| Home | Louis Pasteur (1822 - 1895)
Near the top of my list of heroes is Louis Pasteur. He was one of the greatest benefactors of humanity. Pasteur insisted that if Germs were the cause of fermentation they could just as well be the cause of contagious diseases. Pasteur solved the mysteries of anthrax, rabies, silkworm diseases, and chicken cholera. He contributed to the development of the first vaccines. Pasteurization has of course saved many lives. (Edsel Ford died as a result of drinking un-pasteurized raw milk.) Perhaps even more important was Pasteur's rabies studies showing disease could be treated with weakened viruses thus paving the way for other vaccinations. The wine and beer industries owe him a great debt for his germ theory, which made possible large scale brewing and contributed to antiseptic operations. One of his greatest contributions was proving that the myth of spontaneous generation was impossible. Mice did not spontaneously generate from dirty rags. This should have prevented neo-Darwinists from telling us that Life spontaneously generated from non-living matter. But then Scientism and other religions are often based on ridiculous assumptions. |