Louis Pasteur Chemist and Biologist December 27, 1822 - September 28, 1895 Enter your search terms Submit search form   Web gardenofpraise.com

Louis Pasteur (pahs TOOR) was born to a tanner, Jean Joseph Pasteur and his wife Jeanne in France in the ancient town of Dole. His father had been a soldier in Napoleon's army.

They sent Louis to a school in Arbois (Ahr-bwah) when he was six. He enjoyed drawing portraits of his family and friends. At that time his skill seemed to be in the field of art without a hint of his future fame as a scientist.

After he graduated he went to the Royal College in Besancon (bih zan SAH(N) where he earned his B.A. and then a Bachelor of Science degree two years later at the age of twenty. In 1847 he received a doctorate degree and became a professor at age twenty-six.

He fell in love with and married Marie Laurent and they had five children, but only two of them survived.

He began to study fermentation and how it related to alcoholic drinks. His research led to the process of pasteurization* of milk to kill viruses and harmful bacteria. The milk is not heated to the boiling point which would change the flavor, but is heated to a temperature sufficient to kill the bacteria which would cause it spoil easily or cause disease. It is then chilled and must be kept cold until used.

He named the new science bacteriology* and suggested a new theory, The Germ Theory of Disease. He believed that diseases were caused by germs attacking the body from the outside.

The raising of silkworms was a large industry in France at that time. People raised them in their homes or in large sheds. The silk worms constantly ate mulberry leaves, so the owners would even get up in the night to feed them. The silkworm would spin a cocoon and become a chrysalis.

Then the cocoons were put in a steam stove, dried in the sun and handed over to the weavers to unravel the silk threads. Each cocoon would be composed of a single silk thread 1000-3000 feet long. A few of the cocoons would be saved to develop into the moths which lay the eggs which hatched into silkworms and start the cycle all over again.

In 1849 the worms were hit with a disease and began to die. It first started in France and spread worldwide to every country except Japan. In 1865 at the request of the government Pasteur performed experiments to find the cause of the malady. Using the microscope he determined that corpuscles in the infected worms were causing them to die. The worms would infect each other. He helped the growers to find a way to isolate and then use eggs that were not infected.

At the end of this arduous* task he suffered a stroke and paralysis. For several months he was completely paralyzed. He was only 45 years old. After two years he began to recover the use of his body.

His next task was to try and find the cause of disease in the body. He developed a vaccine for a disease in chickens, fowl cholera, and a disease in animals, splenic fever. After proving its success he began to prepare a vaccine for large numbers of animals and by 1883 the number of animals vaccinated against the disease called anthrax* reached nearly 500,000.

Pasteur devoted the rest of his life developing vaccines for people against such diseases as cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis and smallpox.

The idea of immunization* with a weakened version of a disease was not new. As early as 1774 a vaccine for smallpox* had been discovered, and Edward Jenner before 1800 was vaccinating people against smallpox. He found that if he inoculated people with cowpox, they got the less severe disease which prevented them from getting smallpox.

He is especially remembered for the case in which he vaccinated* a nine-year-old boy, Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by a dog that had rabies.* The boy recovered after receiving the vaccine from Pasteur. When he grew up he became a caretaker at the Pasteur Institute.

Thousands of people since that time have received rabies vaccinations and been saved from getting the disease which is almost always fatal.

The Pasteur Institute was founded in 1888 in Paris. When he died he was buried there in a fine tomb.

Many of the facts in this story were taken from the book, (Louis Pasteur, His Life and Labours )
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Louis Pasteur Biography from World of Biography Louis Pasteur at Wikipedia Louis Pasteur Biography from Zephyrus Louis Pasteur from Access Excellence An Adaptation of Microbe Hunters two-act play by Gail Tucker-Griffith Life and Times of Louis Pasteur lecture by David Cohn Louis Pasteur from Panspermia.org Pasteurization of milk at Wikipedia Silkworms at Wikipedia Rabies Vaccine Saves Boy - July 6, l886 Saved From Hydrophobia by E. H. Julian, treated by Pasteur Louis Pasteur's Gravesite Louis Pasteur And the Myth of Pasteurization a dissenting view of Pasteur

Luis Pasteur: The Founder of Modern Medicine, The Sowers Series By Mott Media, Llc This book traces in exciting detail the events in the life of Louis Pasteur. Learn about his early life as the son of a obscure country tanner. Experience his years of struggle as an unknown scientist. Enjoy his triumph as one of the world's most celebrated heroes. Recommended for ages 9 to 13. In the Sowers Series, you can read for yourself, from the actual pen of these noted people form world history, of their relationship to Jesus Christ, and how that relationship affected their decisions and the course of human history! See history come alive, learn of the many hiding facts involving famous men and women from the pages of their diaries, letters to friends, the books they wrote, and more. You'll be amazed at what has been left out of our history books!

The Glad Scientist Discovers the Creator Ages 5-10 By Karol Ladd / B & H Publishing Group "The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator."---Louis Pasteur. Join the Glad Scientist as he explores creation with fun experiments using simple equipment found in homes and classrooms. Your 5- to 10-year-olds will discover the key steps of scientific method: question, hypothesis, procedure, observation, conclusion. 52 reproducible pages, softcover from Broadman & Holman.

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From Word Central's Student Dictionary
by Merriam - Webster
(Pronunciation note: the schwa sound is shown by &)

bacteriology
Pronunciation: (")bak-"tir-E-'ahl-&-jE
Function: noun
a science that deals with bacteria and their relations to medicine, industry, and agriculture

pasteurization
Pronunciation: "pas-ch&-r&-'zA-sh&n, "pas-t&-
Function: noun
the process of heating a liquid (as milk) to a temperature high enough and keeping it
at that temperature long enough to kill many objectionable germs and then
cooling it rapidly without causing a major change in its chemical composition

rabies
Pronunciation: 'rA-bEz
Function: noun
a disease of the nervous system of mammals that is caused by a virus usually passed on
by the bite of an animal already infected with it and is always deadly if untreated

vaccine
Pronunciation: vak-'sEn, 'vak-"sEn
Function: noun
a preparation of killed, weakened, or fully infectious microbes that is given
(as by injection) to produce or increase immunity to a particular disease

Word History: Toward the end of the 18th century, Edward Jenner, an English physician, made an important discovery. He observed that dairymaids who had the disease cowpox did not get smallpox, a much more serious disease. Working from this observation, he injected a person with material taken from another person's cowpox sores. He found out that this injection protected that person against the dreaded smallpox.

anthrax
Pronunciation: 'an-"thraks
Function: noun
an infectious and usually fatal disease of warm-blooded animals (as cattle and sheep)
caused by a bacterium and transmissible to humans;
also : a bacterium causing anthrax

immunization
Pronunciation: "im-y&-n&-'zA-sh&n
Function: noun
treatment (as with a vaccine) to produce immunity to a disease


smallpox
Pronunciation: 'smol-"pahks
Function: noun
a sometimes deadly disease that is caused by a virus, is characterized by fever and a
skin rash, and is believed to have been wiped out worldwide as a result of vaccination

arduous
Pronunciation: 'ahrj-(&-)w&s
Function: adjective
extremely difficult; an arduous climb

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