THE PRIVATE SCIENCE OF LOUIS PASTEUR. BY GERALD LYNN GEISON. PDF

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THE PRIVATE SCIENCE Of URAL! L* «IIStN On the hundredth anniversary of Louis Pasteur’s death, Gerald Geison has writ¬ ten a controversial biography that finally penetrates the secrecy that has surrounded much of this legendary scientist's labora¬ tory work. Geison uses Pasteur's labora¬ tor...

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THE PRIVATE SCIENCE Of

URAL! L* «IIStN

On the hundredth anniversary of Louis Pasteur’s death, Gerald Geison has writ¬ ten a controversial biography that finally penetrates the secrecy that has surrounded much of this legendary scientist's labora¬ tory work. Geison uses Pasteur's labora¬ tory notebooks, made available only re¬ cently, and his published papers to present a rich and full account of some of the most famous episodes in the history of science and their darker sides—for example, Pasteur’s rush to develop the r'abies vac¬ cine and the human risks his haste en¬ tailed. The discrepancies between the public record and the "private science" of Louis Pasteur tell us as much about the man as they do about the highly competi¬ tive and political world he learned to master. Although experimental ingenuity served Pasteur well, he also owed much of his success to the polemical virtuosity and political savvy that won him unprec¬ edented financial support from the French state during the late nineteenth century. But a close look at his greatest achieve¬ ments raises ethical issues. In the case of Pasteur’s widely publicized anthrax vac¬ cine, Geison reveals its initial defects and how Pasteur, in order to avoid embar(CONTINUED

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The Private Science of LOUIS PASTEUR

The Private Science of LOUIS PASTEUR

Gerald L. Geison

PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY

PRINCETON,

NEW

Kenosha Public library Kenosha, W! 53142

PRESS

JERSEY

3 0645 4528499 509.2 P26g

Copyright © 1995 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, Newjersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Geison, Gerald L., 1943The private science of Louis Pasteur / Gerald L. Geison p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-03442-7 1. Pasteur, Louis, 1822-1895. 2. Scientists—France—Biography. I. Title. Q143.P2G35

1995

509.2—dc20 [B]

94-35338

This book has been composed in Berkeley with Benguiat Display Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America 468

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For Christopher and Andrew MY

FAVORITE

SONS

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Chapter Nine.

CONTENTS

Private Doubts and Ethical Dilemmas: Pasteur, Roux, and the Early Human Trials of Pasteur’s Rabies Vaccine

234

PART IV. THE PASTORIAH MYTH Chapter Ten.

The Myth of Pasteur

259

Appendixes

279

Author’s Note on the Notes and Sources

305

Notes to the Chapters

309

Acknowledgments

343

Bibliography

345

Index

367

List of Illustrations and Tables t

* /

PLATES 1. Pasteurs mother. From a portrait drawn in pastel by Pasteur at the age of thirteen. 2. Pasteur’s father. From a portrait drawn in pastel by Pasteur at the age of fifteen. 3. Pasteur’s birthplace in Dole. 4. Pasteur in 1846, while a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure. From a drawing by Lebayle, based on a daguerrotype. 5. Pasteur in 1857, while dean of the Faculte des sciences at Lille. 6. Pasteur’s first laboratory at the Ecole Normale Superieure. 7. Pasteur and Madame Pasteur in 1884. 8. Emile Roux. 9. Pasteur in 1884. 10. Pasteur observing rabbits injected with the rabies virus. From La Science illustre, 15 September 1888. 11. Joseph Meister in 1885. 12. Jean-Baptiste Jupille in 1885. 13. From the famous painting by Rixens of Pasteur’s jubilee at the Sorbonne. 14. Pasteur, in 1892, with his grandson. 15. The original building of the Institut Pasteur, inaugurated in November 1888. 16. Pasteur in 1895, the last photograph taken of him in the gardens of the Institut Pasteur. 17. Pasteur’s funeral procession through the streets of Paris, 5 October 1895. 18. Pasteur’s mausoleum at the Institut Pasteur. 19. “The Death of Pasteur. Exhibition of the Body at the Institut Pasteur.”

