He found out that the bacteria that spoils wine can be eliminated by heating it at a temperature of 55 ºC. Spoilage of food can be preserved by liquidation of microbes, which are already present in the food and protect food from another spoilage. The process got it’s name after it’s inventor – pasteurization. This is the most used process to conserve food without damaging it. He also helped the French silk industry to get rid of the dangerous silkworm disease, which made big losses in the French economy.
He spent the last period of his lifetime working on causes and prevention of diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis, smallpox, anthrax or septicemia. But he is best known for his investigation in the prevention of rabies, also known as hydrophobia. Pasteur and Roux attempted to transfer rabies on healthy dogs by injecting them with the saliva of rabid animals. Research found that the active agent of rabies is located in the spinal cord and in the brain. But they weren’t able to find a specific organism causing disease, so they applied extracts from the spinal cord of rabid dogs directly to the brain of healthy ones. This produced rabies in the test subjects in few days. The purpose was to develop a vaccine that would stop the rabid agent from the place of the bite through spinal cord to the brain. The development of vaccine: “Animal was injected by suspension of spinal cord of rabid animals that were attenuated in strength by air drying over a 12-day period of time in the now-famous Roux Bottle. A strip of spinal cord was suspended from a hanger in the center of the bottle containing two holes, one on top and one on the lower side. Air entered by lower hole, passed over a drying agent and exited from the top. The longer the cord was dried, the less potent was tissue in producing rabies.”
The treatment plan developed immunity from rabies by injecting day by day with stronger extract of dried spinal cord for 12 days under the skin. Then was the subject was resistant against bites of rabid animals. This brought great publicity.
But could he test his vaccine on humans? In 1885 he started additional research. But fate had another idea. Events made him act sooner. On July 6, 1886, a 9-year old boy named Joseph Meister and his mother appeared in Pasteur’s lab. The boy was bitten by a rabid dog. He was so badly mauled that he couldn’t walk. His mother asked Pasteur to treat her son. He had treated several dogs, and most of them were resistant to rabies. Pasteur after discussions with his physician colleagues, he started to treat the boy.