hospital. "You mean Pasteur," he said. "I'll take you there."

Bacteriologist Louis Pasteur, who kept kennels of mad dogs in a crowded little laboratory and was hounded by medical criticism, had never tried his rabies vaccine on a human being before. But moved by the tears of Mme Meister, he finally took the boy to the Hotel-Dieu, had him injected with material from the spinal cord of a rabbit that had died from rabies. For three weeks Pasteur watched anxiously at the boy's bedside. To his overwhelming joy, the boy recovered.

In October the French Academy of Sciences officially recognized Pasteur's serum, and hostile criticism melted before the warm rush of praise that greeted the scientist from all over the world. Hundreds of persons who had been bitten by mad dogs rushed to his laboratory, and a public international subscription was opened to build larger quarters. Thousands of francs poured in, and in 1888 President Sadi Carnot of France, surrounded by a brilliant throng of cheering scientists, opened the Pasteur Institute. But the new Institute came too late to the old genius who had! suffered taunts and gibes all his life. As he gazed with pride at his spacious new buildings and modern equipment he said sadly: "I have the poignant melancholy of a man who enters here beaten by time."

Although he died within seven years, Louis Pasteur was wrong. For around his tomb, which stands in the largest of the three Institute buildings, moves a crowd of busy scientists who are so passionately devoted to Pasteur's ideals of free criticism and painstaking experiment that his lifetime has really been projected into the future. Many of his successors still use his old furniture, work with his old instruments. And janitor of the Institute is old Joseph Meister. "I shall see always Pasteur's good face focused on me," he tells Institute visitors.

Next week the Pasteur Institute will celebrate its soth anniversary. President Albert Lebrun of France will attend the ceremonies, and a thousand scientists from all over the world will meet to honor Pasteur and the work of the Institute. All will recall Pasteur's speech at the opening of the institute. "Two opposing laws seem to me now in contest," he said. "The one, a law of blood and death . . . the other, a law of peace, work and health. . . . Which of these two laws will prevail, God only knows." These words seem very fresh to Institute scientists, for they had planned their celebration last November, were forced to postpone it because of war threats.

The Institute, located behind the Invalides, where Napoleon is entombed, consists of three Georgian-style buildings which contain 68 laboratories inhabited by 218 scientists. Head of the entire organization is grey-bearded Dr. Louis Martin. There are many laboratory annexes throughout Paris, a large library, a hospital, a model monkey centre for experimental studies, and a farm at Villeneuve-l'Etang, near Paris. The Curie Cancer Center is an outgrowth of the Institute, and there are branches in Indo-China, North Africa, Greece and Persia.

Practically every large experimental laboratory in the world has been guided by the example of the Pasteur Institute. And no single laboratory in the world has been responsible for so many bacteriological discoveries, largely directly applicable to preventive medicine. Among the achievements of the Institute are development of a vaccine to prevent tuberculosis by Albert Calmette and Alphonse Guerin in 1921,* Emile Roux's and Alexandre Yersin's epoch-making work on the diphtheria bacillus, the typhus discoveries of Nobelman Charles Nicolle of the Pasteur Institute in Tunis, the syphilis and encephalitis investigations of Constantin Levaditi.

Famous scientists who are quietly carrying on significant experiments there include :

> Dr. Harry Plotz, only American in the Institute. For 18 years Dr. Plotz has been head of a large laboratory, but has drawn no salary. Although this is exceptional, all Institute scientists receive very low salaries, for the Institute's income barely supports it. Dr. Plotz, who proved that measles is a virus disease, is now working on a measles serum, recently developed a new modern type of smallpox vaccination. He works in the laboratory of the late famed Biologist Elie Metchnikoff, who received a Nobel Prize in 1908 for his work on immunity. > Professor Gaston Ramon, square-built, square-bearded son of a farmer, who lives surrounded by 400 horses at the Institute's annex in Garches. He makes tremendous quantities of serums against diphtheria, bubonic plague, tetanus and other dread diseases. These serums are sold all over the world. Professor Ramon is famed as the man who developed diphtheria antitoxin, and the principle of multiple vaccination: immunization against several diseases with a single vaccination. > Dr. Ernest Franc,ois Auguste Fourneau, master of chemical therapy, known for his local anesthetics, stovaine and stovarsol. Dr. Fourneau, a serious-looking man, when asked how he happened to name his discoveries, always says that he was inspired by the English translation of Fourneau, which is "stove." In 1935, after trying 1,161 sulfonamide compounds, Dr. Fourneau finally found the formula which conquered the streptococci of puerperal fever and meningitis.

* In 1931 Calmette's vaccine was challenged when 76 vaccinated German children died of tuberculosis. Investigation proved that the serum was harmless, that the deaths were due to negligence of hospital employes.

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