LIST OF

X

ILLUSTRATIONS

AND TABLES

20. “La mort du Pasteur,” Le journal illustre, 6 October 1895. 21. “Pasteur est eternal.” 22. Pasteur as “Benefactor of Humanity.” Frontispiece from Fr. Bournard, Un bienfaiteur de VHumanite: Pasteur, sa vie,

son oeuvre. 23. “National Homage: From France to Louis Pasteur.” 24. “Pasteur Destroys the Theory of Spontaneous Generation.” Advertising card for La Chocolaterie d’Aiguebelle. 25. “Pasteur Discovers the Rabies Vaccine.” Advertising card for La Chocolaterie d’Aiguebelle. 26. Pasteur seated in his laboratory. Advertising card for the Urodonal Company in honor of the centenary of Pasteur’s Birth. 27. “Wine Is the Healthiest and Most Hygenic of Beverages.” Advertisement on the official map of the Metro subway system.

FIGURES 3.1.

Hemihedral crystals of sodium ammonium tartrate.

3.2.

The path to Pasteur’s discovery of optical isomers— the standard story.

3.3.

55

57

From Pasteur’s first laboratory notebook, “Notes divers,” 2/5/2 on the microfiche owned by Seymour Mauskopf.

63

3.4.

Pasteur, “Notes divers,” 1/3/1.

65

3.5.

Pasteur, “Notes divers,” 1/3/2.

67

3.6.

Pasteur, “Notes divers,” 1/3/3.

68

3.7.

Pasteur, “Notes divers,” 1/3/7.

74

3.8.

Pasteur, “Notes divers,” 1/3/8.

75

3.9.

Pasteur, “Notes divers,” 1/3/9.

76

3.10. Pasteur, “Notes divers,” 1/3/10.

77

3.11. The path to Pasteur’s discovery of optical isomers— as reconstructed from his laboratory notes. 5.1.

82

Experiment against spontaneous generation: Pasteur’s apparatus for collecting solid particles from atmospheric air and then introducing them into a previously sterile flask.

115

LIST

OF

ILLUSTRATIONS

AND TABLES

XI

5.2. The “swan-necked” flasks used in Pasteur’s most elegant experiments against spontaneous generation.

117

5.3. Pasteur on the correlations between internal structure, external form, optical activity, and life.

136 r

6.1 (a,b,c). Pasteur’s handwritten record of the agreed upon protocol for the trial of the anthrax vaccine at Pouilly-le-Fort.

152

6.2. This page, from the same laboratory notebook as figure 6.1 (a,b,c), establishing that Pasteur did in fact use the potassium bichromate vaccine at Pouilly-le-Fort.

155

6.3. Schematic diagram of “The Secret of Pouilly-le-Fort.”

157

7.1. On the relativity of immune responses.

186

7.2. Pasteur’s path to his rabies vaccine: the published papers.

194

7.3. Pasteur’s laboratory notes on the presumably rabid M. Girard, his first “private patient.”

196

7.4. Pasteur’s laboratory notes on Julie-Antoinette Poughon, his second “private patient.”

199

8.1 (a,b). Pasteur’s laboratory notes on the treatment of Joseph Meister, beginning on 6 July 1885.

208

8.2 (a,b). Pasteur’s laboratory notes on the treatment of Jean-Baptiste Jupille, beginning on 20 October 1885.

210

8.3. The Roux-Pasteur technique for preserving spinal marrow from a rabid rabbit.

214

9.1. Pasteur’s path to his rabies vaccine, 13 April 1885 through 6 July 1885: Animal experiments and human trials with dried spinal cords.

244

9.2. The results of Pasteur’s experiments on dogs treated by the “Meister Method,” 28 May 1885 through 6 July 1885.

252

TABLES 2.1. Outline of Pasteur’s career.

28

2.2. List of Pasteur’s major prizes and honors.

34

2.3. Chronological outline of Pasteur’s major research interests.

37

3.1. Pasteur’s list of eight tartrates.

66

XIV

PREFACE

In the course of producing this book, I have accumulated a heavy burden of debt to a host of people and institutions. So long is the list that I have saved it for a separate entry on Acknowledgments at the end of the book. By then, I hope my creditors will still be glad to be mentioned there; they are of course absolved of any responsibility for defects in the book. There is, however, one debt so large and so overdue that 1 must acknowledge it here. For the plain fact is that this book would never have seen the light of day without the inspiring scholarly example and patient support of my mentor, Larry Holmes.

