What is Pasteur famous for?

Pasteur had established himself as a leader in research, and in 1877 he committed himself to study diseases. Pastures first important work in the vaccination field arrived in 1879 while studying chicken cholera which was destroying the chicken population. Pasteur was influenced by Edward Jenner and reasoned that if a vaccine was found for one disease (such as smallpox), then a vaccine could be found for all diseases. By 1878, Pasteur had been successful in culturing the virulent bacteria of chicken cholera and had started to vaccinate chickens. This was considered the ‘birth of immunology’ for science and was a breakthrough worldwide.

In 1881, Pasteur helped develop the anthrax vaccination which was used on sheep, cows, and goats. In 1885, Pasteur was studying rabies and tested his first human vaccine (a nine-year-old boy who had been bitten by a dog). Pasteur produced the vaccine by attenuating the virus inside the rabbits and harvesting it from the spinal cords and injecting it into his human trial to make his body recognize the virus.

Without the discoveries of Pasteur, our medical practices would not be the same as it is today. People would still be suffering from illnesses and diseases that are preventable in today’s society due to vaccinations. In today’s modern times there is a dramatic decline in diseases such as rabies, cholera and smallpox, thanks to Pasteur’s discovery of inoculating chickens, then moving to human trials. Pasteur was able to build upon the germ theory which gave way to other scientific research in that field which has led to strict sanitary clinical conditions.