Sir Louis Pasteur's Day

 Who can say microbiology will be complete without Louis Pasteur? His work in this science is so irreplaceable that you can't go further in microbiology if you didn't consider his discoveries and inventions. He's a celebrated father of microbiology and germ theory. No lab is complete without a picture of Pasteur on its wall. The painting of Pasteur (in which he is holding a jar containing the spinal cord of a rabbit infected with rabies which he later used to develop a vaccine against rabies!) was painted by Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt. That's where the legendary portrait came from. Some 30 institutes, a large number of schools, hospitals, buildings, and streets in France bear his name. 

Pasteur had initially started out as a chemist. He discovered the concept of "Chirality" in chemical compounds. When he left chemistry and entered microbiology, he gave the world solid evidence that germs-and, not evil spirits or miasma-cause illnesses. The most famous contribution of Pasteur is Pasteurization, where heat (in the right amount, at right time) is applied to every molecule of milk or juice to kill many of the germs without affecting the taste. He's also renowned for the discovery of the rabies vaccine, where in 1885 he took brain tissue from infected rabbits and attenuated the virus, and tested it on dogs. His first human trial was on a 9 years old boy Joseph Meister who had been bitten 14 times by a rabid dog. He injected Meister with 13 inoculations of untested vaccine over 10 days and the child was cured. As Pasteur himself quotes the poet Virgil, "Audentes fortuna juvat" (Luck comes to the bold" and he never stopped. Apart from this, he was able to demonstrate the formation of lactic acid in milk and fermentation due to yeast. 

What Pasteur taught us beyond microbiology is that chance only favors the one who is prepared for it. His vaccine trials would often involve mouth pipetting the saliva of infected animals which he'd do himself. Such a single droplet could've caused him deadly consequences, but Pasteur never gave up on science and humanity. At one point in his life, in 1868, his working abilities were compromised due to a brain hemorrhage that affected the left side of his body. However, he was a patriotic man at heart and wanted to serve his motherland. He worked on beer fermentation and patented brewing beer and ale putting France at the top of the beer industry. 

May this Pasteur's day you remember the fight of Pasteur and may his story inspire you to realize what you owe to our motherland & humanity. 

Aditya Anil Kadam

Vice President,

Microbiol Association of Microbiology,

Department of Microbiology,

Rajarshi Shahu Mahavidyalaya (Autonomous), Latur.