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The Pasteur Institute
| Article
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13325 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1987 |
2,688 Words |
| Author
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Albert Delaunay
Albert Delaunay is professor emeritus at the Pasteur Institute
in Paris. |
The Pasteur Institute, which constitutes part of France's national pride, will soon celebrate its centennial. For one hundred years, the institute has been dedicated to public health and has continually worked to solve contemporary medical problems. Two recent events have brought world attention to its contributions and on-going research. These are the discovery of the AIDS virus and the astounding donation to the institute by the Duchess of Windsor.
What, then, is the Pasteur Institute? It all began on July 6, 1885, when three people from Alsace appeared at Louis Pasteur's laboratory. Among them was a nine-year-old boy who had been bitten by a dog that had all the symptoms of rabies, which was then a fatal disease. The boy's parents had heard that Pasteur had just perfected an effective vaccine for animals. Could it be used on humans as well? Pasteur hesitated, then decided to try the vaccine on the boy. Joseph Meister was saved from death.
The press, naturally, spread the news of the success. There was widespread excitement, and on March 1, 1886, Pasteur requested the French Academy of Sciences to construct a special institute for the administration of his new vaccine. The institute was built in Paris under Pasteur's name, and public donations were solicited in France and from aboard to support it. The site chosen was originally rue Dutot, but the street was renamed and the institute is now headquartered at 25 rue du Dr. Roux.
In the original statutes, which Pasteur insisted on drawing up himself, he formulated three goals: (1) it would be a center for the rabies vaccination; (2) microbiologic research would be carried on; and (3) special training programs would be set up.
The First Fifty Years
By the time of Pasteur's death, many of the bacteria that caused major infectious illnesses had been identified. Only a few important germs remained undiscovered: the bacillus causing the bubonic plague would be identified by Alexander Yersin, anaerobic bacteria would be studied by M. Weinberg, and useful bacteria that live in the soil would be researched by Sergei Winogradsky all at the institute.
Two of Pasteur's disciples, Emile Roux and Yersin, learned that certain bacteria, such as the diphtheria and tetanus bacilli, kill living beings, especially humans, because these bacilli excrete extremely virulent poisons called
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