On December 27, 1892, many famous scientists from all over the world gathered in a luxurious hall in Paris, France. When the French president walked into the hall with an old man with silver hair on his arm, people stood up and cheered, and the band played a victory march. This is a scene during the 70th birthday celebration of the famous French microbiologist and chemist Pasteur.
Who was Pasteur (1822～1895)? Why are the celebrities and powerful people so mobilized? We have to start from the beginning.
Before the 19th century, rabies seriously threatened people's health. Rabies is a disease that Pasteur in France has been studying for many years and preparing to conquer.
In order to obtain the rabies vaccine, Pasteur and his assistant tied a mad dog to the table, while he leaned down and sucked saliva from the dog's lower jaw drop by drop through a dropper with his mouth. In order to conquer this disease, Pasteur, who was in his 60s, showed no fear. He instructed his assistants to inject the saliva into the experimental animals. As a result, the animals all died of painful diseases. The problem has basically been clarified. It is the saliva of mad dogs that brings the virus into the human body and invades the human brain.
In order to find a way to deal with rabies, Pasteur took out the spinal cord of the mad dog and let it dry. After 10 days, the rabid dog's spinal cord loses its toxicity and is then inoculated into sick dogs that have been bitten by rabid dogs. Strangely enough, the sick dog gradually recovered. Next, Pasteur took out the pathogenic bacteria from chickens that had suffered from cholera and left them for a period of time, and their toxicity was greatly weakened. He took out the spinal cord of a rabbit that died of rabies and found that the longer it dried naturally, the less toxic it became. So he ground the spinal cord of a rabbit that died of rabies after being left for 14 days to make a pulp and injected it into other rabbits. The next day, the rabbits were injected with fresh dead rabbit spinal fluid that had been dried for 13 days, 12 days, etc. Until the injection of fresh dead rabbit spinal fluid on the same day, the rabbits miraculously survived.
The experiment was finally successful and he created a rabies vaccine! After Pasteur achieved these results, he was thinking, if this method is successfully tested on humans, wouldn't it be possible to conquer rabies? But where to find people to test?
He once requested to conduct experiments on a prisoner sentenced to death, but the court did not allow it. He had no choice but to use his own body for experiments, but his family, relatives and friends blocked him in every possible way and even placed him under surveillance. Pasteur was at a loss for words.
The chance finally came. One morning in 1885, the door of Pasteur's laboratory was knocked open, and a man from Alsace broke in holding a child Meister who had just been bitten by a mad dog. "Save him!" The child's mother, who was following behind, begged with tears in her eyes. Under such circumstances, Pasteur could no longer hesitate and immediately experimented on children. He injected the attenuated rabies bacteria into the child, one injection a day, and finally saved the child 31 days later. After that, people rushed to send patients bitten by mad dogs to him for treatment, and most of them were cured. Among them, 16 Russian patients bitten by rabid dogs were also rescued by him, which caused a sensation throughout Russia. The Tsarist government awarded Pasteur a medal. The aforementioned Meister, who was rescued by Pasteur, later worked as a janitor at the Pasteur Institute until he committed suicide when Germany occupied Paris in 1940.
The invention of the rabies vaccine enabled Pasteur to create a new science: immunology. This is another contribution he made to mankind.
If Pasteur had not waited for the chance of human experimentation, he would have postponed or even been unable to conquer rabies for a lifetime, even if he had all the conditions except the opportunity. This illustrates the importance of "waiting" and "timing." "The three most important words in the dictionary are will, work and waiting. I want to build the pyramid of success on these three cornerstones." Pasteur's famous saying tells the secret of success.
Pasteur was an outstanding chemist and biologist. This student, whose chemistry score was judged as "passing" by a professor when he was studying, jumped into the ranks of famous chemists at the age of 26 due to his research on the mirror image isomers of tartaric acid. Although Pasteur was not the first person to propose the germ theory of disease, he strongly supported the germ theory through a large number of experiments and demonstrations. This support was the main factor that convinced the scientific community that the theory was correct. He also invented the immunological treatment of anthrax, a serious infectious disease that attacks cattle, sheep, humans and other animals. He is credited with the discovery of anaerobic bacteria, the chicken cholera vaccine, and the discovery of chicken Vibrio cholerae.
His achievements in medicine and biology can only be briefly described here, so that it cannot fully explain that he is "the most important figure in the history of medicine."
Pasteur's "morality" is reflected in "his life's goal is to help mankind." May 29, 1849 was his wedding day, but he could only be found in the laboratory. When a friend asked him how he forgot about the wedding, he asked: "Can the experiment be stopped midway? I have to finish today's experiment before getting married." He "will do whatever is needed by society." This is an example of him sucking the saliva of a rabid dog regardless of being infected with rabies. He has already put life and death aside. In 1865, when he went to the Ares silkworm area in southern France to study silkworm diseases, he "ran like crazy in various sericulture areas." Even though his father and two daughters were killed by infectious diseases, he did not give up his research. He ground the diseased silkworms with water into juice, took a drop of the juice and observed it under a microscope, and finally found some tiny oval particles. Such particles are also found on the body and eggs of female moths. He repeated the observation again and again and got the same result. So he concluded that these "small particles", namely microorganisms, were the culprit of silkworm diseases. Therefore, he suggested that all moths that laid eggs should be inspected and those found to have spots should be burned. In this way, the silkworm disease was conquered and the French sericulture industry was brought back to life.
Pasteur lived a life of integrity, seeking truth from facts, adhering to the truth, and was able to correctly deal with the jealousy of his colleagues and secular marriage prejudices. For example, at a meeting of the French Medical Association, the pragmatic Pasteur denounced the viciousness and stupidity of a doctor, Quin, so that Quin became furious, jumped up from his chair and threw himself at Pasteur, who was later killed by everyone. Nothing happened until he was delayed. The next day, Quinn proposed a duel with Pasteur, and Pasteur replied: "My profession is to save people, not to kill." Pasteur had a correct outlook on life and marriage. When he was 27 years old, he was a professor of chemistry at the University of Strasbourg. He met Mary, the principal's daughter, and fell in love at first sight. Since there was no rule in France at that time to directly propose to a girl, he had to express his love to his parents first, so he wrote a long letter to the principal, stating that he was the son of a cobbler, with little property, but a healthy body and a kind heart. It can be seen that he is as serious and honest about marriage as he is about science. Later, the two finally got married.
In 1888, in order to thank this outstanding and moral man, the French people voluntarily donated money to build the Pasteur Institute. At the inauguration ceremony, Pasteur said excitedly: "Of course science has no borders, but scientists have their own motherland. I should contribute my talents to the motherland."