Have you ever seen the word “pasteurized” on a carton of milk? You might think it means something about pastures – big grassy fields where animals graze. That’s usually how people pronounce it. But while it’s nice to think of the cows that gave us the milk sunning themselves in grassy pastures, the word actually refers to something that happens after the milk is out of the cow. Before milk goes into cartons and then on to the store, it undergoes pasteurization. The milk is heated to a specific temperature in order to kill any harmful microorganisms, or germs, that might make you sick. It has nothing to do with grassy fields! Instead, it’s named after the man who invented the process: Louis Pasteur.  

Educational Background of Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur’s background gave no hint that he would become a great scientist later in life. Born in 1822 in Dole, France, he came from a long line of leather tanners. His family was poor, and Louis wasn’t even that interested in school as a child. He preferred fishing and drawing. He actually became very good at drawing portraits of his friends and family using pastels and pencil.

Things began to change when Louis went off to college. He began to study hard, but still struggled. His grades in chemistry – a subject he would later do important work in– were especially bad. He wanted to go to the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, but had to take the entrance exam twice! But even though he had setbacks, his hard work and dedication paid off. 

While he was working to try to get into the Ecole Normale, Louis began attending lectures by a famous chemist, and decided that he wanted to be a chemist too. So, when he finally went to the Ecole Normale, that’s what he studied. After he got his doctoral degree, he got a job at the University of Strasbourg, teaching and doing research in the structure of chemical crystals. 

He also met his wife, Marie, there. She was the daughter of the head of the university. At first, she wasn’t so sure about this serious, somewhat shy man. But after getting to know him better, she fell in love too, and they married. She would support him throughout their lives together, helping in the lab and with his papers. 

Louis Pasteur’s Early Works

Even though Louis started out as a chemist, his most important work is in microbiology, or the study of organisms so small, you need a microscope to see them. This shift happened almost by accident, but as Louis himself reminded people, “In the fields of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.” In 1854, he got a new job at a university in northern France. While there, the owner of a factory came to him with a problem. His factory fermented sugar beets to make alcohol, but sometimes he ended up with a spoiled, sour elixir, instead of alcohol.  

At this time, scientists didn’t know how fermentation worked. Some thought it was just chemicals rearranging themselves spontaneously under the right conditions. Most people just knew that when you left crushed grapes or soggy grain in a covered container for long enough, you got wine or beer. Louis wasn’t satisfied with those answers though, and set about trying to solve the mystery. He got samples of the good alcohol and the sour substance and put them under his microscope. 

What do you think he saw?

He saw different kinds of microorganisms swimming around in them! The alcohol samples had yeast, which is a microscopic type of fungus. The sour stuff had bacteria, which is a completely different kind of microorganism! Both types float around in the air, but Louis was the first to realize that the yeast settled in containers of grapes or mashed grain and caused fermentation. Those tiny yeast ate up the sugars in the beets, used it to make energy, then got rid of the uhhh…waste that they didn’t need. That waste was the alcohol.

Studies in Microorganisms

Louis was hooked. He went on to study the microorganisms in wine and beer, finding new ways to make sure they weren’t contaminated by tiny critters that would spoil them. But he wasn’t just interested in making beverages safer, although this was very important for people’s health and the French economy. Louis wanted to know more about how these tiny microorganisms lived. If so many scientists were wrong about fermentation, what other discoveries were waiting to be made?

One idea that didn’t make much sense to Louis was “spontaneous generation.” Spontaneous generation was the idea that some living creatures just arose from nonliving things. Rotting meat made flies, some people thought, because they’d seen fly larvae on rotting meat. Louis thought that flies must be laying tiny eggs in the meat. He suspected that microorganisms, like the yeast in beer and wine, actually float around in the air, settling on things and, if the conditions are right, growing and multiplying.

Louis devised an ingenious way to demonstrate that living things didn’t just spring fully-formed from non-living things. He designed a bottle with a long, skinny neck that curved downward like the top of the letter S, opening toward the ground. He then boiled a broth, killing any microorganisms that were already in it. He poured some of the broth into the S-neck bottles, and some into bottles with necks that opened upwards, toward the sky. 

