Father of Preventative Medicine

Louis Pasteur was born on December 27, 1822, in Dole in the Jura region of France. His father, Jean-Joseph Pasteur, was a poor tanner and a sergeant major decorated with the Legion of Honour during the Napoleonic Wars. From his father he acquired a strong sense of patriotism, a major element of his character. Louis was an average student in his younger years but was gifted in drawing and painting. His pastels and paintings of friends and family members, made when he was 15, are kept in the museum of the Pasteur Institute inParis. He attended primary school in Arbois, the town where he grew up. He attended secondary school in nearby Besanon. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1840 and his Bachelor of Science degree in 1842 at the Royal College of Besanon.

In 1843 Louis Pasteur was admitted to the Ecole Normale Superieure, an elite teachers’ college inParis. While there he attended lectures by French chemist Dumas. Pasteur decided to become a research chemist and was Dumas’ teaching assistant. Pasteur obtained his Master of Science degree in 1845 and then earned an advanced degree in Physical Sciences. He earned his Doctorate in Sciences in 1847. Pasteur was appointed professor of physics at the Dijon Lycee, a secondary school, in 1848. Shortly after teaching at the Dijon Lycee he accepted a position as professor of chemistry at theUniversityofStrasbourg. While at Strasbourg Pasteur met and courted Marie Laurent, the daughter of the rector of the university. They were married on May 29, 1849. Together they had five children. Only two survived childhood. Of the three who died young, two died of typhoid and one from a brain tumor. These personal tragedies inspired Pasteur to study diseases and find cures.

In 1854, at the age of just 32, Pasteur became Dean of the Faculty of Science at the Universityof Lille. Lille was the center of alcohol manufacture inFrance. In 1856, Pasteur received a visit from a man who worked at a factory that made alcohol from sugar beet. Many of his vats of fermented beer were turning sour and had to be thrown away. He asked Pasteur to find out why. Pasteur began a series of studies on alcoholic fermentation. Using a microscope, Pasteur found thousands of tiny micro-organisms. He was convinced they were responsible for the beer going sour. He believed that they caused the putrefaction- not that they were the result of the putrefaction. He continued to work on this theory by studying other liquids such as milk, wine and vinegar. In 1857, he returned to the Ecole Normale Superieure inParisas Director of Scientific Studies. Between 1857 and 1859, he became convinced that the liquids he had studied were being contaminated with microbes that floated in the air.

The medical establishment ridiculed Pasteur for his germ theory. He was vilified in public. But rather than giving up he was more determined to fight for what he believed in. He devised tests to prove he was right and was eventually able to prove that air contained living organisms; that these microbes can produce putrefaction; that the microbes could be killed by the heating of the liquid they were in; and that these microbes were not uniformly distributed in the air. In April 1864, Pasteur explained his beliefs in front of a gathering of famous scientists at theUniversityofParisand proved his case beyond doubt. With his germ theory established he invented a process in which liquids such as milk were heated to kill most bacteria and molds already present in them. This process was soon afterwards known as pasteurization.

Once Pasteur proved that germs were the cause of fermentation in liquids he believed they could be the cause of contagious diseases in people and animals as well. Because of his study in germs, Pasteur encouraged doctors to sanitize their hands and equipment before surgery. Prior to this, few doctors or their assistants practiced washing procedures. He proposed preventing the entry of micro-organisms into the human body, which led Joseph Lister to develop antiseptic methods in surgery. Pasteur had ushered in the era of preventative medicine.

In the following years Louis Pasteur solved the mysteries of chicken cholera, anthrax in sheep, and silkworm diseases. He contributed to the development of the first vaccines for animal diseases. Pasteur turned next to rabies and developed a vaccine for animals afflicted with the disease. Most people who were victims of rabies died a painful death and the disease was getting more and more common in France. But he faced a problem- what worked on animals might not work on people. In 1885, a young boy, Joseph Meister, had been bitten by a rabid dog and was brought to Pasteur. The boy would have certainly died an agonizing death if nothing was done. Pasteur took a risk and gave the boy his animal-tested vaccine. The boy survived.

All of Louis Pasteur’s achievements point to his brilliance and perseverance. His work was the springboard for branches of science and medicine such as stereochemistry, microbiology, bacteriology, virology, and molecular biology. His work has protected millions of people from disease through vaccination and pasteurization.

“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.”- Louis Pasteur

Jody Victor