The Creation of Pasteurisation

Louis Pasteur discovered the process of pasteurization in 1857. He did this by making alcohol go off while it was fermenting. To see what was happening he decided to heat water in a swan neck flask (shown below). He then observed that the air could not get in after the water had been heated, but if he broke the top of the flask air would race in and in a few days bacteria would begin to grow.

A swan-neck flask: the idea was that air could get in but the dust and other impurities would get stuck in the flasks curve.

The first immunization he found was for chicken cholera. This discovery was accidental but Charles Cumberland, one of his colleagues, and Louis figured it out. To do this deed Pasteur took some of the blood from some sick chickens and grew the germs in a broth where they could breed. But before the chickens were injected with the broth he went on a short holiday leaving the broth in an open flask exposed to the air. When he returned he injected some chickens with a dose of the broth. They did not die. He then injected them with the proper disease and they all survived. Unable to believe his results he did the same thing again, the newly injected chickens survived the proper disease. Then he injected a final set with the proper disease straight off and they all died. Pasteur then realized that leaving the germs exposed to the air had weakened them. The broth had helped the chickens to become immune so that the later but stronger virus had no effect whatsoever. This knowledge helped him in the future when he discovered many other disease immunizations.

Pasteur also wanted to find a cure for the incredibly deadly disease of anthrax so in 1877 he began an investigation into it. He had been studying this for nearly four years and thought that he might have found a cure. Pasteur used the same approach as the chicken cholera. To prove it worked he went to a farm near Paris. There were sixty sheep. Some were injected with the vaccine, then a deadly dose. Some had a deadly dose straight away and he left a few of them alone. When a month had passed only the sheep that had been vaccinated had survived.

Finally he attempted his biggest challenge yet, a cure for rabies. He thought that one of his assistants might be on the right track. This assistant was Emile Roux and he was using the spines of infected rabbits. Roux kept on testing how long the germs would live. Louis copied this to the annoyance of Roux but he tested the weakened germs on dogs. He would firstly give it germs from a spine that was 14 days old, then 13 days and so on. Pasture, though the vaccine worked on dogs was not sure if it would work on humans. This was until a 14 year old named Joseph Meister came. He had been bitten all other by a rabid dog and Pasture thought that he was gong to die anyway so he used the vaccine. It worked and soon lots of people were being vaccinated against rabies.

Louis Pasteur, though not the first one to discover a vaccine, is remembered for his pioneering work in microbiology. He has given scientists today the ability to figure out the causes of other diseases. This is shown everywhere and from hospitals to pharmacies. It also led scientists to discover other disease vaccinations such as measles, mumps and tuberculosis. It proves that Louis Pasteur was indeed one of the most important men who ever lived.