Adaryn
The Living Force
This is the translation of an article published in Michel Dogna's book Prenez en main votre santé, based on Philippe Decourt's book Les Vérités indésirables.
1st part :
Pasteur, the Stalin of Medicine (edit : removed the "e" in "Staline" - wrong spelling)
Who could doubt the history of medicine's great discoveries as they are taught in school, and the trends that gave rise to them?
Who hasn't heard of Claude Bernard without knowing, most often, what he did - whereas the name of Pasteur, praised, revered like a demigod, evokes in most minds capital discoveries such as the microbes, the vaccination against rabies, the rescue of the silk industry, pasteurization, asepsis, which place him among the greatest benefactors of humanity?
Between the legend of school books and historical reality, there is often a serious gap, generally aiming at serving religious and political ideologies - and in Pasteur's case, pharmaco-commercial ideologies.
The historical truncating, or even lie, is all the more easy as most biologists are never interested in the mere history of their field. They have, most of the time, never read a single line written by Cuvier, Linné or Darwin (the one who is descended from the ape), by Lamarck or Pasteur himself, even less by Claude Bernard - even if they sometimes quote them.
A short history of the Pasteur investigation
It's Jean Rostand who, having had in his hands part of Davaine's work in 1948, took the bold initiative in questioning the legendary paternity of Pasteur about the microbian origin of infectious diseases (see "L'Homme de Vérité", 2nd volume). Thus he entrusted a young zoologist keen on the history of sciences, named Jean Théodoridès, with the mission to look deeper into Davaine's work. This fascinating work brought Théodoridès to come into contact with an excellent historian of sciences - a physician retired in Limousin, Dr. Léon Delhoume, who had written 3 big volumes on the lives of Dupuytren, Cruveihier, d'Arsonval, and especially on the unpublished works of Claude Bernard, of a remarkable erudition.
On the basis of which documents had Delhoume worked?
D'Arsonval had been Claude Bernard's last assistant. Bernard, suffering at 65 from an acute fatal disease, and dismayed not to be able to finish his work, confided in his close friends before he died : "Pasteur was wrong". Then he delegated d'Arsonval, then aged 26, to have his (unfortunately unfinished) work published. Very impressed, d'Arsonval preferred to delegate the great chemist Berthelot who, immediately, had a publication issued at the Academy of Sciences.
Pasteur went into a mad fury, and young d'Arsonval, frightened, didn't dare to transmit anything any longer. That's what explains the withholding for 50 years of the Claude Bernard file, until d'Arsonval made the decision, at the end of his life, to transmit it to Dr. Delhoume, a historian.
Philippe Decourt, a member of the International Academy of the History of Medicine and a friend of Théodoridès, regularly visited Dr. Delhoume. Thus it is that one day, the doctor personally handed to him a document called : Béchamp or Pasteur ? with the subtitle : A lost chapter of the history of biology. Delhoume confided in him : "Now I'm too old. You should look into it further." This book had been written by an English woman, based on the notes of an American physician, a personal friend of Béchamp ; then it had been translated into French in 1948 (Le François Press) with the preface of two Swiss physicians who were very hostile to vaccination - which might have compromised the success of the book.
Philippe Decourt writes : "What I was seeing while reading these documents stupefied me. My stupefaction increased even more while I was gradually studying the other discoveries which are attributed to Pasteur. Reality is quite different from the legend. A myth had been created and was repeated without checking anything. We were the victims of a huge hoax."
Galtier, Duboué, Roux, then Toussaint and Fermi were the true architects of the anti rabies vaccination
On the 25th August 1879, Galtier, a teacher at the veterinary School of Lyon, presented at the Academy of sciences his works on the prevention of rabies thanks to a method of attenuation in vitro. For this, Galtier had used the thesis that Pierre Henri Duboué had presented in the beginning of that year, and which explained the incubation period of rabies by the slow nerve propagation of bacterial toxins between the bite locus and the medulla oblongata - a theory which would prove to be correct later. Dr Emile Roux, Pasteur's assistant, took over Galtier's work and devoted his thesis to it in 1883. Consequently, he set up an intracerebral inoculation process, with rabbit's spinal cord which was contaminated and dried out on potash.
In 1885, Pasteur seized Galtier and Roux's works and planned to carry out immediate tests on humans. Roux, panicked, refused to sign the contract note of October 1885, because he held the innocuousness method as uncertain, and its application as too early. The future would show that Roux was right. Pasteur's fame about rabies was to be based on two famous cases:
The Joseph Meister case
A 9 year old child saved thanks to the "Pasteur method" of prevention against rabies after a dog bite. (it was the title of his communication).
The dog was destroyed, and an autopsy was carried out. A few wood fragments were found in its stomach. It's common for dogs to gnaw at wood pieces. But at the time, according to the popular belief, this was taken as a sign of rabies. No inoculation tests on rabbits were carried out to demonstrate that the dog was truly rabid.
Moreover, what few know, according to Dr. de Brouwer's words, is that this nasty dog had bitten five other people who didn't receive any particular treatment and who never had any health problems afterwards.
