other. Here was room for the play of imagination. From speculation on the manner in which molds exercise this marvelous preferential metabolism, Pasteur dragged a concrete fact of analytical importance: optically active plant alkaloids combine with optically active acids, giving salts of sufficiently different solubilities to permit the separation of isomers.

An appointment to the faculty of science at Lille brought Pasteur to a new environment. He instructed the pupils in physics and chemistry with particular regard to the needs of local industry. The locality was rich in its fermentation industries, and so Pasteur, besides visiting iron foundries and factories of various kinds, came to a place where an attempt was being made to produce alcohol from beet juice. There was born Pasteur, the bacteriologist.

You all know the story-his puzzling over the globules found in good juice and the strange forms they assume in spoiled juice; his examination of fermented milk, and his correlation between the long globules in fermented milk and the long globules in spoiled beet juice. At last came the beginning of bacteriology-separation of typical fermentations; studies of pure cultures (and no mean skill in their chemical analysis); clear recognition of specific types of cells; the demonstration that fermentation is a life process. Then came industrial control by means of pure cultures, adjustments of temperature and of acidity, and the heat treatment now known as pasteurization.

As "hindsight" is clearer than foresight, we can now say that Pasteur, the chemist, should have recognized the justice of Liebig's remark, “In what respect does the explanation of fermentation appear clearer when you have introduced it into a living organism.” It was not until Buchner had separated enzymes capable of fermenting without the presence of living cells that Liebig and Pasteur were each shown in a degree to be right, but each wrong in his exclusion of the other's view.

This controversy with Liebig was more or less bound up with the campaign against the theory of spontaneous generation. Others might have been content to let the experimental facts lie in the archives of scientific societies and to rest smugly in the reassurances of savants who, with Voltaire, had ridiculed the theory of spontaneous generation. Not so Pasteur. Here was a superstition, a falsehood. To dispel the superstition, Pasteur explained. Against the falsehood, he raged. In one respect it is a pity that so much time was spent in hammering away at this theory of spontaneous generation, but in another aspect it was not time wasted. Each stroke of Pasteur's hammer was a beautiful experiment; every resounding crash prepared the popular mind for the public-health work which was to follow.

The experiments are charmingly described in "Studies on Fermentation." This book is a clear and detailed account of experiments as they are done. In these days, when editors clamor for brevity

and bookwriters must condense a world of information, it is refreshing to read this: "Let us boil the liquid, and, having previously drawn out the neck of the flask, let us close the end in the flame of a lamp whilst the steam is escaping, as soon as we judge that the air has been nearly all expelled."

In this easy manner Pasteur describes his experiments; but how skillfully they cut the ground from underneath an opponent, and with what glee Pasteur drops the opponent in the pit! A certain M. Duval has claimed that yeasts metamorphose to lactic ferments. Pasteur points out that M. Duval has made his medium alkaline with chalk and thus favored the lactic ferments in a mixed inoculum. Little points like this show that Pasteur was altogether too keen to be withstood.

At one time or another I have commented upon Pasteur's discernment of the effects of acidity and alkalinity on microbial life. How he managed it is a puzzle. It is probable that he depended upon color changes in litmus and thus adjusted essentially as we do to-day. Perhaps he made litmus work through a wider range than our dull eyes see to-day. Perhaps he had an awareness of intensities of acidity that we have recently had to define and formulate to appreciate.

The absolute loyalty of the man to experimental evidence and his perception of significant facts are well shown in his paper entitled "Animalcules infusoires vivant sans gaz oxygène." Now, it must be appreciated that in Pasteur's time oxygen was considered essential to all life. Some day I hope to see the list of those present at the French Academy when Pasteur read this paper. I am sure that in the list of names will be several of those who are illustrious for their studies in respiration and for the theory which had then become the dogma-no life without oxygen. Before these men, Pasteur, ignoring dogma, described what he saw-living cells which shun

Oxygen.

