Page:Microbe Hunters.djvu/186
nothing for Roux and Chamberland to do but to roll up their sleeves and get the vaccines ready.
The day for the first injections came at last. Their bottles and syringes were ready, their flasks were carefully labeled—"Be sure not to mix up the first and second vaccine, boys!" shouted Pasteur, full of a gay confidence, as they left the Rue d'Ulm for the train. As they came on the field at Pouilly-le-Fort, and strode toward the sheds that held the forty-eight sheep, two goats and several cattle, Pasteur marched into the arena like a matador, and bowed severely to the crowd. There were senators of the Republic there, and scientists and horse doctors and dignitaries, and hundreds of farmers; and as Pasteur walked among them with his little limp—it was however a sort of jaunty limp—they cheered him mightily, many of them, and some of them snickered.
And there was a flock of newspaper men there, including the now almost legendary de Blowitz, of the London Times.
The sheep, fine healthy beasts, were herded into a clear space; Roux and Chamberland lighted their alcohol lamps and gingerly unpacked their glass syringes and shot five drops of the first vaccine—the anthrax bacilli that would kill mice out leave guinea-pigs alive, into the thighs of twenty-four of the sheep, one of the goats, and half of the cattle. The beasts got up and shook themselves and were labeled by a little gouge punched out of their ears. Then the audience repaired to a shed where Pasteur harangued them for half an hour—telling them simply but with a kind of dramatic portentousness of these new vaccinations and the hopes they held out for suffering men.
Twelve days went by and the show was repeated. The crowd was there once more and the second vaccine—the stronger one whose bacilli had the power of killing guinea-pigs but not rabbits—was injected, and the animals bore up beautifully under it and scampered about as healthy sheep, goats and cattle should do. The time for the fatal final test drew near; the very air of the little laboratory became finicky;