Pasteur then made (intentionally or not) a tremendous mistake in his reasoning: as much as the death rate by rabies bite on the face is high and fast, the farther from the head the bite is inflicted, the more the death risk decreases. It drops to 15% for bites on the trunk and extremities, and to 3% through the clothes. Pasteur knew it just as everybody else. Yet, young Meister having been bitten on his right hand and on his legs through his trousers, the risk was then comprised between 3 and 15% in case the dog would have been rabid.
That's why Peter contested this recovery at the Academy of Medicine, saying : "How could you, Mr. Vulpian, a doctor, fail to see that young Meister's case doesn't prove anything, a single case being of null-significance in therapeutics, young Meister possibly having - as we all have - 5 chances in 6 of not becoming rabid after a rabies bite ?"
The Jupille case
This man went to Pasteur's laboratory on the 20th october 1885 to be vaccinated, after he had been bitten by a would-be rabid dog.
On the 26th october (6 days later), Pasteur was already telling his story of Jupille's recovery at the Academy of Science.
On the 27th october, he repeated his communication at the Academy of Medicine.
On the 29th october, he told the story again at the French Academy, asking for a courage prize for Jupille's courage in fighting a rabid dog.
The dog in question was a Picard shephard renowned for never attacking people. And it's Jupille who, accompanied by 6 children, attacked the dog with a whip, when it was just barking. The dog defended itself and bit Jupille on his left hand. Jupille, acording to Pasteur's own words, then fought with the dog, tied it up and drowned it (one may ask who was the most rabid).
Concerning Pasteur's declarations, one can only be dumbfounded by his incredible fickleness and his lack of intellectual integrity, when he dared to officially announce a recovery without even waiting for the required period of 15 days for a possible immunization to take place, on a morbidity which just had 1 chance in 6 to break out, and all this beginning with a dog who, as we have seen, had no reason whatsoever to be rabid.
The so-called results of Jupille's vaccination thus have no scientific value and it is surprising that the 3 academicians let themselves fooled so easily in front of so random facts.
Nervertheless, the fact remains that high-circulation scientific magazines, both french and english, passed on the advert and that the tout-Paris went completely delirious over Pasteur's medical feats.
Thousands of bitten (by non rabid dogs) people flocked to the Pasteur Institute.
On the 1st March 1886, Pasteur published his first statistics on 350 treated cases. He concludes : "It can be asserted that the method has proved its worth" (which proofs ?).
On the 2nd November 1886, he reports 2490 treated patients, 1796 of whom on the French and Algerian terrritory. There were 10 deaths. Pasteur concluded that his method was a total success, by the fact that he registered 1 death in 170 treated cases. Intellectual dishonesty again, since he reasoned as if the 1700 cases had been bitten by truly rabid dogs - which was rarely checked. But the matter went wrong when a complaint was made on the 17 November 1886 against the Pasteur Institute, by the father of a 12 year old child who died after the treatment. At the autopsy carried out by Dr. Loir, the child's medulla was extracted and submitted to inoculation on rabbits. Those died of rabies within the usual period. Had the child died of rabies, or the vaccine? Drs. Loir, Roux and Brouardel decided to dissimulate the result. It is Loir who revealed the truth later.
Brouardel submitted a report to the legal authorities, saying the animals who had been inoculated were in perfect health and that the child hadn't died of rabies.
There were many other similar cases where the subjects wouldn't have died if they hadn't receive inoculation. But when Peter did the diagnosis of rabies after the method had been applied, Pasteur got angry and claimed Peter was incompetent.
Contrary to what is commonly believed, present vaccines weren't created by Pasteur, but by Toussaint, a teacher at the Veterinary School of Toulouse.
His 3 methods of bacterial attenuation were :
- heating of the virulent matter at 55°C (131°F)
- great dilution
- action of an antiseptic (phenic acid or potassium dichromate).
In fact, the Pasteur vaccine, of a doubtful and irregular efficiency, based on dried out rabbit spinal cord (Roux method) was given up in 1908 when Fermi took over Toussaint's 3rd method, far safer.
Concerning the efficiency of vaccines, Peter declares in 1887 that, in France, death by rabies hadn't decreased since the Pasteurian method was applied on a big scale, on a period going from 1850 to 1876 - i.e. 28,5 cases per year, on a constant basis.
The anthrax vaccine was stolen from Toussaint
In 1850, a big medicine boss, Rayer, was called to Eure-et-Loir to study the anthrax disease which had been devastating sheep flocks. He took with him his student, Davaine. Together, they had the idea - original at the time - to observe the sheep's blood under a microscope. Thus, they could observe little rods twice as long as red corpuscles. Moreover, they discovered that blood could transmit the disease from one animal to the other.
Davaine was convinced that the rods in the blood were linked to the disease. Unfortunately, he didn't have a laboratory to confirm his thesis and had little spare time to think about the problem.
In 1860, another researcher intervened - Onésime Delafond, a veterinary teacher at the School of Alfort. He too started to observe under a microscope rods in the blood of infected animals. Then, he lay himself open to ridicule on the part of his colleagues, among whom was Bouley (his superior), which laughed at him because he was looking for diseases in a microscope. This didn't prevent him, on the 10th May 1860, from exposing the main body of his discoveries on the examined blood of 125 animals infected by the disease. The only question which remained to be understood was : did the rods come from outside, or were they produced by the disease ?