Princeton, New Jersey August 1994

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PART I

Background and Context

Laboratory Notebooks and the Private Science of Louis Pasteur

I

N 1878, WHEN he was fifty-five years old and already a French national hero, Louis Pasteur told his family never to show anyone his private labo¬

ratory notebooks.1 For most of a century those instructions were honored. Pasteur’s notebooks—like the rest of the manuscripts he left behind at his death in 1895—remained in the hands of his immediate family and descen¬ dants until 1964. In that year, Pasteur’s grandson and last surviving direct male descendant, Dr. Pasteur Vallery-Radot, donated the vast majority of the family’s collection to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.2 But access to this material was generally restricted until Vallery-Radot’s death in 1971, and there was no printed catalog of the collection until 1985.3 The Pasteur Collection at the Bibliotheque Nationale is stunning in its size and significance. It is a tribute not only to Pasteur’s own awesome pro¬ ductivity as scientist and correspondent, but also to the tireless efforts of Pasteur Vallery-Radot, who greatly increased the size of the initial family collection by gathering additional correspondence and manuscripts by and about his grandfather from every conceivable source. There are, to be sure, other significant collections of manuscript materials by or relating to Pas¬ teur—at the Academie des sciences and the Archives Nationales in Paris, for example, or at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in Lon¬ don, and at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, in the United States. But the collection at the Bibliotheque Nationale is the largest and most important by far. As now deposited in the Salle de Manuscrits at the Bibliotheque Nation¬ ale, the Papiers Pasteur includes fifteen large bound volumes of correspon¬ dence by, to, or about Pasteur. Another fifteen volumes contain lecture notes, drafts of published or unpublished manuscripts, speeches, and

CHAPTER ONE

4

related documents. Most important, the Papiers Pasteur includes a meticu¬ lously preserved collection of more than 140 notebooks in Pasteurs own hand, of which more than one hundred are laboratory notebooks recording his day-to-day scientific activities over the full sweep of his forty years in research. Until these manuscripts are deciphered, edited for publication, and subjected to critical scrutiny, our understanding of Pasteur and his work will remain incomplete. There is no prospect that this monumental task will be accomplished anytime soon, not even with the stimulus of the centenary of Pasteur’s death in 1995. Indeed, the task has not even begun in any systematic way, and a full and proper edition of Pasteur’s papers and manuscripts will require a massive investment of time and resources. For the foreseeable future, we shall have to contend with a vast reservoir of unedited and unpublished manuscripts. True, Pasteur Vallery-Radot long ago published a small but significant sample of the collection, including notably a four-volume selection of Pasteur’s correspondence.4 Some of these letters, when read critically in the light of other sources, already reveal a Pasteur who was more complex and interesting than he has been seen, or indeed wished to be seen. Yet even these published letters have been sur¬ prisingly under-utilized by students of Pasteur’s career. They have done little to add nuance or depth to the standard Pastorian legend. In the popu¬ lar imagination, Pasteur remains the great and selfless “benefactor of hu¬ manity” who single-handedly slashed through the prejudices of his time to discover a set of scientific principles unmatched in their impact upon the daily lives and well-being of humankind. But as the centenary of Pasteur’s death approached, his oft-examined ca¬ reer attracted still greater, attention, some of it more critical than the usual celebratory accounts. Much of the revaluation now underway has focused on Pasteur the man, whose human foibles and difficult personality have never been entirely absent from the published record but are now gaining wider publicity. But Pasteur the scientist is also being subjected to the more systematic critical scrutiny that his importance and influence deserve. That is not to suggest that Pasteur’s life can be neatly divided into its scientific and nonscientihc aspects. In some ways, his scientific style seems a virtual extension of his personality, and one theme of this book will be that his scientific beliefs and modus operandi were sometimes profoundly shaped by his personal concerns, including his political, philosophical, and reli¬ gious instincts. As this book unfolds, it will become clear how much the standard Pasto¬ rian legend needs to be qualified, even transformed. That point will be made most explicitly in the last chapter, “The Myth of Pasteur,” which will also serve as a bibliographical essay of sorts. Tong before that last chapter, how-

LABORATORY

NOTEBOOKS

5

ever, the standard Pastorian saga will begin to unravel. For now, I want only to emphasize that the most important revelations in this book are the re¬ sult of focusing on what I have chosen to call “the private science of Louis Pasteur.”

