Pasteur Brewing Louis Pasteur – Science, Health, and Brewing A biography of Louis Pasteur, just completed by his son-in-law, gives the following description of the surroundings of the great French investigator at his daily work:
All the animals in the laboratory, from the little white mice hiding under a bundle of cotton-wool to the dogs barking furiously from their railed kennels, are doomed to death. These inhabitants of the place, which are marched out day after day to be subject to operations or other experiments, share the space with still more ghastly objects. From all parts of France hampers arrive containing fowls which have died of cholera or some other disease.
Here is an enormous basket bound with straw; it contains the body of a pig which has died of fever. A fragment of lung, forwarded in a tin box, is from a cow which died of pneumonia. Other goods are still more precious. Since Pasteur, two years ago, went to Pauillac to await the arrival of a boat which brought yellow fever patients, he receives now and then from far-off countrie3s a bottle of black vomit. Tubes of blood are lying about; and plates containing drops of blood may be seen everywhere on the work-table. In special stores bottle-like bladders are ranged. The prick of a pin into one of these bladders would bring death to any man. Enclosed in glass prisons millions of microbes live and multiply.
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