Comptes Rendus Biologies最新文献

In the 19th century, the applications of the scientific discoveries of Louis Pasteur to medicine had difficulty in imposing themselves within the French medical community and its National Academy. Among those concerning infectious diseases, their prevention by hygiene and their etiology by microbes are described here. Louis Pasteur found it difficult to convince and had to fight, to show through the surgical practice of asepsis and examples of infections induced in animal models (anthrax), the modes of transmission of germs and their pathogenicity.

I attempt in this essay to shed new light on the origins of Louis Pasteur's uniquely progressive mind and spirit and the various factors in his background and upbringing that shaped them. There is, however, very limited documentation on the early period of Pasteur's life, apart from his son-in-law's (René Vallery-Radot) biographical account, and this is considered by many as more akin to a work of hagiography. We do have, on the other hand, Pasteur's correspondence with his parents and sisters as compiled and annotated by his grandson, Louis Pasteur Vallery-Radot. Using these limited sources, combined with what we know about Pasteur's home environment and early education, his cultural influences (like the books he read), and his drawings and etchings, I have attempted in this essay to hypothesize regarding the influences during Pasteur's childhood, adolescence, and very early adult years as a scientist and how they contributed to the formation of Pasteur's mind and spirit, while fully acknowledging the extent to which this is based on indirect evidence and, occasionally, outright speculation.

Pasteur's originality in the way he developed pure research is to have understood the importance, for society, of the underlying motivation. Curiosity, of course, is a strong motivation, which explains why we seek to understand the origin of life. But, in front of the immensity of the possible choices, why not, also, choose to start from questions of economic interest (diseases of beer and wine, diseases affecting the silk industry ...) Finally, of course, health is a constant preoccupation, but the diseases, which have no borders, often come from tropical countries and Asia especially. It is therefore necessary to settle there, but not to come and impose one's point of view, but on the contrary to use the knowledge coming from the local culture in order to open new ways of understanding the reality of the world.

Louis Pasteur is celebrated as the founding father of microbiology. But he was a chemist by training and discovered molecular dissymmetry experimentally. All his life, his constant preoccupation will be to apply the method and strategies of the fundamental sciences to living processes, "from the molecule to the brain". His fundamental aim will be, beyond the biology of microbes, the chemistry of life, a disposition which signs the originality of his work. More unexpectedly, Pasteur was at the origin of therapeutic chemistry-which his successors, and especially Daniel Bovet, brilliantly illustrated at the Pasteur Institute and which they would pursue with the pharmacology of the nervous system or "neuropharmacology".

Pasteur's work on fermentations has variously influenced the conception that veterinarians had of the origin of virulent diseases. Jean-Baptiste Chauveau asserted as early as 1866 the specificity of contagious diseases and their exogenous origin. Henri Bouley was initially a supporter of the spontaneity of these diseases. He became an advocate of the germ theory when Pasteur unambiguously demonstrated the causal role of anthrax bacteridia in 1877. Pasteur then had a fruitful collaboration with veterinarians during his work on chicken cholera, swine erysipelas, contagious pleuropneumonia and rabies. After Pasteur's experience at Pouilly-le-Fort, Henri Bouley and Edmond Nocard, a disciple of Pasteur, were strong advocates for the adoption of vaccinations by veterinarians and farmers. Nocard's work on various contagious animal diseases greatly contributed to the foundation of veterinary microbiology.

From 1865 to 1869, on a "government order", Louis Pasteur tackled a silkworm disease, the pebrine, which was ruining the economy of southern France. Well beyond the scientific results-he was going to highlight a second disease, the flacherie-and the operational results-he installed techniques to limit the progression of one disease and protected the farms from the other-, this sequence opened the door to what would become Pasteur's working method: a science involved in practice, a great importance given to the team of collaborators and to innovations of all kinds, in this case, microphotography. It also establishes the characteristics of the socialization of the Pasteurian approach: diffusion of methods among all the social actors concerned, networking of scientists and internationalization of research.

The last two centuries have seen major scientific and technological advances that have turned the field of microbiology upside down. If Louis Pasteur came out of his vault to celebrate his two hundredth birthday with us, would he recognize the field of study of which he was one of the founders? Are the objectives of the discipline still the same? What is the influence of new technologies on our scientific approach? What are the new horizons and future challenges?

Louis Pasteur was born in Dole on December 27, 1822. The Pasteur family left the town of Dole in August 1825. After five years in Marnoz, Jean-Joseph Pasteur rented a tannery in Arbois in 1830.In the 1831 register of house visits, he is mentioned at 83 rue de Courcelles: "Pasteur Jean-Joseph, tanner, age 39, from Besançon. Jeanne Etiennette Roqui his wife, 37 years old, from Marnoz 4 children: Jeanne-Antoine 11 years old. Louis 9 years old. Joséphine 5 years old. Emilie 3 years old. A worker, Eloy Dole, 25 years old, from Poligny". At that time, Arbois and its suburbs had nearly 7000 inhabitants. The young Pasteur first attended the mutual education school and then the municipal college. After failing in Paris in 1838 to prepare for the baccalaureate, Pasteur studied rhetoric in Arbois and then, in 1839, at the royal college in Besançon. In 1842, Pasteur entered the École normale supérieure. In 1849 he became a professor at the faculty of Strasbourg, 1854 professor and dean of the new faculty of sciences of Lille, 1857 Pasteur was at the Ecole normale supérieure as administrator and director of scientific studies.In spite of his high functions, Pasteur and his family always came back to Arbois, it was a return to their roots."If there is no Arbois, there is no Pasteur," said the writer and academician Erik Orsenna.