Gentlemen,
In this town of Chartres where all epochs are in some way superimposed,
from the fabled crypt of the Black Madonna which is nothing less than the
ancient sanctuary of the Carnutes where druids came to pray, to its
cathedral that sets out in the middle of the plains of the Beauce the
sculpted encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, it has been your wish that our
own age too comes to leave, however modest it may be, a visible trace of
its endeavours, as a testament to our faith. It was not your wish to
aspire to a comparative monument a few paces away from one whose beauty
has never been surpassed and in all likelihood never will be, but
nevertheless it has been your wish to accomplish an appropriate
commemoration.
You could not have succeeded better in this than with this charming,
moving and profound composition, scholarly twice over, one might say,
through the scholarly artistry with which it has been conceived, and by
the artistic science with which it has been realized.
The memory that it is here to establish, the event that it recounts -
there are few greater. Because if you really think about it, it is here
on the same fields of Chartres that one of the greatest victories in
modern science was achieved, one of the greatest victories without
tears, which in its peaceful way assured humanity of ultimate conquest.
It is in this very spot that Pasteur made a discovery, the truth of
which was in some ways greater than the object to which it was applied,
extending immediately beyond those animals affected by anthrax that were
the preoccupation only of farmers, to all of suffering humanity, which
is not to say, alas, that humanity has become cured, but that each day
at least humanity is spared more and more.
And more than any other Pasteur came to associate himself to our
Academy to which he never failed to deliver bulletins on his work, the
bulletins of his victory. He communicated his remarkable notes which
testified in incontrovertible facts the whole extent of the progress
accomplished in his study of anthrax.
At the present time we now see only the results gained. It is as if
we have scarcely retained the memory of the obstacles overcome, the
bitter struggles that Pasteur had to engage in at every step forward on
the new path. There is cause here to stress the revolution accomplished
in medicine following on from the work done on anthrax where we find in
origin all the progress that has been achieved subsequently in all
branches of medicine.
Pasteur showed us that there is no infectious disease born of
spontaneous generation. This is the fundamental point. There is no doubt
that from time immemorial we have had a marked tendency to attribute the
origin of infectious diseases to an animate contagion, to lower
organisms, living as parasites in the infected subjects.
Leeuwenhoek's discovery of infusoria seemed to give a serious
foundation to these simple opinions, and the parasitic doctrine was
accepted unreservedly by Kircher, Lancisi, Réaumur and Linnaeus. This
doctrine fell almost totally into disrepute when the astonishing
research carried out by Pasteur on fermentation came to introduce into
the problem a new and decisive element. He demonstrated that atmospheric
air is the receptacle for an infinite quantity of living germs which, by
their very active proliferation and multiplication, determine the
phenomena of fermentation and putrefaction.
From there the idea that infections and contagious diseases in humans
are themselves merely zymoses was only a step away. We know that cholera
can only derive from the cholera germ, that plague only ever issues from
plague, that yellow fever always requires the introduction of yellow
fever. Now that we no longer accept the simplistic origin of all these
diseases, now that we apply ourselves to precise and specific concepts,
the better we are able to prevent these diseases and protect ourselves
against their propagation.
On the other hand, without our committed classification of pathogenic
microbes, serotherapy would not have seen the light of day. The
discovery of attenuated viruses and their usage as vaccinations against
rabies, anthrax and other diseases demonstrates the pioneering role that
Pasteur played in these new therapeutics that were born of his
doctrines.
We have all read, gentlemen, accounts of the plague in the Middle
Ages, which, in six or seven years, carried off eighty million souls in
Europe, between a quarter and a third of its probable population.
In Italy, and particularly in Florence where suspicions that the
plague was propagated by witchcraft took on such immense proportions,
committees were formed to denounce the imagined guilty parties upon whom
the judges were cruel enough to inflict torture.
So, we have now seen, in 1898, the plague imported into Vienna, in
the centre of Europe, in a hospital where more than a thousand patients
were confined, and immediately localized, so that it carried off no more
than two or three victims.
This abrupt termination of a developing epidemic is the direct
consequence of Pasteur's work.
And the benefit of this discovery is universally at the foundation of
every aspect of medicine, up to the very diagnosis of the clinician for
whom today a sample of the patient's sputum is sufficient to confirm
tuberculosis, or some samples of matter to recognize that he has been
struck with cholera; and has gone so far as sanitary hygiene which has
been able to replace, thanks to him, the draconian prescriptions of the
past with measures that are both effective and merciful.
But just now I was evoking for you the memory of that encyclopedia in
sculpture and paint from the Middle Ages which is the cathedral of the
beautiful town that welcomes us today. I cannot help thinking,
gentlemen, that in the XIIth century and even at the start of the XIIIth
century, among the seven liberal arts, otherwise known as the sciences,
medicine was not included.2 On the portals, in the
stained-glass windows of our most ancient cathedrals you can easily make
out geometry, astronomy, music, grammar, philology, but medicine is
nowhere to be found.
And it is only a little later, in the middle of the XIIIth century
that you see it appear on the portal of Reims cathedral, holding up to
its eye a vial in which it is carefully examining the urine of a sick
person.
On the other hand, on the portal of Chartres you will see an
individual called Magus, the magician who symbolizes alchemy, hermetical
study, vanquisher of evil, who grovels on his knees, and to whom this
little statue was erected out of the gratitude of the men that he had
preserved or saved.
It is with a no less brotherly sentiment nor with any less religious
gratitude that we offer today his statue to the good magician who has
delivered humanity from the scourges that were thought to be invincible
and who has given hope to hopeless invalids that one day they will be
cured, and that one day the microbe that causes their illness will be
discovered.
Gentlemen, I was speaking to you a moment ago about the deadly plague
in Florence. At that time as we have seen, it was believed that the
plague was spread by disseminators who maintained pestiferous unguents
in vast laboratories that they were going to diffuse everywhere. Well!
scientific progress which has caused so many strange imaginings of the
ancient past to leave the realm of miracles and make them enter the
realm of reality, appears also to have realized this superstition that
belongs to an era of naivety, but by changing its character of
witchcraft to the good, like those poisons that medicine has turned into
remedies. There is no doubt that it was not only in the imaginations of
men of the Middle Ages that there existed laboratories in which plague
germs were cultivated; today they exist in reality; the mysterious
source is indeed cultivated there, but it is no longer destined to wage
war against humanity, but to cure it and even to prevent the outbreak of
disease. Pasteur, gentlemen, was the ingenious creator of these
beneficial laboratories for which Humanity and Science will always
observe an eternal gratitude.
1. This speech was delivered at Chartres, Sunday 7 June 1903. It is not inconceivable that Marcel Proust was responsible for some parts of the text, especially the passages about Chartres cathedral. At the time he was busy with his Ruskin translations.
2. In the Middle Ages there were seven liberal arts comprising the
trivium (grammar, rhetoric and dialectics), followed by the quadrivium,
comprising the mathematical arts (arithmetic, music, geometry and
astronomy). It is curious to note that Dr Proust, or his son, omitted
rhetoric, dialectic and arithmetic. On the other hand he mentions
philology, which did not figure in it.
Created 14.06.17