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Louis Pasteur: 3 ideas worth knowing

3 ideas from Louis Pasteur, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• The curved flask that killed 'spontaneous generation'

  Louis Pasteur boiled broth in flasks with long, curved 'swan necks' that let air in but trapped dust and microbes in the bend. The sterile broth stayed lifeless indefinitely — unti…

  — Louis Pasteur, Mémoire sur les corpuscules organisés qui existent dans l'atmosphère

• A nine-year-old boy was the first person ever saved from rabies by a vaccine

  In 1885, Joseph Meister was bitten fourteen times by a rabid dog. Louis Pasteur, who had only tested his rabies vaccine on animals, gave the boy an untested series of injections ov…

  — Louis Pasteur, Rabies vaccine

• Heating wine just enough to kill germs, without cooking it, saved a national industry

  French wine and beer were spoiling in transit, and Louis Pasteur traced the problem to living microorganisms rather than the chemistry of the drink itself. He found that briefly he…

  — Louis Pasteur, Études sur le Vin

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