Although the philosophical significance of this has been obscured by practical applications of the fact, it stirred the imagination of Pasteur. He made it an integral part of his theory of fermentation. He dwelt upon its importance in wound infections. He speculated upon it, and some of the speculations now forgotten are worthy of reconsideration.

I believe that if we examine the life of Pasteur with care and moderation, we shall find him to be not a giant in sheer intellectual power, but rather an exceptionally keen observer, possessed of qualities often attributed to genius--the mind constantly prepared to

receive the significant impression, infinite patience to follow it, and power to visualize the consequences. Many of the facts which Pasteur is commonly believed to have discovered had been observed before. But the observations were islands. Pasteur was the earthquake that lifted the islands to a continent.

All this work on fermentation was causing a "fermentation" in men's minds, and gradually (no one can tell exactly how) there effervesced the misty idea that the contagious diseases of man and animals are somehow akin to the contagious "diseases" of beer and wine. At any rate, we at last find Pasteur's old friend Dumas urging him to assail the problem of silk-worm disease. Duclaux states that Pasteur's only training for this work was witnessing the dissection of a May beetle larva. But once in the field, Pasteur fell back upon his trusted method--personal test of every idea by experimentation. Thus was born Pasteur, the pathologist.

Six strenuous years gave France the brilliant results that saved her silk industry. Then, after a return to older problems, came the last period of Pasteur's rich life. You who are pathologists know, the story better than I--the work on chicken cholera, the chance discovery of attenuated virus, and the genius that snatched from an apparent failure the light that illuminated Jenner's principle of vaccination; the work on anthrax, and the dramatic public experiment on anthrax vaccination; septicemia, and the attack upon the unhygienic methods of the lying-in hospitals; the inspiration given to Lister; and at last the eventful day when courage was summoned by this layman in medicine to treat a human patient, little Joseph Meister, the victim of a rabid dog.

It is chiefly for the work of these later years that Pasteur is being honored the world around to-day. And the reason is clear. When history is written as it will some day be written, the years of man's political rise will seem a dreary waste of wars and quarrels, and the tinseled glories of sordid kings. Real history begins when man began to conquer his environment. Among the conquerors, Pasteur was preeminent.

But when this story is told, when public health work has done its task and we are secure against our microscopic enemies, there will still be another story--that of man's attempt to understand the methods he has turned to practical uses. Here, too, Pasteur will be honored. Let us judge him by what he has done and what we have left undone. He revealed the asymmetry of chemical structure and the asymmetric preferences of fermentation. The chemist uses the fact to separate isomers; the bacteriologist uses the fact to distinguish species. We now picture chemical structures better, but we have not explained the asymmetry of life processes.

He set straight the sequence of events in fermentation. We use the knowledge and have added details, but we do not really under

stand the fundamental chemistry of the simplest phase of fermentation, or the nature of virulence.

He rediscovered and added significance to anaerobiosis. The bacteriologist uses the fact for the cultivation of pathogens, and the physiologist forgets the fact and still says all life is dependent upon oxygen. Almost every known method for obtaining anaerobiosis was used in principle by Pasteur and his pupils. Yet every volume of the several bacteriological journals contains a so-called new method, adding little but a mechanical "stunt" where we find Pasteur seeking a principle.

In short, Pasteur touched upon, and, at each touch illuminated, great problems which I may call problems of understanding as contrasted with problems of practical ways and means. Because the practical ways and means were questions of life and death, Pasteur, the humanitarian, threw his great energy into their solution, and with such success that he is revered among the ignorant as a sort of miracle man. Let us remember, however, that the practical ways and means were tribute moneys levied by Pasteur, the humanitarian, upon Pasteur, the scientist. Here was an insatiable craving to understand the projection of hypotheses into the unknown, mistakes, failures, disappointments, pragmatic results which satisfy the utilitarian mind--and, at last, illumination which widened the horizon and brought honors, but left Pasteur still a pioneer, lonely, on a new far-flung frontier. We think our horizon widened since Pasteur's time. In reality we have to do not with the horizon of the trigonometer but with the horizon of the pioneer. We have gone around great areas difficult of exploration. From their darkness stalk untamed things which haunt us; and, confessing our impotence, we start anew from-Pasteur.