The following year, he died of a systemic erysipelas, which put a stop to his research.
Two years later, in 1863, Davaine was finally able to undertake research work thanks to a banker friend who allowed him to set up a mini laboratory inside a hall of his private mansion. It is there that, without help nor grant, with little available time, Davaine became the real inventor of microbiology.
Within a short time, he began to transmit several communications to the Academy, on the basis of countless forensic experiments.
In 1864, two fierce detractors, Leplat and Taillard, published a refutation of Davaine's commentaries. But the latter had more arguments than needed to confound them, the result of which was to win him great publicity and many followers. Also, a flood of discoveries were to be made based on his work.
Particularly, Robert Koch, a young German, invented the nutritional solid medium and the fixation of microbes on coloring, discovered the spores of the anthrasic bacterium in 1876, the cholera comma bacillus in 1883, then the tuberculosis bacillus which would take his name, then tuberculin which is now used to take skin tests, and finally he demonstrated the existence of acquired immunity.
It is also thanks to Davaine that Hansen would discover the leprosy bacillus in 1874, Neisser the gonococcus in 1879, Perroneito - in 1878 - and Toussaint - in 1879 - the hen cholera bacillus , Eberth the typhoid bacillus in 1880, Pasteur the staphylococcus and streptococcus in 1880, Klebs - in 1875 - and Loeffler - in 1882 - the diphtheria bacillus, Yersin the plague bacillus in 1894, Laveran the paludism haematozoa in 1880, etc.
Taking again Davaine's works as a starting point, as soon as 1877, Toussaint issued many publications on the anthrasic bacteria and, on the 12th july 1880, a historical date, he left a sealed envelope at the Academy of Medicine, which contained the means to acquire immunity against anthrax. He prescribed heating at 55°C (131°F) of anthrasic defibrinated blood, during 10 minutes. The numerous experiments he carried out on sheep and dogs, on which we won't elaborate here, gave a total reliability. It was the birth of the first modern vaccine.
On the 6th september 1880, Bouley, the general inspector of veterinary schools, confirmed and authenticated Toussaint's work.
When Pasteur heard about Toussaint's declaration, he was utterly stupefied. He wrote Bouley on the 10th august 1880 : "I am in awe and amazed by M. Toussaint's discovery. This turns upside down all the ideas I've had on viruses, vaccines, etc. It's beyond me... A dead germ cannot vaccinate".
But he didn't admit defeat for all that. He went into a raging feverishness, where his litteral obsession was to put Toussaint in the wrong. He prevented Chamberland and Roux from taking holidays. He bought hens and sheep and tried to hastily reproduce Toussaint's experiments. His hysterical fury made him commit huge technical errors. Thus, he wrote Bouley : "You know, the results have been absolutely negative. The hens which were inoculated immediately or after a variable time (1, 2 or 3 days ?) with infectious viruses have died without showing the least immunity".
At that moment, Pasteur ignored Jenner's principle on the time of reaction of the organism, which is 10 to 15 days. It is Roux who would tell him about it ultimately.
As soon as the 21st of August, Pasteur, helped by Roux and Chamberland, botched up, in the same manner, the same experiment with a few sheep. Still not waiting for the time of reaction, he wrote the Academy : " On the strength of numerous experiments which don't leave room to any doubt, I can assure you that M. Toussaint's interpretation must be reconsidered".
On the 29th August, for an experiment that was effective on the 21th August, Pasteur wrote Bouley :"Toussaint acted with a thoughtlessness which cannot be allowed in such a matter... The inoculation of fresh anthrasic blood causes all the sheep to perish..."
That was a lie, as in reality, despite the improper application of Toussaint's method, all the sheep hadn't perished. The experience was resumed from cold, later, by Pasteur, following a correct protocol, but he kept silent about it (according to Roux's and Chamberland's personal notes).
It was only on the following 21th March that Pasteur acknowledged the value of Toussaint's vaccine. However, he continued to accuse him about the interpretation of his experiment, claiming that the anthrasic germ was not killed in the vaccine (this upset his theories too much), but modified in its vitality. He even added that M.Toussaint's vaccine exposed the flocks to heavy losses (what a nerve !).
On the same day, he presented his own vaccine against anthrax, the marvelous simplicity of which he praised.
His idea had only been to limit the heating of the vaccine to 42-43°C (107-109°F) instead of 55°C (131°F), while increasing the heating time. But his declaration was just bluff, because he hadn't developed any actual vaccine.
The Pouilly-le-Fort experiment
A veterinary from Melun, M. Rossignol, being sceptical, invited Pasteur on the behalf of the Agricultural Society of Melun, to come to give a demonstration of what he asserted. On the 28th April, a protocol of experiment on 60 sheep was signed. Chamberland and Roux were stupefied and alarmed that Pasteur had signed such an agreement. Indeed : they had only undertaken one experiment on a sheep, and it had been uncertain and incomplete.