Then he waited. After a few weeks, the bottles with the S-necks hadn’t really changed. But the ones with upward-facing necks had become cloudy. Looking at the liquid under a microscope confirmed that microorganisms had landed from the air and grown in it. But, microorganisms couldn’t land in the S-neck bottles, so that liquid stayed clear!

With all these accomplishments and discoveries to his name, you might be wondering, what else can one scientist do? A lot, it turns out! Louis wanted to study how microorganisms might be involved in causing diseases, and maybe even find ways to prevent or cure those diseases.  Sadly, he was motivated by events in his own life: three of his daughters passed away from typhoid fever when they were young. He started studying two diseases caused by bacteria: chicken cholera and anthrax. 

Chicken cholera is not a serious disease for humans, but is deadly to chickens, which you might have guessed from the name. Louis developed a vaccine for it almost by accident, but as with his study of microorganisms in alcohol, he was prepared to take advantage. Before going on vacation Louis gave an assistant specific instructions for how to infect some chickens with the bacteria they had been growing. But the assistant waited too long, and the cholera bacteria dried up. Lucky chickens!

But Louis didn’t think of himself as unlucky. Instead, he decided to give the chickens a dose of the dried-up, mostly-dead bacteria. These chickens got a little sick, but soon recovered. Later, Louis injected those same chickens with fresh, living cholera bacteria. Louis suspected that the first dose of mostly-dead cholera bacteria might actually protect the chickens from the living bacteria. He was right! The chickens didn’t get sick again!

Next, Louis heard about a vaccine for anthrax that a veterinarian named Jean Jaques Henri Toussaint had invented. Anthrax bacteria was deadly to both farm animals and people. He tested Toussaint’s vaccine, and it worked. In an unfair twist, Louis got credit for creating the vaccine, because his test was more widely covered in newspapers at the time. Sadly, Toussaint died only a few years later.

But Louis wasn’t done working on vaccines. The next disease he studied was truly terrifying: rabies. Rabies is a virus that causes animals, and unfortunate humans they might bite, to get a high fever, behave aggressively, fear water, and eventually die. There was no cure. Louis got to work, trying to develop a weaker version of the disease that could be used to make a vaccine. He tested it out on dogs. It seemed to work, but Louis wanted more time to experiment. 

But the experiment was about to speed up. One summer day in 1885, a mother burst into the lab, gripping the hand of her nine year old son. Both were crying and distraught. The boy, Joseph Meister, had been bitten 14 times by a rabid dog. Louis was worried because he had never tried his vaccine on a human. But without help, Joseph would die. Louis had to try. Just as they had done with the dogs, Louis and his assistants injected Joseph with the vaccine several times over the course of weeks. Louis and the boy’s mother spent this time worrying and waiting. It can take weeks or months for a person to get sick with rabies after they’ve been bitten, so they wouldn’t know if the vaccine had worked for some time. 

But time passed, and Joseph stayed healthy! He went back to school and playing outdoors, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he was afraid of dogs after that. People all over the world heard about the new rabies vaccine, and people came from miles away to receive it if they’d been bitten. Today, almost all pet dogs and cats get the rabies vaccine, though humans usually only get it if they’ve been bitten by a wild animal. Louis’s vaccine saved countless lives.

Louis Pasteur always wanted to use his work to serve others. Thanks to his work, we know a lot more about how microorganisms work, how they cause disease, and how to keep from getting sick from them. But Louis knew that wanting to do good wasn’t the same as actually doing it. He worked tirelessly, sometimes pacing the room late at night while he thought through a problem. He was careful and methodical in his work, trying to be sure he’d gotten it right, before he made any exciting announcements. But he also knew when to take advantage of an opportunity. If he didn’t, he never would have studied the yeast in fermented drinks, or how to make vaccines from weakened germs. He never would have saved Joseph Meister’s life with his rabies vaccine. Your milk wouldn’t be as safe to drink. So next time you notice something unexpected, or find something didn’t work the way you thought, think of Louis Pasteur, and keep examining it. Look at it carefully. You might discover something amazing!

