Louis Pasteur

The kids are participating in a biography fair with our homeschool group next Thursday and have been working on their presentations all month. I had the urge to learn about someone, too. I mean, if they have to do it I should too, right? We've been learning about microscopes in science and some of the small things scientist could now see because of microscopes and Louis Pasteur and germs were mentioned. There was only a small tid-bit of information and I was intrigued. I decided to learn more and do my biography on him.  I read a simple book, did a simple summary (following what I've been learning from my new writing program), and presented what I learned to my kids.  I think he's a fascinating man. 

"Watch out! It's a mad wolf!"  Louis Pasteur heard this a lot as a young boy in Arbois, France.  Mad wolves were biting people and the people were dieing.  He never forgot the mad wolves. 

As a youth, Louis Pasteur wanted everything he did to go right.  He worked slowly and carefully.  He loved to draw and was good.  He thought he might be an artist, but his High School principal said he should be a professor. 

Louis attended a school and studied hard.  He liked science.  He still thought about the mad wolf. 

Pasteur was interested in crystals and how they grow.  He got a job teaching science at a University.  He studied crystals in the lab.  Then he met someone that he liked more that crystals--Marie Laurent.  They were soon married and had 4 girls and 1 boy. 

Guess what Louis studied next?  Beet juice!  Sometimes it turned to alcohol, sometimes it turned sour.  He found living things in the beet juice which are called microbes or germs.  He learned that different microbes act in different ways which caused the juice to act differently.  Scientist didn't know where microbes came from.  Louis found that they were in the air.  He learned that heat would kill the microbes.  People used his idea and killed microbes in milk.  This process is called pasteurization.  Louis' findings also helped dirty hospitals kill  microbes.  Louis told the doctors to boil their tools to kill the germs. 

Then 3 of Louis' daughters died.  He worked harder trying to find ways to help people. 

He studied sick silkworms next and found ways to keep them healthy.  After that he studied anthrax in sheep.  It was killing the sheep.  He injected a weak version of anthrax into healthy sheep and they didn't get sick.  These weakened versions of a disease are called vaccinations.  It's what you get when you go to the doctor for shots.  Lois Pasteur discovered this idea.

Remember the mad wolf?  So did Louis.  Now he decided to study rabies.  It was very hard and dangerous.  The rabies microbe is small and there was a chance that he would get bitten.  Bet he kept trying.  He gave infected animals a vaccine and cured them.  Now he wanted to try in on people but wondered if it would be safe.  He tried the vaccine on a boy bitten several times by a mad dog.  The boy got 13 shots and got well.  Pasteur gave the shot to many other people and save many lives.  He was a hero.

People donated money to Pasteur and he made the Pasteur Institute.  He was now too old to study, but he had a lot of helpers.  He died when he was 73 years old, but his work will never die.