Louis Pasteur 1887 Manuscript Letter Signed - Scientist
Pioneering French microbiologist and chemist (1822–1895) who demonstrated the germ theory of disease and developed the first vaccine against rabies.
Two-page manuscript letter signed “L. Pasteur” to the folklorist Henri Gaidoz, Bordighera (Italy), February 9, 1887. An interesting letter in which Pasteur writes to thank Gaidoz after reading his book: ‘votre livre m’a causé un veritable plaisir’. He praises Gaidoz’s “deep erudition” in gathering together all the “bizarre, puerile and superstitious practices which may once have been suggested to distraught spirits about the idea of a cure for anger.”
The book in question must be Gaidoz’s La rage et St-Hubert (1887), a history of anger since antiquity from the point of view of the curative methods and remedies employed at different times.
Following the advice of his doctors, Pasteur spent the winter of 1886–7 at Bordighera on the Ligurian coast near the French border. It is thus likely that Gaidoz’s work was read by him more for diversion than as part of his scientific reading. As he says in the present letter, the contents of the book “have a very singular effect when one is in the habit of living enclosed like me in a laboratory of experimental research.”
Accompanied by original mailing envelope.
In very fine condition, central mailing fold.
Pioneering French microbiologist and chemist (1822–1895) who demonstrated the germ theory of disease and developed the first vaccine against rabies.
Two-page manuscript letter signed “L. Pasteur” to the folklorist Henri Gaidoz, Bordighera (Italy), February 9, 1887. An interesting letter in which Pasteur writes to thank Gaidoz after reading his book: ‘votre livre m’a causé un veritable plaisir’. He praises Gaidoz’s “deep erudition” in gathering together all the “bizarre, puerile and superstitious practices which may once have been suggested to distraught spirits about the idea of a cure for anger.”
The book in question must be Gaidoz’s La rage et St-Hubert (1887), a history of anger since antiquity from the point of view of the curative methods and remedies employed at different times.
Following the advice of his doctors, Pasteur spent the winter of 1886–7 at Bordighera on the Ligurian coast near the French border. It is thus likely that Gaidoz’s work was read by him more for diversion than as part of his scientific reading. As he says in the present letter, the contents of the book “have a very singular effect when one is in the habit of living enclosed like me in a laboratory of experimental research.”
Accompanied by original mailing envelope.
In very fine condition, central mailing fold.
Pioneering French microbiologist and chemist (1822–1895) who demonstrated the germ theory of disease and developed the first vaccine against rabies.
Two-page manuscript letter signed “L. Pasteur” to the folklorist Henri Gaidoz, Bordighera (Italy), February 9, 1887. An interesting letter in which Pasteur writes to thank Gaidoz after reading his book: ‘votre livre m’a causé un veritable plaisir’. He praises Gaidoz’s “deep erudition” in gathering together all the “bizarre, puerile and superstitious practices which may once have been suggested to distraught spirits about the idea of a cure for anger.”
The book in question must be Gaidoz’s La rage et St-Hubert (1887), a history of anger since antiquity from the point of view of the curative methods and remedies employed at different times.
Following the advice of his doctors, Pasteur spent the winter of 1886–7 at Bordighera on the Ligurian coast near the French border. It is thus likely that Gaidoz’s work was read by him more for diversion than as part of his scientific reading. As he says in the present letter, the contents of the book “have a very singular effect when one is in the habit of living enclosed like me in a laboratory of experimental research.”
Accompanied by original mailing envelope.
In very fine condition, central mailing fold.