The official experiment of Pouilly-le-Fort was only carried out on 2 sheep. Roux and Chamberland decided to use a vaccine attenuated with potassium dichromate (Toussaint's 3rd method) without telling Pasteur (who was easily angered) about it.
Fifteen days later, virulent anthrax was injected. The sheep didn't manifest any trouble: they were properly vaccinated.
The Pouilly-le-Fort experiment had an enormous impact, and vaccine orders came flooding in from everywhere. But what most people ignore is that the experiment was carried out with Toussaint's method, not Pasteur's. Pasteur didn't want to know anyway (the essential thing being that Toussaint was "mud").
The hen cholera vaccine stolen, again, from Toussaint
Pasteur's first research on this disease began in 1879. Being convinced that protection against an infectious disease can only be obtained via the inoculation of an earlier harmless disease, this belief he never wanted to give up misled him much in his work - whereas Toussaint said and demonstrated that it was possible to vaccine with dead germs, therefore without the disease.
The second thing that is interesting to know, is that all the reports about the creation of the first vaccines originate in the book La Vie de Pasteur (Pasteur's Life), written by his son-in-law René Vallery-Radot, under the control of, and often dictated by Pasteur himself. This allowed Pasteur to fictionalize and embellish his story according to his natural tendency towards fame and paranoia.
Regarding his research on hen cholera, the fact is that, for more than a year, he prevaricated between various theories on the attenuation method, going from ideas about the alteration of acidity to ideas about the exhaustion of the germ's food (hence the old expression : "to feed the disease"), then to the idea about the action of oxygen on microbes, all those things being each time the subject of lengthy declarations at the Academy.
That didn't prevent him from praising his method of attenuation of the germs as a means to turn them into vaccines, yet without giving any detail about it. However, by the summer of 1880, Pasteur still didn't have any clear idea neither about the vaccines nor about the method of attenuation of hen cholera.
In August 1880, the English surgeon Lister urged him to reveal his method. But Pasteur excused himself, on the pretext that it was too early, in the name of scientifical probity.
On the 5th October, Jules Guérin, a member at the Academy, lost his patience and demanded that Pasteur finally reveal his mysterious method. Pasteur then got angry and violently took him to task. Guérin, feeling insulted, wanted to challenge him to a duel (though Guérin was 78). Pasteur refused. Things cooled down with time and Pasteur published, on the 26th October 1880, De l'atténuation du choléra des poules (On the attenuation of hen cholera). But still no glimpse of the vaccine formula, which didn't exist yet.
This didn't prevent Pasteur from telling, on the 21th March 1881, at the Academy of Sciences, that six months before Toussaint, he had demonstrated the possibility of attenuating the microbe of hen cholera and of preparing the vaccine virus in this way, thus placing himself as the first creator of that vaccine.
PASTEUR CRUSHES BÉCHAMP: THE TRIUMPH OF IMPOSTURE
French dictionaries mention Béchamp, briefly and contemptuously, as "Pasteur's adversary". In the new Larousse illustré published at the beginning of the XXth C., it is written that in all his works, Béchamp was opposed to the theory of microbian infection (!?). The same is written in the great Encyclopédie.
That is exactly the opposite which happened ; we're going to prove it later.
In l'Encyclopédie française (the French Encyclopedia), the most famous of all, it is mentionned : "Pasteur acknowledged that the visible corpuscles inside ill silkworms, which Cornalia had already observed without attaching importance to them (!?), were parasites". But in fact, Pasteur called fools those who acknowledged that. One can see how completely groundless historians' allegations are. According to them, for example, Claude Bernard would have been a "fierce adversary" of the microbian theory of diseases.
He would have "attempted to take the first data on microbiology", "denied the part played by ferments as living organisms", "considered fermentation as a purely chemical phenomenon". Ultimate reproach: he would have been "opposed to the pasteurian doctrine" and he's accused of having "delayed its spreading in France".
Yet, nothing in all this is actually true. Reality is even the exact opposite. As for his so-called opposition to Pasteur, on the contrary : he was the one who constantly supported him, had prizes awarded to him, and guided his first experiments (Pasteur himself admitted it). This is how the history of sciences is written. This is a shame.
The small history of silkworm in France
The silkworm industry, coming from Constantinople, was developed in France by Henri IV, who appointed a famous agronomist, Olivier de Serres, a high official in this national function. Also, de Serres published, in 1599, a remarkable work called La cueillette de la soye par la nourriture des vers qui la font (silk gathering, by the feeding of silkworms which make it), on what is essential to know to be successful in this culture. Nineteen successive editions were to be published in 73 years.
In 1806, magnaneries [silkworm farms] were so affected by muscardine (silkworm disease) that the French government appointed a Belgian physician, Pierre Humbert Nysten, to study on the spot this high-cost epidemy. Two years later, Nysten gathered a remarkable report not only on muscardine, but also on other silkworm diseases, and particularly the dead flat worm disease, or flachery (flaccid dead worms). As regards to muscardine, he had noticed that tworms affected by this disease were covered with a sort of white mold in which he could see grains (spores) under a microscope.
But it's only in 1835 that an Italian, Agostino Bassi (equipped with a better microscope), clearly isolated, for the first time, the agent responsible for muscardine - and which later would be called "microbe".
