Louis Pasteur — "I have great hopes that the vaccine against rabies will be a success."
I have great hopes that the vaccine against rabies will be a success.
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More from Louis Pasteur
"The greatest error is to believe that one knows everything."
"I have been for the past three years studying a disease which is called hydrophobia, or rabies. It is a disease which I believe to be caused by a microbe."
"The more progress physical sciences make, the more they give us cause to believe that all phenomena are reducible to molecular forces."
"The greatest discovery of my life has been finding God."
"When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments: tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Pasteur expresses optimism that his experimental rabies vaccine will work. He is voicing confidence in a treatment he developed but has not yet fully proven, anticipating that it will protect people bitten by rabid animals from a disease that was, at the time, almost universally fatal once symptoms appeared.
Relevance to Louis Pasteur
Pasteur spent years developing the rabies vaccine by attenuating the virus in rabbit spinal cords, despite not being a physician. In 1885 he famously administered it to nine-year-old Joseph Meister, who survived. This quote captures his characteristic blend of scientific caution and bold conviction, reflecting his lifelong drive to apply germ theory to save human lives.
The era
In the 1880s, rabies was a terrifying death sentence with no cure, and Europe lacked any reliable vaccine beyond Jenner's smallpox inoculation. Germ theory was still contested by miasma believers. Pasteur worked without modern virology, microscopes that could see viruses, or institutional vaccine trials, making his rabies breakthrough a landmark that helped launch the era of microbiology and preventive medicine.
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