Louis pasteur quotes the greatest disease

Louis Pasteur – Contributions

Louis Pasteur (27 December 1822 – 28 September 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, the last of which was named after him.

Spontaneous generation

Pasteur was responsible for disproving the doctrine of spontaneous generation. Louis Pasteur showed that microbes were omnipresent – in water, in air, on objects, on the skin – and that some were responsible for diseases.

In 1862 Louis Pasteur was able to claim that:

• airborne dust contained microorganisms which develop and multiply.
• even the most putrescible liquids remained unadulterated if kept away from air (and hence these microorganisms) after heating.

He recommended ways of preventing and fighting these germs. This notably included the use of aseptic procedures. He advocated the importance of sterilization of linen and dressings, passing instruments through a flame and clean hands.

How does fermentation work?

While studying butyric fermentation he discovered a new class of living organisms capable of living without air. He used the term ” anaerobic ” to describe ferments able to live without air and ” aerobic ” for microorganisms requiring the presence of free oxygen to grow. He came to the conclusion that fermentation is the consequence of life without air.

His research, which showed that microorganisms cause both fermentation and disease, supported the germ theory of disease at a time when its validity was still being questioned. Thus, Pasteur is also regarded as one of the fathers of germ theory of diseases. His many experiments showed that diseases could be prevented by killing or stopping germs, thereby directly supporting the germ theory and its application in clinical medicine. He is best known to the general public for his invention of the technique of treating milk

Louis Pasteur (27 December1822 – 28 September1895) French microbiologist, chemist, pioneer of the "Germ theory of disease", discoverer of molecular asymmetry and stereo-chemistry, and inventor of the process of Pasteurization.

Quotes

• I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner.
  • Letter (December 1851); as quoted in The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History (2004) by John M. Barry
  • Variant translations:
  • I am on the verge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner. The nights seem to me too long... I am often scolded by Madame Pasteur, but I tell her I shall lead her to fame.
    • Microbe Hunters (1926) by Paul De Kruif
  • My plan of study is traced for this coming year... I am hoping to develop it shortly in the most successful manner... I think that I have already told you that I am on the verge of mysteries, and that the veil which covers them is getting thinner and thinner. The nights seem to me too long, yet I do not complain... I am often scolded by Mme. Pasteur, but I console her by telling her that I shall lead her to fame.
    • The Life of Pasteur (1916) by René Vallery-Radot

• Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.
  • In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.
    • Lecture, University of Lille (7 December 1854)
  • Variant translations of this or similar statements include:
  • Chance favors the prepared mind.
  • Fortune favors the prepared mind.
  • In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.
  • Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.

• There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are sciences and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.
  • Revue Scientifique (1871)
    • Variant translation: There are no such things as applied scien

Today is the 200th anniversary of the French scientist Louis Pasteur’s birth. So what, you might say? Why does he matter?

It turns out he mattered a great deal. He made fundamental scientific discoveries and also kept important French industries from failing. 

Pasteur began the field of stereochemistry. He demonstrated that organic molecules could come in mirror-image forms. He also discovered the basis of fermentation and found a way to prevent the spoilage of wines and beer. He identified two diseases of silkworms and developed methods to separate sick from healthy silkworms, thus saving the French silk industry.

Pasteur demonstrated the bacterial basis of many diseases and helped identify the organisms responsible. He helped to develop infection control by introducing antiseptic practices. Other important contributors were the German scientist Robert Koch and the English physician Edward Lister.

He developed the first vaccine for anthrax, and the viral disease rabies. This one achievement won him awards around the world.

Disproving Spontaneous Generation

Perhaps Pasteur is most famous for disproving spontaneous generation. He demonstrated that germs on dust were responsible for spoilage and microbe growth, by sterilizing broth in swan-necked flasks and then letting the broth sit. The swan necks prevented dust and microbes from getting in, so nothing grew. Spontaneous generation did not take place. (Do you suppose if he had waited 500 million years, it might have happened?)

Now, from what sort of background did this prodigy emerge?

Pasteur was born December 27, 1822, in Dole, France, to a poor family. His father was a tanner. They valued education and found support to send him to the best schools they could afford. Pasteur loved painting and drawing and neglected his studies for years. When it dawned on him that art was not likely to earn a living for him, he switched to chemistry. 

He was not

Abstract

Louis Pasteur is traditionally considered as the progenitor of modern immunology because of his studies in the late nineteenth century that popularized the germ theory of disease, and that introduced the hope that all infectious diseases could be prevented by prophylactic vaccination, as well as also treated by therapeutic vaccination, if applied soon enough after infection. However, Pasteur was working at the dawn of the appreciation of the microbial world, at a time when the notion of such a thing as an immune system did not exist, certainly not as we know it today, more than 130 years later. Accordingly, why was Pasteur such a genius as to discern how the immune system functions to protect us against invasion by the microbial world when no one had even made the distinction between fungi, bacteria, or viruses, and no one had formulated any theories of immunity. A careful reading of Pasteur’s presentations to the Academy of Sciences reveals that Pasteur was entirely mistaken as to how immunity occurs, in that he reasoned, as a good microbiologist would, that appropriately attenuated microbes would deplete the host of vital trace nutrients absolutely required for their viability and growth, and not an active response on the part of the host. Even so, he focused attention on immunity, preparing the ground for others who followed. This review chronicles Pasteur’s remarkable metamorphosis from organic chemist to microbiologist to immunologist, and from basic science to medicine.

Keywords: Louis Pasteur, microbe, vaccination, chicken cholera, anthrax, rabies, immunity, attenuation

The microscope or the telescope, which of the two has the grander view?

(Hugo, 1862, Les Miserables)

Introduction

As a student of immunology, I learned that Louis Pasteur was really the father of immunology, despite Edward Jenner’s pioneering introduction of vaccination to prevent smallpox in 1798 (Smith, 2011). Although successful, Jenner’s experiments led to no underst