Pasteur made great contributions to the prevention and treatment of diseases in humans and livestock and poultry raised by humans. Due to his outstanding achievements in science, he enjoys a high reputation throughout Europe. The University of Bonn in Germany solemnly awarded an honorary degree certificate to this famous scholar.
The well-deserved "Father of Microbiology"
Louis Pasteur (1821-1895), a French microbiologist, chemist, and the founder of modern microbiology. Pasteur was a professor at the University of Lille and the Université Normale de Paris in France and the director of the Pasteur Institute. During his lifetime, he made major achievements in the research of isomerism, fermentation, bacterial culture and vaccines, thus laying the foundation of industrial microbiology and medical microbiology. Just like Newton pioneered classical mechanics, Pasteur pioneered the field of microorganisms and made immortal contributions to immunology, medicine, etc. His reputation as the "Father of Microbiology" is well deserved. After the Franco-Prussian War broke out, Germany occupied French territory. Out of his deep feelings for his motherland and his great hatred for the invaders, Pasteur resolutely returned the honorary degree certificate to the University of Bonn, Germany. He said: "Although science has no There are no national boundaries, but scientists have their own motherland.” This resounding statement fully expresses the patriotic feelings of a scientist and has become an immortal patriotic saying.
The establishment of germ theory
Pasteur spent his whole life proving three scientific issues: 1. Every fermentation is due to the development of a kind of microbial bacteria. The heating method can kill those annoying microorganisms that make beer bitter. 2. Every infectious disease is the development of a microbial bacterium in an organism. It discovers and eradicates a bacterium that infects silkworm eggs: 3. The virulence of infectious microorganisms can be reduced under special cultivation, turning them from germs into vaccines for disease prevention.
In fact, Pasteur was not the first discoverer of germs. Before him, Kirula, Henry Bao and others had put forward similar hypotheses. But he not only put forward the theory about germs enthusiastically and bravely, but also proved the correctness of his theory through a large number of experiments, thus establishing the germ theory and convincing the scientific community.
The Story of Pasteur and the Rabies Vaccine
Pasteur’s research on rabies vaccines in his later years was the culmination of his career. Although Pasteur did not know that rabies was a viral disease in the era when germ theory was dominant, he knew from scientific practice that the toxicity of infectious substances would decrease after repeated passage and drying. To obtain this infective substance, Pasteur often risked his life by extracting it from sick animals. Once, in order to collect the saliva of a mad dog, Pasteur knelt at the feet of the mad dog and waited patiently. Pasteur continuously inoculated the isolated virus into the brains of rabbits for passage. When he injected the rabies virus that had undergone 100 brain-free passages into healthy dogs, a miracle happened. The dogs did not get sick and were immune. force.
On July 6, 1885, 9-year-old French child Meister was bitten by a rabid dog in 14 places. After diagnosis, the doctor declared that he had no hope of survival. However, Pasteur gave him a daily rabies vaccine. Two weeks later, the child's condition turned around. Pasteur became the first person in the world to cure rabies. In 1888, in recognition of his outstanding contributions, the Pasteur Institute was established and he personally served as its director.
Discovered "anaerobic respiration of yeast"
In September 1854, the French Ministry of Education appointed Pasteur as dean of Lille Polytechnic and chairman of the Department of Chemistry, where he I became interested in the alcohol industry. An important process in making alcohol is fermentation. At that time, an alcohol manufacturing factory in Lille encountered technical problems and asked Pasteur to help study the fermentation process. Pasteur went deep into the factory to inspect and brought various beetroot juices and fermented liquids back to the laboratory for observation. After many experiments, he discovered that there was a spherical cell in the fermentation broth that was much smaller than yeast. Soon, buds will grow on the bacterial cells. After the buds grow up, they fall off and become new spherical bodies. In this continuous cycle, they grow up and become "yeast", and the beetroot is fermented.
Pasteur discovered through continued research that the alcohol and carbon dioxide gas produced during fermentation are obtained by yeast decomposing sugar. This process can occur even in the absence of oxygen. He believes that fermentation is the anaerobic respiration of yeast, and controlling their living conditions is the key to brewing wine.
Pasteur and "Pasteurization"
The French beer industry is very famous in Europe, but the beer often becomes sour, and the entire barrel of aromatic and delicious beer becomes The sour, grinning slime had to be poured out, causing wine merchants to complain endlessly, and some even went bankrupt. In 1865, a brewery owner in Lille asked Pasteur to help cure the "disease" of beer and see if he could add a chemical to prevent the beer from becoming sour. In his research, Pasteur discovered that the liquid of unspoiled aged wine and beer contained a spherical yeast cell. When the wine and beer became sour, there were thin stick-like lactobacilli in the liquid. This is what Pasteur discovered. The "bad guys" multiply in the nutrient-rich beer, making it "sick". He placed closed wine bottles in wire baskets and soaked them in water to heat them to different temperatures. Trying to kill the lactobacilli without cooking the beer bad. After repeated experiments, he finally found a simple and effective method: as long as the wine is kept in an environment of 50 or 60 degrees Celsius for half an hour, the lactobacilli in the wine can be killed. This is the famous "Pasteurization" method. Disinfection method”. This method is still used today, and the sterilized milk sold on the market is sterilized using this method.