The life of Louis Pasteur

I am Louis Pasteur, the French scientist whose work made the world a safer place for everyone. But science isn't easy. It means very careful research, but it also means acting on what you believe. Even when everybody laughs at your ideas, or even worse, if it puts you in danger. Both things happened to me. I remember when I was young, the whole of our village was shocked when a mad wolf attacked a little boy and bit him really badly. The wolf had a horrible disease called rabies, which no one understood. The best cure we had was to burn out the deep bites with the blacksmith's red hot iron. How the poor boy screamed. I'll never forget it as long as I live. He died of course. Otherwise it was a quiet life for me as a boy. I loved fishing by the river with my brother. My most favorite thing was painting. I wanted to become an artist, which was a shame because my father wanted me to be a teacher. Let me show you my dad anyway. He's a tanner. Someone who takes the skins of cows and pigs and turns it into leather for saddles and shoes and bags. So a smelly, dirty place full of the smell of dead animals and strong chemicals. Oh and here is my mom, picking flowers. She loves gardening and she's a wonderful mother to all five of us. I was a quiet boy, but I could not get it out of my mind. What was that wild animal disease? Rabies. Why couldn't the grown-ups cure it? And another thing, what was the disease that made my sister so weak and ill all the time? Well, how could I ever find out the answers? I wasn't doing very well at school and I was really bored by the lessons, but my teacher noticed that there were things that did interest me because I kept asking questions and he said that I had some good ideas. One day he took me to one side and said, if you try your hardest and don't give up, you could go to the best school in Paris and find answers to these puzzling questions that you keep asking. So I did what he said. I swatted away and learned as much as I could and if you are determined enough, you can do it. When I was 21, I got into the best science school in Paris and all the professors were cheering at my success. How proud I was. Soon afterwards, I got a job at a university teaching chemistry and there I met Marie, the daughter of the head of the university. We fell in love with each other and I asked her to marry me. She said yes, but I had to ask her dad first. You have to do things properly, you know. Have a look in my photo album at our wedding picture. Here's Marie on her father's arm as she's walking down the aisle towards me in front of all my family. Marie was the best wife I could have chosen. She was always helping me with my work. She would take notes and listen to my ideas night after night as I look through my microscope. She never said to me, oh, do stop that, Louis Pasteur, it's so boring. I couldn't have done it without her. Here, look at this snapshot from my album. It wasn't just my work that we shared. We had a very happy family life and it wasn't long before we had a family of five children. Science isn't just people in white coats in dusty laboratories. For example, one day, Mr. Bigou, the father of one of the boys in my class, asked me to help him solve a problem. He made wine from grapes. The wine tasted disgusting. Why? I decided to help. With my microscope, I looked into Mr. Bigou's wine and I could see dancing around inside the wine some funny little living things, not animals exactly, but things we call bacteria. Some of these bacteria are very friendly and helpful and others are very nasty. They make you ill, they make you sick, and they can turn your milk bad. And they were making Mr. Bigou's wine taste disgusting too. People just thought this stuff happened by itself. Things just went bad. But I discovered things like milk or wine went bad because bacteria somehow got into them. I wanted to find a way to get rid of those bad bacteria. How could I do that? How would you do that? Any ideas? After lots and lots of experiments that went wrong, I finally found the answer. I heated up the wine and the heat killed the bad bacteria and this kept the wine tasting good and made it safe to drink. Today, nearly all the drinks you buy are heated in this way. Next time you drink some milk, look out for my name, Pasteur. It's still on every bottle today. It's Pasteur Heist. Well, after this big discovery, I told everyone another idea. That these small bacteria, which we cannot see, are all around us in the air. The scientists didn't believe me. Everyone laughed at me. I did not care. I knew I was right and I did not give up. Shortly afterwards, I went to visit my son in a hospital, a place where lots of bacteria like to gather because of all the sick people. I was shocked. The hospital was dirty and smelly. It was no place to get better. The bacteria had to go. But how could we get rid of them? You can't heat the bacteria. They are in wounds and on windows, in bedpans, everywhere. And you need a microscope to see them. Aha! Bacteria hate clean places. Right. Scrub everything. The doctors and nurses must be scrubbed clean. Clean clothes, clean hands, clean instruments, and clean patients. That way, those nasty bacteria can't survive and patients could get better. Today, hospitals are cleaner and safer because of what I found out. Making people better is a doctor's job. And I'm not a doctor, remember? So, I had to stick with animal illnesses and try to cure them like chicken disease. Lots of chicken died of a nasty flu and the farmers wanted me to help. Like the other scientists in my day, I knew that the body can learn to fight bad bacteria, but it needs to practice a bit first. You give it a training session. But how? You inject a small, weak bit of the disease into the body. Just a few nasty bacteria. That wakes up the army of good fighters inside you. They quickly get into training and rush off to beat up those nasty bacteria. And so, the next time those bacteria try to get in, they don't stand a chance. So, I injected the chicken with a tiny little bit of chicken disease to get the chicken's body soldiers in training. The next day, I injected a little bit more. And then, after that, I gave the chicken the full force version, expecting it to drop down dead. But ooh la la! What a surprise! The chicken lived. Everyone was delighted by my discovery, not just the chickens. Now, animals were safe from disease with my vaccinations. The Emperor of France gave me a medal, the highest honor in the whole of France. And I was surrounded by cheering people. I loved all this success, and it made me a rich man. But I still carried on my work. I was still haunted by the wolf-bitten boy and the brutal treatment that failed to cure him. I was determined to find a cure for the dreadful rabies. But it was dangerous work. My lab was full with mad, growling dogs, all frothing at the mouth and trying to bite me before I injected them. Remember, I was only allowed to try my experiments on animals. But a lady, Mrs. Maester, came to me and begged me to save her son, Joseph. He had been bitten by a wild dog. She had heard about my work with rabies. If I didn't try and help, he would suddenly die. I couldn't be sure my injections would work. Besides, if I did inject him, I would be breaking the law. I had to make my mind up. Over 10 long days, I gave him 13 injections to make his body's vitals strong. And then I waited. And I prayed. Instead of keeping him in a dirty hospital, I kept Joseph at home. I didn't know whether Joseph would live or die. After a few days, he started to feel better. And soon, he was back to normal. I had found the cure for rabies. I died rich, successful, and famous at the age of 73. At my funeral in the big Paris Cathedral of Notre Dame, thousands of people turned out to say, thank you, Louis Pasteur. My name is famous around the world. There's a crater on the moon with my name on it. And I'm on every bottle and carton of milk. Just have a look tomorrow.