Sources

Curtis, Robert H. (1993) Great Lives: Medicine. Macmillan, New York.

Dickman, Nancy (2016) Louis Pasteur: Germ Destroyer. Gareth Stevens Publishing, New York.

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/cellular-energetics/cellular-respiration-ap/a/fermentation-and-anaerobic-respiration

https://www.nature.com/articles/d42859-020-00008-5

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20527335/

http://thispodcastwillkillyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/TPWKY-Episode-82-Anthrax.pdf

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Close your eyes and imagine you’re a soldier in a war. But you’re not on the battlefield. Instead, you’re lying in bed recovering from injuries you received in battle. The room is pitch black and it’s been a long night, and you are very uncomfortable. You are sad and not feeling well. You miss your family back at home and wish you were not sick. But suddenly, you hear a door open and you turn and look down the hall. There’s light from a lamp and it’s moving toward you. You smile because you know who it is. A woman, a nurse, stops by you and puts her hand on your shoulder. “How are you feeling,” she asks. “Can I get you anything?” She gives you a drink of water. “Let me know if you need anything else,” she says and then walks away to attend to another soldier. You felt lonely and sad but now you feel much better, thanks to the woman who would become one of the most famous nurses of all time, the Lady with the Lamp, Florence Nightingale. 

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820. Her parents were English, which means from England, but at the time they were living in the city of Florence, Italy. And this is where she got her name, Florence! The Nightingales were a very wealthy family. Her father was a London banker. Florence and her sister had a very easy, privileged life. Growing up they got to travel all over Europe as a family. Imagine how interesting that would have been! After their travels, they settled in their home country, England. There they had two homes, a summer house in Derbyshire and a winter house in Hampshire. With the homes came servants who took care of them and all of the housekeeping. Like I said, a pretty easy life for the girls and the parents who had plenty of money to live in comfort.

During the 1800s most girls didn’t get a great education. But William Nightingale wanted the best for his daughters, so he took a special interest in their learning and taught them various subjects like history, geography, and literature. Florence was a very gifted child and soaked up everything her father taught her. Even at a young age with lots of practice, she could speak in several languages: French, German, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Latin. 

In the time Florence lived, called the Victorian era, women from wealthy families were expected to only handle housework (with the servants doing most of the work) and host guests. They weren’t supposed to look for jobs or earn money. Florence saw this but wanted something different. She wanted to work for herself and earn money for herself. She wasn’t satisfied with the way the world was. She wanted to find her purpose in life and believed there was more for her than simply running the home and taking care of guests. At an early age, she decided her calling in life would be to help others, to ease their suffering. She loved taking care of sick pets and servants. Being a nurse seemed like a natural fit for desire to help others.

So Florence mustered up the courage and went to her parents to tell them she wanted to be a nurse. They were very upset and refused to let her do it. They told her she wasn’t allowed to go to nursing school. In their minds, this was very inappropriate for a woman of her wealth and status. Like I said, it was a very different time and Florence was going against what was normal in her day.

But do you think Florence just went along with it? Nope. She was determined to become a nurse so she could help others.  Finally, after a lot of persuasion, her father gave in and she packed up her bags and moved to Germany to go to nursing school. The school was called the Institution of Protestant Deaconesses. There she learned all the important skills to take care of other’s medical needs. Florence was a fast learner, so she made quick progress and after moving back to England soon became the head of a hospital in London. 

In 1854, a war broke out between the countries of Turkey and Russia. Did you know there was a country called Turkey? It’s a big country on the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and the Middle East. The war became Russia and Turkey later became known as the Crimean War. Since England, Russia and France were allies, British soldiers were sent to fight in the war. To help sick and injured soldiers, a hospital was set up in Scutari, Turkey. And sadly due to the war, many injured soldiers ended up in the hospital. But the soldiers weren’t being taken care of properly. And this means soldiers who didn’t receive the proper care, often did not survive. Leaders at the time wondered what to do and someone suggested just the person to help – Nurse extraordinaire, Florence Nightingale! Florence was a friend of the Minister of War’s wife and he requested her to accept the job.