PRIVATE SCIENCE AND LOUIS PASTEUR The choice of this phrase for the very title of this book deserves a prelimi¬ nary discussion and justification, if only because some readers may consider it a contradiction in terms. If, as many assume, the very definition of science implies a public (usually published) product—if, as Charles Gillispie has written, “science is nothing until reported,” or if, in Gerard Piel’s words, “without publication, science is dead”5—whatever can “private science” mean? The notion of private science is indeed problematic, and not only in the sense that these commentators probably have in mind. Strictly speaking, there may be no such thing as purely private science or knowledge—or even a purely private thought. Even the most solitary scientist is heir to a tradi¬ tion of thought, practices, techniques, training, and social experiences. Per¬ haps this was part of what the Victorian physicist John Tyndall had in mind when he wrote in 1885, in his introduction to the English translation of the first biography of Pasteur, that “[t]he days when angels whispered into the hearkening human ear, secrets which had no root in man’s previous knowl¬ edge or experience, are gone for ever.”6 Tyndall’s immediate purpose was to convey his inductivist skepticism toward the alleged role of “preconceived ideas” in Pasteur’s research, but his general point can be extended to the realm of seemingly private thoughts or practices of any sort. For, in fact, there is always a continuum between private thought or prac¬ tices and public knowledge, whatever the field. The thoughts of the individ¬ ual scientist alone in his or her study or laboratory will perforce be filtered not only through an inherited tradition, but also through the scientist’s an¬

ticipations of audience response to the communication of those ideas. The scientist will always be aware that the anticipated audience may be large or small, friendly and receptive, or skeptical or hostile. According to the Rus¬ sian cultural critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1978), thought itself is nothing but ‘“inner speech,’ or social conversations we have learned to perform in our heads.” On this view, “when we think, we organize possible ‘dialogues’ with other people, whose voices and implicit social values live within us.”7 One might even say that something like a “sociology of the mind” is always at work. As we shall see in the case of Pasteur, and as the famous example

CHAPTER

6

ONE

of Darwin amply reveals, this sociology of the mind can temper, modify, repress, or forever silence a “passing thought.”8 Similarly, the “private” correspondence of a scientist (or anyone else) is obviously written with at least one recipient in mind. In the case of famous correspondents, including the mature Pasteur, some presumably private let¬ ters are clearly also being addressed to that larger audience known as “pos¬ terity.” More generally, as Stephen Jay Gould has suggested, there is little reason to suppose that “private letters somehow reveal the ‘real’ person underneath his public veneer.” This common notion, says Gould, is a “mis¬ placed, romantic Platonism”: People have no hidden inner essence that is more real than their overt selves. If [a scientist] reacted one way to most people in public life, and another to his sister in letters, then the public man is most of the whole. We meet a different [scientist] in these letters, not the truer core of an essential personality. These letters do not show us the real man. They simply remind us once again that people have the damnedest ability to compartmentalize their lives; one can be a fine statesman and a cad at home, a financial genius and an insensitive lout, a lover of dogs and a murderer of people.9 Goulds point can be extended to private documents of any sort, includ¬ ing even laboratory notebooks. They may provide revealing insights into a scientist and his or her work, but they do not offer uniquely privileged access to the “real” story as opposed to the public “myth.” In the case at hand, Pasteur’s public performances must also be incorporated into our understanding of him and his science, as with any other social actors and their work. “Private science” becomes a still more problematic category when the research involves assistants and collaborators, as it did throughout much of Pasteur’s career (and as it does in most modern laboratory research). Even Pasteur, despite his secrecy and “Olympian silence” about the direction of his research, could not always conceal his work or thoughts from his closest collaborators.10 And a few of them did not always and forever honor Pas¬ teur’s stricture that the research carried out in his laboratory should remain a totally private affair within the Pastorian circle unless and until he chose to disclose the results himself or spe...