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2nd part to be posted by Stardust
1st part :
Pasteur, the Stalin of Medicine (edit : removed the "e" in "Staline" - wrong spelling)
Who could doubt the history of medicine's great discoveries as they are taught in school, and the trends that gave rise to them?
Who hasn't heard of Claude Bernard without knowing, most often, what he did - whereas the name of Pasteur, praised, revered like a demigod, evokes in most minds capital discoveries such as the microbes, the vaccination against rabies, the rescue of the silk industry, pasteurization, asepsis, which place him among the greatest benefactors of humanity?
Between the legend of school books and historical reality, there is often a serious gap, generally aiming at serving religious and political ideologies - and in Pasteur's case, pharmaco-commercial ideologies.
The historical truncating, or even lie, is all the more easy as most biologists are never interested in the mere history of their field. They have, most of the time, never read a single line written by Cuvier, Linné or Darwin (the one who is descended from the ape), by Lamarck or Pasteur himself, even less by Claude Bernard - even if they sometimes quote them.
A short history of the Pasteur investigation
It's Jean Rostand who, having had in his hands part of Davaine's work in 1948, took the bold initiative in questioning the legendary paternity of Pasteur about the microbian origin of infectious diseases (see "L'Homme de Vérité", 2nd volume). Thus he entrusted a young zoologist keen on the history of sciences, named Jean Théodoridès, with the mission to look deeper into Davaine's work. This fascinating work brought Théodoridès to come into contact with an excellent historian of sciences - a physician retired in Limousin, Dr. Léon Delhoume, who had written 3 big volumes on the lives of Dupuytren, Cruveihier, d'Arsonval, and especially on the unpublished works of Claude Bernard, of a remarkable erudition.
On the basis of which documents had Delhoume worked?
D'Arsonval had been Claude Bernard's last assistant. Bernard, suffering at 65 from an acute fatal disease, and dismayed not to be able to finish his work, confided in his close friends before he died : "Pasteur was wrong". Then he delegated d'Arsonval, then aged 26, to have his (unfortunately unfinished) work published. Very impressed, d'Arsonval preferred to delegate the great chemist Berthelot who, immediately, had a publication issued at the Academy of Sciences.
Pasteur went into a mad fury, and young d'Arsonval, frightened, didn't dare to transmit anything any longer. That's what explains the withholding for 50 years of the Claude Bernard file, until d'Arsonval made the decision, at the end of his life, to transmit it to Dr. Delhoume, a historian.
Philippe Decourt, a member of the International Academy of the History of Medicine and a friend of Théodoridès, regularly visited Dr. Delhoume. Thus it is that one day, the doctor personally handed to him a document called : Béchamp or Pasteur ? with the subtitle : A lost chapter of the history of biology. Delhoume confided in him : "Now I'm too old. You should look into it further." This book had been written by an English woman, based on the notes of an American physician, a personal friend of Béchamp ; then it had been translated into French in 1948 (Le François Press) with the preface of two Swiss physicians who were very hostile to vaccination - which might have compromised the success of the book.
Philippe Decourt writes : "What I was seeing while reading these documents stupefied me. My stupefaction increased even more while I was gradually studying the other discoveries which are attributed to Pasteur. Reality is quite different from the legend. A myth had been created and was repeated without checking anything. We were the victims of a huge hoax."
Galtier, Duboué, Roux, then Toussaint and Fermi were the true architects of the anti rabies vaccination
On the 25th August 1879, Galtier, a teacher at the veterinary School of Lyon, presented at the Academy of sciences his works on the prevention of rabies thanks to a method of attenuation in vitro. For this, Galtier had used the thesis that Pierre Henri Duboué had presented in the beginning of that year, and which explained the incubation period of rabies by the slow nerve propagation of bacterial toxins between the bite locus and the medulla oblongata - a theory which would prove to be correct later. Dr Emile Roux, Pasteur's assistant, took over Galtier's work and devoted his thesis to it in 1883. Consequently, he set up an intracerebral inoculation process, with rabbit's spinal cord which was contaminated and dried out on potash.
In 1885, Pasteur seized Galtier and Roux's works and planned to carry out immediate tests on humans. Roux, panicked, refused to sign the contract note of October 1885, because he held the innocuousness method as uncertain, and its application as too early. The future would show that Roux was right. Pasteur's fame about rabies was to be based on two famous cases:
The Joseph Meister case
A 9 year old child saved thanks to the "Pasteur method" of prevention against rabies after a dog bite. (it was the title of his communication).
The dog was destroyed, and an autopsy was carried out. A few wood fragments were found in its stomach. It's common for dogs to gnaw at wood pieces. But at the time, according to the popular belief, this was taken as a sign of rabies. No inoculation tests on rabbits were carried out to demonstrate that the dog was truly rabid.
Moreover, what few know, according to Dr. de Brouwer's words, is that this nasty dog had bitten five other people who didn't receive any particular treatment and who never had any health problems afterwards.
