Louis Pasteur : his life and labours by his son-in-law. Translated from the French by Lady Claud Hamilton, with an introd. by John Tyndall.

  • Vallery-Radot, René, 1853-1933.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Louis Pasteur : his life and labours by his son-in-law. Translated from the French by Lady Claud Hamilton, with an introd. by John Tyndall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto.

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    dissymmetry, down to his most recent investigations on hydrophobia, on virulent diseases, and on the arti- ficial cultures of living contagia, which have been converted by such cultures into veritable vaccines— passing by the intermediate celebrated experiments on spontaneous generation, fermentation, the diseases of wine, the manufacture of beer and vinegar, and the diseases of silkworms—the author of these pages has been able, if not to witness all, at least to follow in its principal developments this uninterrupted series of scientific conquests. ' What a beautiful book,' he remarked one day to M. Pasteur, ' might be written about all this !' 'But it is all in the Comptes-rendus of the Academy of Sciences.' ' It is not for the readers of the Comptes-rendus that such a book needs to be written, but for the great public, who know that you have done great things, but who know it only vaguely, by the records of journals, or by fragments of biography. The persons are few who know the history of your discoveries. What was your point of departure ? How have you arrived at such and such principles, and at the conse- quences which flow from these principles ? What is the connection and rigorous bond of your method ? These are the things which it would be interesting to put together in a book which would have some chance of enduring as an historic document.'