As Korzybski has emphasized, the distinctive attribute of man is his ability to propagate the labor of those who have passed. In this way man has attained a new dimension. He can "bind time." He makes the past the intellectual present and the future the present vision. Thus it is that, in a sense rigidly logical and beautifully true, we have Pasteur with us to-day. He points to the facet on the crystal of tartaric acid; we would not see it otherwise. He gives us rabies prophylaxis. Our hands administer. Our minds have added little. He emphasizes the fact of anaerobiosis and, recalling his own efforts to understand, he asks if we see the relation between anaerobic fermentation and the recently discovered anaerobic phase of muscle metabolism.

We have

We have led his bacterial friends to beneficent uses. encircled the world in a relentless campaign against his microbial enemies. Pasteur's eyes sparkle-then flash. Ever a man of vigor, he brings down his fist-"we foresee the accomplishment of this

humanitarian task, but when, oh when, shall we understand the chemistry of immunity?"

Pasteur-crystallographer, chemist, mycologist, bacteriologist, pathologist. The terms are too many. Let us name him investigator, and, like him, mingle our chemistry and bacteriology.

Pasteur-investigator, benefactor. He lives with us. His great .heart, the heart of a living friend; his genius our inspiration.

REGULATION REQUIRING PASTEURIZATION OF MILK UPHELD.

The following is an opinion of the New York Supreme Court, Dutchess County, upholding a regulation of the board of health of the city of Poughkeepsie, which in effect prohibited the sale of any milk, except grade A raw and certified, unless pasteurized:

Morschauser, J.: The question for determination is the regulation of the board of health passed July 20, 1920, taking effect May 1, 1921. The board of health of the city of Poughkeepsie on July 20, 1920, made and published a regulation that in effect prohibits the sale of any milk in Poughkeepsie, except what is designated grade A raw and certified milk, unless the same is pasteurized. The dealers in milk were given until May 1, 1921, to prepare to meet the conditions imposed upon them by the regulations.

Ordinarily, milk is produced under circumstances which favor the introduction of dirt. The udder of the cow is not normally clean; stables where cows are kept naturally collect manure, dirt, dust, and flies; and milk is seldom, if ever, produced without contamination to a greater or less degree by some of these substances. Invariably accompanying and intimately associated with dirt are bacteria, which are far more injurious than the dirt itself. These organisms may be derived from the udder of the cow, or may have their source from the dirty condition of stables, or from contamination in handling the milk. Milk is the ideal medium for the growth of bacteria, affording the necessary elements for their development, and immediate multiplication ensues. A supply which originally contained but a few hundred bacteria to a cubic centimeter (one-fourth of a tablespoon) may within a few hours be transformed into one containing thousands or even millions. Among these bacteria are many that are harmless, and some that are necessary; but there may also be disease germs. Some of the fatal diseases known to be conveyed by milk are typhoid fever, malaria, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, septic sore throat, diarrhea, and enteritis.

In order to guard against the introduction of disease germs into the milk, provision is made for the inspection of dairies and the tests of the cows for tuberculosis. These measures do result in some protection to the consumers of milk, but, however thorough the inspection of the dairies may be, it does not afford absolute protection against disease, and a further means of safeguarding the milk is afforded by pasteurization. Certified milk.--Cows must be tuberculin tested once during previous year and reactors excluded; farms must be scored not less than 35 per cent for equipment and 50 per cent for methods; employees must be examined by physicians; milkers to wear washable suits, not worn at other times; bacterial count not more than 10,000 bacteria per cubic centimeter.

Grade A raw, -Cows must be tuberculin tested once during previous year and reactors excluded; farms must be scored not less than 25 per cent for equipment and

People ex rd Ogdon r. McGowan, 195 N. Y. Supp. 286.