The legacy of Louis Pasteur

In 1885, Louis Pasteur, a French chemist and biologist, successfully tested his rabies vaccine on a human subject. He began closely studying bacteria while investigating the cause of souring in milk and other beverages. This led him to develop the process of pasteurization, where a liquid is boiled and then cooled to kill the bacteria that cause the souring.

Pasteur moved on into a more thorough study of bacteria, enabling him to prove that these microscopic organisms occurred naturally in the environment and did not simply appear spontaneously, as was then generally believed.

Pasteur lived at a time when thousands of people died each year of rabies. Pasteur had worked for years on a vaccine. Just as he was about to experiment on himself, a 9-year-old, Joseph Meister, was bitten by a rabid dog. The boy’s mother begged Pasteur to experiment on her son. Pasteur injected Joseph for ten days -- and the boy lived. Decades later, of all the statements Pasteur could have had etched on his headstone, he asked for three words: Joseph Meister Lived.

Sin is a disease (Jeremiah 8:22; 14:19; 30:12; Hosea 5:13; Micah 1:9; Mark 2:17). Christ offers complete forgiveness of sin, cleansing of the conscience, and eternal life, and today is your day to accept it. Prepare yourself for the judgment seat of Christ (1 Corinthians 4:3-5).

Kyle Campbell