Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/106

91 The general problem, of which Jenner's discovery was a particular case, has been grasped by Pasteur, in a manner, and with results, which five short years ago were simply unimaginable. How much "accident" had to do with shaping the course of his inquiries I know not. A mind like his resembles a photographic plate, which is ready to accept and develop luminous impressions, sought and unsought. In the chapter on fowl-cholera is described how Pasteur first obtained his attenuated virus. By successive cultivations of the parasite he showed that, after it had been a hundred times reproduced, it continued to be as virulent as at first. One necessary condition was, however, to be observed. It was essential that the cultures should rapidly succeed each other—that the organism, before its transference to a fresh cultivating liquid, should not be left long in contact with air. When exposed to air for a considerable time the virus becomes so enfeebled that when fowls are inoculated with it, though they sicken for a time, they do not die. But this "attenuated" virus, which M. Radot justly calls "benign," constitutes a sure protection against the virulent virus. It so exhausts the soil that the really fatal contagium fails to find there the elements necessary to its reproduction and multiplication.

Pasteur affirms that it is the oxygen of the air which, by lengthened contact, weakens the virus and converts it into a true vaccine. He has also weakened it by transmission through various animals. It was this form of attenuation that was brought into play in the case of Jenner.

The secret of attenuation had thus become an open one to Pasteur. He laid hold of the murderous virus of splenic fever, and succeeded in rendering it, not only harmless to life, but a sure protection against the virus in its most concentrated form. No man, in my opinion, can work at these subjects so rapidly as Pasteur without falling into errors of detail. But this may occur while his main position remains impregnable. Such a result, for example, as that obtained in presence of so many witnesses at Melun must surely remain an ever-memorable conquest of science. Having prepared his attenuated virus, and proved, by laboratory experiments, its efficacy as a protective vaccine, Pasteur accepted an invitation, from the President of the Society of Agriculture at Melun, to make a public experiment on what might be called an agricultural scale. This act of Pasteur's is, perhaps, the boldest thing recorded in this book. It naturally caused anxiety among his colleagues of the Academy, who feared that he had been rash in closing with the proposal of the president.

But the experiment was made. A flock of sheep was divided into two groups, the members of one group being all vaccinated with the attenuated virus, while those of the other group were left unvaccinated. A number of cows were also subjected to a precisely similar treatment. Fourteen days afterward all the sheep and all the cows, vaccinated and unvaccinated, were inoculated with a very virulent