Pasteur

918-451-0270, Terry Dashner

I think you will benefit from this story told by author Robert Hastings. Dr. Hastings is a native of Illinois and has written many books with stories which are as good as, or better than, this one. Enjoy.

Although Robert Koch proved to the world that diseases are transmitted by microbes or germs invisible to the human eye, it was the French chemist Louis Pasteur who discovered how to use weakened microbes to inoculate against all kinds of infectious diseases.

His first successes were with anthrax and chicken cholera. Next he turned to a search for the deadly virus of hydrophobia. But before he could develop a serum of weakened hydrophobia microbes, he must first find and isolate the killer virus.

To do this, it was necessary for Pasteur to experiment with dogs that were mad with rabies. In the lab he would stick his beard within inches of their fangs so as to suck froth into glass tubes. Using these specimens, obtained at such risk of life, he hunted the microbe of hydrophobia.

And succeed he did. But the serum had to be proven. The first subject was a nine-year-old boy by the name of Joseph Meister from Alsace. His mother came crying to Pasteur