Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) - photo 1
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) - photo 2
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) - photo 3

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

Starting price
£ 6 000
Auction dateClassic
09.12.2020 00:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 470174
Lot 53 | Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

Letter to Baron Kemény. 4 October 1881

PASTEUR, Louis (1822-1895). Autograph letter signed ('L. Pasteur') to Baron [Gábor] Kemény [de Magyargyeromonostor], Paris, 4 October 1881.



In French. Two pages, 273 x 228mm, a retained draft with extensive autograph cancellations and revisions. Integral blank.



On the preparation and distribution of his anthrax vaccine. Kemény has asked for authorisation for Pasteur's assistant, Louis Thuillier, to proceed to a complete preparation of the anthrax vaccine before the relevant commission in Hungary, but Pasteur cannot agree: 'This preparation ... is rather simple in principle: I have published it in the proceedings of the French Académie des Sciences. But to ensure its full value requires considerable time and even investment. One needs to test ... the state of the virulent anthrax parasite every day as it progressively changes, and this test can only be done with the help of inoculations practised on animals, and finally on sheep in sufficient numbers'. Thuillier will therefore not have enough time to devote himself to this experiment. Furthermore, Pasteur insists that for at least a year 'all the vaccine which will be used by breeders of sheep and of cattle must be prepared by me'. Pasteur is in the process of scaling up production: 'I already possess no less than two hectolitres of liquid ready to be transformed into vaccine. Next spring I shall be able to send out tubes full of liquid vaccine over distances, delivered for the most modest prices'. Pasteur assures Kemény that Hungary will have favoured status for the propagation of the vaccine, and envisages setting up a production line in Hungary under his close supervision. 'For the moment one needs to convince the farmers and the great landowners of the efficacity of the method'.



Pasteur had begun working on an anthrax vaccine shortly after Robert Koch's proof that the disease was caused by the B. anthracis microbe, and his work had concluded with a sensational demonstration in May 1881, in which two groups of 25 sheep, one vaccinated and the other not, were injected with the bacterium, resulting in the deaths of the entire unvaccinated group, while the vaccinated sheep survived. The recipient of the letter, Baron Kemény (1830-1888) was the Hungarian Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Trade. Pasteur's assistant, Louis Thuillier (1856-1883), went on to conduct a series of anthrax vaccinations of sheep and cattle in Germany and Austria-Hungary in the following two years.

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