Louis Pasteur face à la maladie du ver à soie (1865–1870) : du chimiste au biologiste

Abstract

In 1865, at the request of the government, Louis Pasteur was led to investigate the causes of a disease, the “pebrine”, which struck the silkworm farms, especially in the south of France, and to provide a remedy. He devoted 5 years of his life (1865–1870) to it, years in which he discovered biology, which represented for him a real epistemological rupture and a profound paradigm shift: from the chemist he was, he discovered and converted to biology. How did this happen, and under what conditions?These 5 years of work on silkworm diseases appear as a response to a challenge that Pasteur has launched himself, in a field totally new to him. He was able to bring an original solution to get rid of these germs that permanently infested the French strains of the silkworm, strains long selected for their silk production. But these results go far beyond that. He was able to define a rigorous approach to what was known only approximately: infection, contagion and heredity of diseases. He was able to come up with concepts that would later have a much broader application, to any animal or human pathology. It is necessary to emphasize Pasteur’s ability to radically change paradigms, swapping those of chemistry for those of biology. At this point in his career, Louis Pasteur became a biologist$~$!

Keywords

• Pasteur L.
• Ver à soie maladie
• Microsporidie
• Histoire des sciences
• Sélection par couple