The parents of 9-year-old Joseph Meister were desperate. Their son had been bitten by a rabid dog and they knew he would soon come down with rabies and die.
In 1885, they brought the boy to the home of French microbiologist Louis Pasteur and franticly pleaded that he administer his new vaccine on their son.
Though Pasteur was reluctant to try the untested vaccine on a human subject, he understood his vaccine was the parents' only hope. He began the treatment and on July 6, 1885 declared a major breakthrough: After several anxious weeks, little Joseph did not come down with rabies. He was cured!
Although it may have been his most famous discovery, the rabies vaccine was certainly not the first major medical breakthrough for Pasteur. In fact, over the course of a lifetime, Pasteur created a veritable scientific revolution. Applications of many of his discoveries saved countless lives.
Pasteur was born on Dec. 27, 1822 in Dole, France, and showed a talent for art as a young boy. His father, one in a long line of Pasteur tanners, sent the boy to the Ecole Normale in 1842. He was elected to the Academie des Sciences in 1862 and elected to the Academie Francaise in 1882.
Pasteur married Marie Laurent in 1849 and they had five children, only two of whom survived childhood. Pasteur devoted most of his money to laboratory equipment or supplies, and often his wife, with a practical eye toward their children's future, had to beg him to take out patents on the processes he discovered.
Pasteur's "germ theory" of disease led to the practice of antiseptic surgery, which was pioneered by Pasteur's friend, British surgeon Sir Joseph Lister.
His study of the fermentation of wine, beer and milk led to the process of pasteurization -- using heat to kill the bacteria that causes food and drink to spoil.
From his study of fermentation, Pasteur concluded that the "infinitely little" organisms that caused wine to sour might also be the tiny creatures responsible for causing disease in the human body.
From then on he devoted himself to the study of contagious diseases and was credited with saving the silk worm industry in France by isolating the diseases that were killing silk worms. He developed the process of vaccination to wipe out anthrax, a widespread epidemic in France's sheep and cattle, in 1881, and went on to pioneer the rabies vaccine.
Although partially paralyzed by a brain stroke in 1868, he continued to work, founding the Pasteur Institute in 1888 and serving as its director until his death on Sept. 28, 1895.