Pasteur then made (intentionally or not) a tremendous mistake in his reasoning: as much as the death rate by rabies bite on the face is high and fast, the farther from the head the bite is inflicted, the more the death risk decreases. It drops to 15% for bites on the trunk and extremities, and to 3% through the clothes. Pasteur knew it just as everybody else. Yet, young Meister having been bitten on his right hand and on his legs through his trousers, the risk was then comprised between 3 and 15% in case the dog would have been rabid.
That's why Peter contested this recovery at the Academy of Medicine, saying : "How could you, Mr. Vulpian, a doctor, fail to see that young Meister's case doesn't prove anything, a single case being of null-significance in therapeutics, young Meister possibly having - as we all have - 5 chances in 6 of not becoming rabid after a rabies bite ?"
The Jupille case
This man went to Pasteur's laboratory on the 20th october 1885 to be vaccinated, after he had been bitten by a would-be rabid dog.
On the 26th october (6 days later), Pasteur was already telling his story of Jupille's recovery at the Academy of Science.
On the 27th october, he repeated his communication at the Academy of Medicine.
On the 29th october, he told the story again at the French Academy, asking for a courage prize for Jupille's courage in fighting a rabid dog.
The dog in question was a Picard shephard renowned for never attacking people. And it's Jupille who, accompanied by 6 children, attacked the dog with a whip, when it was just barking. The dog defended itself and bit Jupille on his left hand. Jupille, acording to Pasteur's own words, then fought with the dog, tied it up and drowned it (one may ask who was the most rabid).
Concerning Pasteur's declarations, one can only be dumbfounded by his incredible fickleness and his lack of intellectual integrity, when he dared to officially announce a recovery without even waiting for the required period of 15 days for a possible immunization to take place, on a morbidity which just had 1 chance in 6 to break out, and all this beginning with a dog who, as we have seen, had no reason whatsoever to be rabid.
The so-called results of Jupille's vaccination thus have no scientific value and it is surprising that the 3 academicians let themselves fooled so easily in front of so random facts.
Nervertheless, the fact remains that high-circulation scientific magazines, both french and english, passed on the advert and that the tout-Paris went completely delirious over Pasteur's medical feats.
Thousands of bitten (by non rabid dogs) people flocked to the Pasteur Institute.
On the 1st March 1886, Pasteur published his first statistics on 350 treated cases. He concludes : "It can be asserted that the method has proved its worth" (which proofs ?).
On the 2nd November 1886, he reports 2490 treated patients, 1796 of whom on the French and Algerian terrritory. There were 10 deaths. Pasteur concluded that his method was a total success, by the fact that he registered 1 death in 170 treated cases. Intellectual dishonesty again, since he reasoned as if the 1700 cases had been bitten by truly rabid dogs - which was rarely checked. But the matter went wrong when a complaint was made on the 17 November 1886 against the Pasteur Institute, by the father of a 12 year old child who died after the treatment. At the autopsy carried out by Dr. Loir, the child's medulla was extracted and submitted to inoculation on rabbits. Those died of rabies within the usual period. Had the child died of rabies, or the vaccine? Drs. Loir, Roux and Brouardel decided to dissimulate the result. It is Loir who revealed the truth later.
Brouardel submitted a report to the legal authorities, saying the animals who had been inoculated were in perfect health and that the child hadn't died of rabies.
There were many other similar cases where the subjects wouldn't have died if they hadn't receive inoculation. But when Peter did the diagnosis of rabies after the method had been applied, Pasteur got angry and claimed Peter was incompetent.
Contrary to what is commonly believed, present vaccines weren't created by Pasteur, but by Toussaint, a teacher at the Veterinary School of Toulouse.
His 3 methods of bacterial attenuation were :
- heating of the virulent matter at 55°C (131°F)
- great dilution
- action of an antiseptic (phenic acid or potassium dichromate).
In fact, the Pasteur vaccine, of a doubtful and irregular efficiency, based on dried out rabbit spinal cord (Roux method) was given up in 1908 when Fermi took over Toussaint's 3rd method, far safer.
Concerning the efficiency of vaccines, Peter declares in 1887 that, in France, death by rabies hadn't decreased since the Pasteurian method was applied on a big scale, on a period going from 1850 to 1876 - i.e. 28,5 cases per year, on a constant basis.
The anthrax vaccine was stolen from Toussaint
In 1850, a big medicine boss, Rayer, was called to Eure-et-Loir to study the anthrax disease which had been devastating sheep flocks. He took with him his student, Davaine. Together, they had the idea - original at the time - to observe the sheep's blood under a microscope. Thus, they could observe little rods twice as long as red corpuscles. Moreover, they discovered that blood could transmit the disease from one animal to the other.
Davaine was convinced that the rods in the blood were linked to the disease. Unfortunately, he didn't have a laboratory to confirm his thesis and had little spare time to think about the problem.
In 1860, another researcher intervened - Onésime Delafond, a veterinary teacher at the School of Alfort. He too started to observe under a microscope rods in the blood of infected animals. Then, he lay himself open to ridicule on the part of his colleagues, among whom was Bouley (his superior), which laughed at him because he was looking for diseases in a microscope. This didn't prevent him, on the 10th May 1860, from exposing the main body of his discoveries on the examined blood of 125 animals infected by the disease. The only question which remained to be understood was : did the rods come from outside, or were they produced by the disease ?
