Anne E. Maczulak

“During a rabies scare in 1885, Pasteur concocted a treatment and gave the untested drug to a nine-year-old boy, Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by a grocer’s dog. Three weeks later, Meister had almost fully recovered. Pasteur’s legend received considerable help by the fact that Meister hailed from Alsace, a region controlled by Germany but claimed by France. The tricolor declared a victory for French science and for Pasteur who had beaten the German, Robert Koch, who had like Pasteur been working on vaccines. As a grown man, Joseph Meister took a job as a guard at the Institut Pasteur after Pasteur’s death. When German troops entered Paris in 1940, they swarmed the institute’s grounds and ordered that Pasteur’s crypt be opened. Meister likely had been one of several men who defended the crypt against the Wehrmacht and prevented its defilement. Shortly after, Meister inexplicably shot himself through the head. Even this act became part of Pasteur’s celebrity.”
― Anne E. Maczulak, Allies and Enemies: How the World Depends on Bacteria

“that a given bacterial species caused a specific disease. In 1876, Koch established a set of criteria that a bacterium must meet in test animals to be identified as the cause of disease. The criteria to become known as Koch’s postulates laid the foundation for diagnosis of infectious disease that continues today. Medical historians have debated whether the criteria attributed to Robert”
― Anne E. Maczulak, Allies and Enemies: How the World Depends on Bacteria