Page 29 - Fall2020

THE OFFICIAL STORY concept of vaccination. He prepared two groups The germ
Bacillus anthracis is a rod-shaped, gram- of twenty-five sheep, one goat and several cattle.
positive, facultative anaerobic bacterium about The animals of one group were twice injected theory
1 by 9 μm in size. The bacterium normally rests with an anthrax vaccine prepared by Pasteur, allowed
in spore form in the soil and can survive for at an interval of fifteen days; the control group scientists to
decades in this state. was left unvaccinated. Thirty days after the
Anthrax is spread by contact with the bac- first injection, both groups were injected with a envisage a
terium’s spores. Anthrax spores often appear culture of live anthrax bacteria. All the animals quick fix to
in infectious animal products. Contact is by in the unvaccinated group died, while all of the disease with
breathing, eating or through an area of broken animals in the vaccinated group survived.
skin. Anthrax does not typically spread directly This apparent triumph, widely reported in a vaccine.
between people or animals—in other words, it the local, national and international press, made
is not contagious. Pasteur a national hero and ensured the accep-
Although a rare tance of vaccination
disease, human an- in the practice of
thrax, when it does medicine.
occur, is most com- That’s the of-
mon in Africa and ficial story, anyway.
central and southern Now, let’s examine it
Asia. Anthrax in- more closely.
fection on the skin
is known as “hide- PUBLIC VERSUS
porter’s disease.” PRIVATE
Historically, inhala- Pasteur’s pub-
tional anthrax was lic triumphs look
called “woolsorter’s different when we
disease” because it compare the glowing
was an occupational newspaper reports
hazard for people of the day with Pas-
who sorted wool. Spores of Bacillus anthracis. teur’s private note-
Today, this form of books, analyzed by
infection is extremely rare in advanced nations, Gerald L. Geison in his book The Private Sci-
as almost no infected animals remain. In 2008, ence of Louis Pasteur.
2
a drum maker in the United Kingdom who Pasteur promoted the theory, widely dis-
worked with untreated animal skins died from puted at the time, that microbes caused most
inhalation anthrax. if not every disease. The germ theory allowed
1
While rare today, anthrax posed a major scientists to envisage a quick fix to disease with
economic and livestock challenge in France and a vaccine containing a weakened or attenuated
elsewhere during the nineteenth century. Sheep form of the bacteria—similar to the then-com-
were particularly vulnerable, and national funds mon idea that a little bit of poison could make
were set aside to investigate the production of a you immune to a larger dose.
vaccine. Louis Pasteur dedicated several years Reading about these early attempts to find a
to this quest after Robert Koch, his German vaccine for anthrax conjures up images of Monty
rival, claimed discovery of the causative Bacil- Python and the Ministry of Silly Science. Some
lus anthracis agent. The efforts to find a vaccine scientists attempted “attenuation” by subjecting
enticed not only Pasteur but other scientists of the microbe to a poison, potassium bichromate,
his day into a fiercely competitive race for the or carbolic acid, a disinfectant. Another scientist
glory and the gold. thought he could create an attenuated vaccine
In 1881, Pasteur performed a public ex- by heating the blood of infected animals and
periment at Pouilly-le-Fort to demonstrate his injecting it into non-infected ones. Some favored

FALL 2020 Wise Traditions 27