Role in Society
One of the most influential people in medical history was the French microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur.
He significantly contributed to the current knowledge of infectious illnesses and ushered in a new era in how people treat them.
Pasteurization, which he invented to keep food from spoiling, and the germ hypothesis of illness, which states that many diseases are caused by germs, have made him famous.
Pasteur’s work in silkworms was a turning point in his career, as it allowed him to delve into the complexities of infectious diseases and to develop certain practices of epidemiology. Through his study of chicken cholera, he discovered the principle of vaccination and applied it to many other diseases, including anthrax. He obtained financial support from farmers to conduct a large-scale public experiment of anthrax immunization, which was a complete success and convinced many people of the validity of his work.
Personal History
Jean-Joseph Pasteur, Louis Pasteur’s father, was a tanner and a sergeant major who won the Legion of Honor for his service in the Napoleonic Wars (Debré, 2000). Louis Pasteur had a mediocre academic career up until his early teens, but he excelled as an artist. When he was 15 years old, he began creating pastel pictures of his family and friends, which are now housed at the museum (Debré, 2000). The Royal College of Besançon awarded him a bachelor of arts in 1840 and a bachelor of science in 1842 after he completed his elementary and secondary education in the town of Arbois, where he had migrated with his family (Debré, 2000).
In 1843, Pasteur enrolled in the École Normale Supérieure (Debré, 2000).
In 1845, Pasteur graduated with a master’s degree in science; he later earned a doctorate in physics (Debré, 2000).
In 1847, he went on to receive a PhD in the natural sciences (Debré, 2000).
In 1848, Pasteur accepted a position as a physics teacher at the Lycée (secondary school) in Dijon (Debré, 2000).
However, he quickly changed courses and became a chemistry professor at Strasbourg University. He wed Marie Laurent, whose father was the university’s rector, on May 29, 1849 (Debré, 2000).
Evolution of Treatment Approach
When he was appointed chemistry professor and dean of the scientific department at the University of Lille in 1854, he started looking into issues at a nearby distillery that were affecting the quality of the alcohol being produced (Debré, 2000). Thanks to his research, he was able to determine the significance of many microbes in other fermentation-related issues. His finding that introducing air into a fermenting fluid would stop the process, known as the Pasteur effect, demonstrated the vital role that oxygen plays in fermentation, and eventually led to the coining of the terms aerobic and anaerobic to describe organisms that can survive either with or without oxygen (Debré, 2000). As a result of his expertise in microbiology and fermentation, the French wine and beer industries were saved from extinction as he addressed production and contamination issues (Debré, 2000).
Many illnesses, he theorized, resulted from the proliferation of microbes inside the body, and he proposed that weaker versions of these pathogens may be employed to protect against sickness.
The first vaccination that was developed by Pasteur was for chicken cholera. He observed that infected hens who managed to recover went on to become immune to future outbreaks, and he theorized that this was because their bodies were harboring weaker versions of the infection (Debré, 2000). He put this theory to the test by injecting healthy chickens with bodily fluids from ill birds and discovered that the healthy chicks became immune to the disease (Debré, 2000).
Pasteur used this information to develop a vaccine against rabies. He accomplished this by the cultivation of the rabies virus in rabbits (Debré, 2000). Injecting the attenuated virus into dogs and people, he discovered that they became immune to the sickness.
These days, vaccines are developed employing a wide range of techniques, from in vitro pathogen growth and protein purification to genetic engineering. It has been more than a century since Pasteur’s original discovery of the notion of immunizing people by exposing them to weaker versions of diseases, but the essential idea is still the same.
References
Debré Patrice. (2000). Louis Pasteur. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.