So, Florence, not being one to waste time, quickly went to work assembling a team of 34 nurses and all of the supplies they’d need to help the soldiers waiting in the hospital far away in Turkey. 

When Florence and the nurses arrived in Turkey, they were shocked at what they saw! The hospital was so overcrowded that soldiers had to sleep on the floor. And it was very unhygienic, which means it was unclean and it’s very important that a hospital is kept clean because if not germs can flourish and make sick soldiers even sicker. There were puddles of drain water everywhere — and worst of all rats! It was no wonder all of the soldiers were getting infected!

Florence knew if the soldiers were to get better, the hospital would have to change. Right away. With money from England, she quickly improved the conditions. She ordered new equipment, cleaned up the rooms, and even set up the kitchen to serve better quality food. All of her training as a nurse was being put to good use to save the lives of the soldiers and improve their quality of care. She was a true nurse who properly cared for her suffering patients. 

You’d think with all of this busyness, Florence would just want to rest at night. But at all hours, Florence kept an eye on her patients. At night she used to make her rounds, checking on each and every soldier. She used a lamp to light her way and the soldiers named her “the Lady with the Lamp”. Imagine if you were a soldier suffering and could not sleep at night. Imagine what it would feel like to see that lamplight coming down the hall and know that someone cared for you and was checking in on you. This is the kind of care Florence gave! She also wrote letters to the home of the soldiers who were unable to do it themselves and found ways to entertain them.

Thanks to Florence and other nurse’s hard work and selfless service, the conditions in the hospital barracks started to change. The mortality rate, which is the number of deaths in a certain period of time, decreased by two percent. This means that more and more soldiers were starting to survive their injuries!

This was such exciting news that papers back in London started writing articles about Florence Nightingale. People started calling her a heroine. Even the Queen of England wrote her a thank you letter!

After the Crimean War ended, Florence’s work did not. After seeing how poor the conditions were in Turkey, she set out on her new mission to make hospitals better across the empire. She met up with important figures such as Queen Victoria to discuss her ideas. Eventually, the army started training doctors and nurses to take care of soldiers with the care and concern Florence would give them.

To honor her service, the government decided to create a fund as a token of their appreciation and gratitude. They called it the Nightingale Fund and through it a big sum of money was raised and gifted to Florence to use however she pleased. In 1860, Florence set up her own institute called The Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. 

The school gave hope to women who wanted to work and service and earn their own living. It made training and schooling more normal for women in their society. It was an excellent school, one of the first to be developed based on accurate scientific methods. In fact, it was so advanced that most of the techniques that Florence developed in the school are still in practice today! And to this day, she is considered one of the founders of nursing training. 

Florence believed that nursing starts from the home. With this, she set up various training camps in smaller neighborhoods so the women of lower class could learn from her. This improved the level of health in poor families immensely. Not only was Florence a full-time professional nurse, she also published many books on nursing and healthcare. Her most famous writing is the Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not which is the best guidebook for household nursing. It has detailed step-by-step procedures on how to best tend to a patient at home.

To honor her service, there are plaques and statues of Florence Nightingale all around the globe. Three statues of Florence are in Derby, England alongside numerous plaques. From Los Angeles in the USA to Andhra Pradesh in India and in Kawanishi in Japan, various countries have put up statues in respect of The Lady with the Lamp.

Spend some time thinking about how Florence lived her life and the change for good she made in the lives of others. Do you like caring for others? What does it feel like after you help someone? It feels good inside, doesn’t it? Florence saw suffering around her and did whatever she could to help. For you, this might start small by helping a sibling when they are trying to tie their shoe or make their breakfast. Or it might mean helping your parents when they are sick — remember how much they helped you when you were sick! In fact, just the other day I wasn’t feeling well and my kids brought me some food and water and it made me feel much better. Next time you’re given the opportunity to serve others, remember Florence Nightingale and the change she made in the lives of others one individual at a time!

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