国外英文文学系列 The life of Pasteur.docxVIP

PAGE PAGE 1 国外英文文学系列 The life of Pasteur Title: The life of Pasteur Author: René Vallery-Radot INTRODUCTION L’homme en ce siècle a pris une connaissance toute nouvelle des ressource de la nature et, par l’application de son intelligence il a commencé à les faire fructifier. Il a refait, par la géologie et la paléontologie, l’histoire de la terre, entra?née elle-même par la grande loi de l’évolution. Il conna?t mieux, grace à Pasteur surtout, les conditions d’existence de son propre organisme et peut entreprendre d’y combattre les causes de destruction.—Monod, L’Europe Contemporaine. Whether to admire more the man or his method, the life or the work, I leave for the readers of this well-told story to decide. Among the researches that have made the name of Pasteur a household word in the civilised world, three are of the first importance—a knowledge of the true nature of the processes in fermentation—a knowledge of the chief maladies which have scourged man and animals—a knowledge of the measures by which either the body may be protected against these diseases, or the poison neutralised when once within the body. I. Our knowledge of disease has advanced in a curiously uniform way. The objective features, the symptoms, naturally first attracted attention. The Greek physicians, Hippocrates, Galen, and Aretaeus, gave excellent accounts of many diseases; for example, the forms of malaria. They knew, too, very well, their modes of termination, and the art of prognosis was studied carefully. But of the actual causes of disease they knew little or nothing, and any glimmerings of truth were obscured in a cloud of theory. The treatment was haphazard, partly the outcome of experience, partly based upon false theories of the cause of the disease. This may be said to have been the sort of knowledge possessed by the profession until{vi} men began to study the “seats and causes” of disease, and to search out the changes inside the body, corresponding to the outward symptoms