The following year, he died of a systemic erysipelas, which put a stop to his research.
Two years later, in 1863, Davaine was finally able to undertake research work thanks to a banker friend who allowed him to set up a mini laboratory inside a hall of his private mansion. It is there that, without help nor grant, with little available time, Davaine became the real inventor of microbiology.
Within a short time, he began to transmit several communications to the Academy, on the basis of countless forensic experiments.
In 1864, two fierce detractors, Leplat and Taillard, published a refutation of Davaine's commentaries. But the latter had more arguments than needed to confound them, the result of which was to win him great publicity and many followers. Also, a flood of discoveries were to be made based on his work.
Particularly, Robert Koch, a young German, invented the nutritional solid medium and the fixation of microbes on coloring, discovered the spores of the anthrasic bacterium in 1876, the cholera comma bacillus in 1883, then the tuberculosis bacillus which would take his name, then tuberculin which is now used to take skin tests, and finally he demonstrated the existence of acquired immunity.
It is also thanks to Davaine that Hansen would discover the leprosy bacillus in 1874, Neisser the gonococcus in 1879, Perroneito - in 1878 - and Toussaint - in 1879 - the hen cholera bacillus , Eberth the typhoid bacillus in 1880, Pasteur the staphylococcus and streptococcus in 1880, Klebs - in 1875 - and Loeffler - in 1882 - the diphtheria bacillus, Yersin the plague bacillus in 1894, Laveran the paludism haematozoa in 1880, etc.
Taking again Davaine's works as a starting point, as soon as 1877, Toussaint issued many publications on the anthrasic bacteria and, on the 12th july 1880, a historical date, he left a sealed envelope at the Academy of Medicine, which contained the means to acquire immunity against anthrax. He prescribed heating at 55°C (131°F) of anthrasic defibrinated blood, during 10 minutes. The numerous experiments he carried out on sheep and dogs, on which we won't elaborate here, gave a total reliability. It was the birth of the first modern vaccine.
On the 6th september 1880, Bouley, the general inspector of veterinary schools, confirmed and authenticated Toussaint's work.
When Pasteur heard about Toussaint's declaration, he was utterly stupefied. He wrote Bouley on the 10th august 1880 : "I am in awe and amazed by M. Toussaint's discovery. This turns upside down all the ideas I've had on viruses, vaccines, etc. It's beyond me... A dead germ cannot vaccinate".
But he didn't admit defeat for all that. He went into a raging feverishness, where his litteral obsession was to put Toussaint in the wrong. He prevented Chamberland and Roux from taking holidays. He bought hens and sheep and tried to hastily reproduce Toussaint's experiments. His hysterical fury made him commit huge technical errors. Thus, he wrote Bouley : "You know, the results have been absolutely negative. The hens which were inoculated immediately or after a variable time (1, 2 or 3 days ?) with infectious viruses have died without showing the least immunity".
At that moment, Pasteur ignored Jenner's principle on the time of reaction of the organism, which is 10 to 15 days. It is Roux who would tell him about it ultimately.
As soon as the 21st of August, Pasteur, helped by Roux and Chamberland, botched up, in the same manner, the same experiment with a few sheep. Still not waiting for the time of reaction, he wrote the Academy : " On the strength of numerous experiments which don't leave room to any doubt, I can assure you that M. Toussaint's interpretation must be reconsidered".
On the 29th August, for an experiment that was effective on the 21th August, Pasteur wrote Bouley :"Toussaint acted with a thoughtlessness which cannot be allowed in such a matter... The inoculation of fresh anthrasic blood causes all the sheep to perish..."
That was a lie, as in reality, despite the improper application of Toussaint's method, all the sheep hadn't perished. The experience was resumed from cold, later, by Pasteur, following a correct protocol, but he kept silent about it (according to Roux's and Chamberland's personal notes).
It was only on the following 21th March that Pasteur acknowledged the value of Toussaint's vaccine. However, he continued to accuse him about the interpretation of his experiment, claiming that the anthrasic germ was not killed in the vaccine (this upset his theories too much), but modified in its vitality. He even added that M.Toussaint's vaccine exposed the flocks to heavy losses (what a nerve !).
On the same day, he presented his own vaccine against anthrax, the marvelous simplicity of which he praised.
His idea had only been to limit the heating of the vaccine to 42-43°C (107-109°F) instead of 55°C (131°F), while increasing the heating time. But his declaration was just bluff, because he hadn't developed any actual vaccine.
The Pouilly-le-Fort experiment
A veterinary from Melun, M. Rossignol, being sceptical, invited Pasteur on the behalf of the Agricultural Society of Melun, to come to give a demonstration of what he asserted. On the 28th April, a protocol of experiment on 60 sheep was signed. Chamberland and Roux were stupefied and alarmed that Pasteur had signed such an agreement. Indeed : they had only undertaken one experiment on a sheep, and it had been uncertain and incomplete.
The official experiment of Pouilly-le-Fort was only carried out on 2 sheep. Roux and Chamberland decided to use a vaccine attenuated with potassium dichromate (Toussaint's 3rd method) without telling Pasteur (who was easily angered) about it.
