When you eat a bowl of cereal in the morning and see the word “pasteurized” on the milk jug, do you know that this refers to the French scientist Louis Pasteur? Louis Pasteur was born in France in 1822, a time when most people did not know that germs make you sick, and that germs or microbes are what spoils food and milk.  His research and discoveries have importance to our lives to this day.

 

As a boy, Louis loved to go fishing, and to sketch with oil pastels.  There wasn’t much indication of his future career as a renowned scientist.  But Louis worked very hard to earn admission to the University of Strasbourg, and then worked even harder to pass the entrance examinations for the departments of Math and Science.

 

Pasteur was a successful student, and became a professor of Chemistry. While he taught at the university, he also continued conducting his own research on bacteria, a subject that had always been meaningful to him.  Tragically, three of his five children had died of an infectious disease called typhoid.  This great personal loss helped inspire him to discover what causes diseases – to learn what makes people sick.

 

Louis Pasteur showed perseverance and deliberate care in conducting out his experiments.  He was famous for always saying, “In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.” He was paraphrasing what a Roman philosopher once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

 

His carefully documented his experiments in great detail so that other doctors could re-create his results and therefore would be convinced of what he had discovered.  He proved that bacteria, or microbes, exist, and furthermore that they are in the air and also lie lingering, unseen, on surfaces such as utensils and hands.  Most important, he proved that these microbes cause diseases.

 

As his new knowledge spread, dairy farmers began sterilizing their milk by heating it to kill bacteria.  Fewer people got sick from spoiled milk.  People began to understand that microbes carried diseases.  Doctors started washing their hands, which made many fewer people die in hospitals.

 

Louis Pasteur made many interesting comments in his writings.  He wrote: “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.”  He also wrote: “…there is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world is more than a mere combination of events,”  And he strongly believed that “Science brings man nearer to God”.

 

Louis Pasteur focused his disciplined and methodical approach to the development of vaccines.  As all scientists do, he drew on the work of those who came before him, in this case, Edward Jenner, who discovered in 1796 that by exposing people to cow pox, a disease that affected cows, they would build immunity to smallpox, a disease deadly to people.  As our students of Latin know, ‘vaca’ means ‘cow’ in Latin. This is the origin of the word ‘vaccine’.  Pasteur created vaccines for rabies and anthrax, two other deadly diseases of that time.

 

Pasteur laid the foundation for Dr. Joseph Lister in Scotland to develop sterile surgical procedures.  Listerine Antiseptic was named for Dr. Lister.  Pasteur’s work enabled other scientists to develop vaccines for tuberculosis, diphtheria and tetanus – shots that all of us still receive to this day.

 

In a letter to his father, February 7, 1860, Pasteur wrote: "God grant that by my persevering labors I may bring a little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably failed."

 

Louis Pasteur died in 1895 after spending a life dedicated to helping others.  Many of our grandparents would not have survived these diseases had vaccines not been available.  In fact, many of us might actually not be alive today, but for the work of Louis Pasteur.