Fifteen days later, virulent anthrax was injected. The sheep didn't manifest any trouble: they were properly vaccinated.
The Pouilly-le-Fort experiment had an enormous impact, and vaccine orders came flooding in from everywhere. But what most people ignore is that the experiment was carried out with Toussaint's method, not Pasteur's. Pasteur didn't want to know anyway (the essential thing being that Toussaint was "mud").
The hen cholera vaccine stolen, again, from Toussaint
Pasteur's first research on this disease began in 1879. Being convinced that protection against an infectious disease can only be obtained via the inoculation of an earlier harmless disease, this belief he never wanted to give up misled him much in his work - whereas Toussaint said and demonstrated that it was possible to vaccine with dead germs, therefore without the disease.
The second thing that is interesting to know, is that all the reports about the creation of the first vaccines originate in the book La Vie de Pasteur (Pasteur's Life), written by his son-in-law René Vallery-Radot, under the control of, and often dictated by Pasteur himself. This allowed Pasteur to fictionalize and embellish his story according to his natural tendency towards fame and paranoia.
Regarding his research on hen cholera, the fact is that, for more than a year, he prevaricated between various theories on the attenuation method, going from ideas about the alteration of acidity to ideas about the exhaustion of the germ's food (hence the old expression : "to feed the disease"), then to the idea about the action of oxygen on microbes, all those things being each time the subject of lengthy declarations at the Academy.
That didn't prevent him from praising his method of attenuation of the germs as a means to turn them into vaccines, yet without giving any detail about it. However, by the summer of 1880, Pasteur still didn't have any clear idea neither about the vaccines nor about the method of attenuation of hen cholera.
In August 1880, the English surgeon Lister urged him to reveal his method. But Pasteur excused himself, on the pretext that it was too early, in the name of scientifical probity.
On the 5th October, Jules Guérin, a member at the Academy, lost his patience and demanded that Pasteur finally reveal his mysterious method. Pasteur then got angry and violently took him to task. Guérin, feeling insulted, wanted to challenge him to a duel (though Guérin was 78). Pasteur refused. Things cooled down with time and Pasteur published, on the 26th October 1880, De l'atténuation du choléra des poules (On the attenuation of hen cholera). But still no glimpse of the vaccine formula, which didn't exist yet.
This didn't prevent Pasteur from telling, on the 21th March 1881, at the Academy of Sciences, that six months before Toussaint, he had demonstrated the possibility of attenuating the microbe of hen cholera and of preparing the vaccine virus in this way, thus placing himself as the first creator of that vaccine.
PASTEUR CRUSHES BÉCHAMP: THE TRIUMPH OF IMPOSTURE
French dictionaries mention Béchamp, briefly and contemptuously, as "Pasteur's adversary". In the new Larousse illustré published at the beginning of the XXth C., it is written that in all his works, Béchamp was opposed to the theory of microbian infection (!?). The same is written in the great Encyclopédie.
That is exactly the opposite which happened ; we're going to prove it later.
In l'Encyclopédie française (the French Encyclopedia), the most famous of all, it is mentionned : "Pasteur acknowledged that the visible corpuscles inside ill silkworms, which Cornalia had already observed without attaching importance to them (!?), were parasites". But in fact, Pasteur called fools those who acknowledged that. One can see how completely groundless historians' allegations are. According to them, for example, Claude Bernard would have been a "fierce adversary" of the microbian theory of diseases.
He would have "attempted to take the first data on microbiology", "denied the part played by ferments as living organisms", "considered fermentation as a purely chemical phenomenon". Ultimate reproach: he would have been "opposed to the pasteurian doctrine" and he's accused of having "delayed its spreading in France".
Yet, nothing in all this is actually true. Reality is even the exact opposite. As for his so-called opposition to Pasteur, on the contrary : he was the one who constantly supported him, had prizes awarded to him, and guided his first experiments (Pasteur himself admitted it). This is how the history of sciences is written. This is a shame.
The small history of silkworm in France
The silkworm industry, coming from Constantinople, was developed in France by Henri IV, who appointed a famous agronomist, Olivier de Serres, a high official in this national function. Also, de Serres published, in 1599, a remarkable work called La cueillette de la soye par la nourriture des vers qui la font (silk gathering, by the feeding of silkworms which make it), on what is essential to know to be successful in this culture. Nineteen successive editions were to be published in 73 years.
In 1806, magnaneries [silkworm farms] were so affected by muscardine (silkworm disease) that the French government appointed a Belgian physician, Pierre Humbert Nysten, to study on the spot this high-cost epidemy. Two years later, Nysten gathered a remarkable report not only on muscardine, but also on other silkworm diseases, and particularly the dead flat worm disease, or flachery (flaccid dead worms). As regards to muscardine, he had noticed that tworms affected by this disease were covered with a sort of white mold in which he could see grains (spores) under a microscope.
But it's only in 1835 that an Italian, Agostino Bassi (equipped with a better microscope), clearly isolated, for the first time, the agent responsible for muscardine - and which later would be called "microbe".
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2nd part to be posted by Stardust
